Easter Seals Greater Houston is a provider of disability services with a focus on early childhood intervention. The nonprofit has scaled rapidly over the years due to demand for veteran services, services for children and adults with disabilities, and the expansion of early intervention services to a much larger territory. The nonprofit currently serves more than 12,500 families.
The rapid growth left some parts of the organization, including the back office, lagging behind. Pain points included spending a lot of money and time on a manual check process and filing paperwork.
The company took the advice of their accountant and used BILL to streamline the most labor-intensive functions.
Easter Seals is able to pay employees electronically, has reassigned one headcount and sees average savings of $1,000 a month from time saved and reduced supplies. The nonprofit was also able to free up expensive office space by storing documents in BILL.
“We have to continue to be smarter with our funding. BILL is helping us do that by keeping our team accountable.” — Marjorie Reichard, Accountant
Just a few years ago, the nonprofit was manually mailing over 200 checks a month to cover employee reimbursement for mileage and expenses. Armed with a background in computing, accountant Marjorie Reichard knew that this was not an optimal use of time and resources. Reichard led the charge to modernize the back office and quickly discovered that BILL could make the nonprofit’s operations more efficient, reducing paper flows and approval times, and decreasing costs. Another key driver, according to Reichard, was that employees would benefit from being paid electronically. “We have such a loyal workforce - people who give so generously of their time and often don’t have the time to deposit their own paychecks or misplace them before they can deposit them,” said Reichard.
Reichard quickly saw results. With the accounts payable process streamlined, Easter Seals has been able to reassign the AP employee to more important and strategic initiatives, a win-win for the employee and the nonprofit. The nonprofit is also saving on check costs when paying through BILL, with savings in time and supplies adding up to $1,000 a month. “In addition to the cost savings, BILL is helping us to be smarter with our funding, with the ability to look at all transactions at any point in time, keeping our team accountable.”
Reflecting on other ways BILL has helped the nonprofit, Reichard shared how BILL saved the day during a move to a new office space. When the nonprofit discovered they needed more space, Reichard simply scanned all of the paper charts and freed up the equivalent of an office in space that was no longer needed for filing. As Reichard explains, “This was the cherry on the top! Not only did we see the improvement in savings, efficiency and productivity, we were able to reduce office space costs. BILL has delivered across the board!”
