Invoices by postal mail
Every invoice arrived on paper and was date-stamped before anyone keyed it in.
Acumatica Case Study
How LifeSource, an Upper Midwest organ procurement organization, moved its finances from paper mail to Acumatica in the cloud.
About LifeSource
LifeSource coordinates organ, eye and tissue donation between hospitals and transplant centers, with the second-largest service area of any such organization in the U.S. Its teams support donor families, surgically recover donated organs and transport them to recipients. It works with more than 270 hospitals, 9 transplant centers, 9 medical examiner offices and hundreds of funeral homes.
The Challenge
Organ and tissue recoveries run on tight deadlines, and LifeSource tracks every financial transaction by patient ID, from procurement and transport to transplant and physician pay. Its finances ran on an aging on-premises system and spreadsheets. Invoices arrived by postal mail and were date-stamped by hand.
As the organization grew, the system slowed, and one mistake meant re-entering the whole transaction. A single transportation invoice could hold 100 lines, each keyed in by case. Executives saw financial reports only when the finance team printed them.
LifeSource needed an easy-to-use, paperless cloud system with unlimited users that staff could reach from anywhere.
Every invoice arrived on paper and was date-stamped before anyone keyed it in.
Staff merged and looked up data across spreadsheets that could not share it.
A VPN to the on-premises servers often dropped the connection.
A ninth user had to ask someone to log out or book a time slot.
The Solution
The LifeSource evaluation team looked at newer versions of Sage, Microsoft Dynamics and Oracle NetSuite before choosing Acumatica. The team liked its layout and user interface, its open API for connecting third-party applications, and getting the features it wanted at a cost the non-profit could afford.
LifeSource brought 30,000 complex journal entries, many with allocations, into Acumatica. Onboarding was easy for staff. Employees, especially in finance, took to the system from day one.
Vendors send invoices electronically, and LifeSource tracks them automatically, so little time goes to opening mail and keying data. Automated notifications and document scanning let managers approve payments faster. Aged invoices over 90 days fell by more than 50%.
Acumatica workflows and automation replaced many manual data entry tasks, giving each employee hours back for higher-level work. Data entry efficiency rose 40%, and workflows raised efficiency by 33%.
Executives and staff see the KPIs for their role on dashboards and run reports themselves. Managers view past and month-in-progress reports in real time, drill into the detail and correct miscoded entries if their security clearance allows. Management now tracks grants more effectively.
Acumatica runs in the cloud, and what each person can see is set by their security clearance. Executives and employees reach financial information remotely.
After the first go-live, LifeSource added expense reporting. Employees upload expense reports in the Acumatica mobile app, and finance no longer types them in by hand. Both employees and the finance team save time.
The Result
LifeSource has grown into an $85 million operation and expanded its footprint. The time saved helps it keep overhead costs down, and it is using Acumatica to support a goal of growing transplants by 40%.
Electronic invoices, faster approvals and less manual entry.
Role-based dashboards and real-time reports on demand.
Expense reports uploaded from the mobile app.
Access from anywhere, set by security clearance.