When People’s Care was founded 20 years ago, the corporate office consisted of four employees managing three houses. The entire AP and accounts receivable (AR) process was handled by a single person. Since then, the company has grown to include 64 homes and a much larger team, but the infrastructure supporting the AP process hasn’t scaled to match that growth.

To Tracy Estrada-Hiett, the controller at People’s Care who manages the AP, AR and payroll departments, the challenge was familiar. She encountered a similar problem at her previous role and had turned to Esker.

“I had a really good experience with Esker at my last company,” Estrada-Hiett said. “The implementation
went smoothly, it worked well, and the Esker team was easy to work with.”

Challenges of a Manual AP Process
Due to the nature of the business and that it involves managing individual homes, most of the invoices
People’s Care receives don’t include terms. Monthly expenses, such as utility bills, are due upon receipt.
The current system doesn’t have a good way to track these invoices and their corresponding payments.

Estrada-Hiett and her team have to manually track invoices in a spreadsheet, a process that takes time and doesn’t yield much insight or analytics. Because of this, the company was experiencing recurring issues with payments being missed or having duplicate payments in the following month.

“My biggest problem is that I have no workflow or visibility,” Estrada-Hiett said. “Individual district managers can’t view or approve their own invoices, and administrators of the homes don’t have visibility into their invoices either. Trying to control their expenses is a logistical nightmare.”

Automation Made Simple, but Still Powerful
From her experience with Esker, Estrada-Hiett knew it was the Accounts Payable automation solution that People’s Care needed. Because of the role that district managers and home administrators play in processing payments, the tool needed to be simple to use with a user interface that was easy to navigate, but it also needed to provide metrics and insight into how payments were trending.

“My first big draw with Esker was that the dashboards were super easy to read — for anybody,” Estrada-Hiett added. “It doesn’t require an accounting degree or CPA licence to understand.

She made the case to the company’s CEO and board of directors, pointing out how much money People’s Care was losing in late fees, penalties and duplicate payments. She also outlined how she isn’t able to track any of the payments. She explained how Esker would be able to help identify issues, such as a leak that results in a high water bill.

People’s Care made the decision to move forward with Esker in March and the company is currently in the testing phase, but Estrada-Hiett says that testing is going well. She’s optimistic about the benefits People’s Care will experience once the solution is fully implemented.

Read full press release here.

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