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Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau
Time is money for powerhouse nonprofits
About 85 employees at the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau (ACVB) support Atlanta’s $12 billion hospitality industry, attracting 42 million visitors and sustaining 230,000 metro jobs each year. With such a small staff, every minute of the day matters for the private nonprofit.
The Challenge
With such a lean staff, ACVB’s controller is responsible for finding, assessing and implementing new accounting and finance technologies, but it felt like ACVB was rolling out new software all the time. To avoid another software launch, it took a manual approach to load expense data from Concur into its new accounting system, Sage Intacct. It was a painstaking process, where information had to be downloaded from Concur Expense, converted into a new format, sorted and arranged. The manual workaround required eight to 10 hours of data entry every month.
The Solution
Wipfli Connectors, such as ExpenseConnect, use flexible data mapping to simplify and streamline integrations between Concur solutions and Sage Intacct. During a phone consultation with Wipfli, ACVB was able to send a test file and immediately map GL codes between Concur and Intacct. “It took merely half an hour on the phone, and I didn’t have to involve IT,” ACVB’s controller, Braam Du Plooy, said.
It took eight hours each month, maybe up to 10. In a small company, time is literally money, and that eight to 10 hours amounts to a lot.
The results
ExpenseConnect is changing the finance team’s whole dynamic. The ACVB uses the solution to integrate its expense data automatically, correctly, securely and in real time. Instead of manually entering expense data, staff are focused on quality control and other value-added activities. With more accurate and consistent accounting data, the ACVB is also finding ways to improve processes and use resources differently.
