Emergency Plumbing Heating & Air is a family-owned and operated business on a mission to help residential, commercial, and industrial customers with their plumbing needs through excellent customer service, quality work, and up-front pricing. Established in 1977, they proudly serve the Delaware, Ohio, community and specialize in a range of essential services, including plumbing, heating, cooling, excavation, backflow, and septic tank pumping.
Even when they are not on the job, Emergency Plumbing Heating & Air stays actively engaged with the community. The team loves to organize seasonal events, including an annual fall festival chili cook-off, adopting a family at Christmas, and supporting a local food pantry. They're dedicated to giving back to the community that's shown their business so much support for generations.
Sandra Helton, Office Administrator at Emergency Plumbing Heating & Air, says that before she joined, “The team was using a lot of spreadsheets.” They were on Excel, comparing balance sheets to spending, and manually making sure everything matched up in QuickBooks.
These manual processes got the job done but were also time-intensive, and more difficult than they needed to be. One of their owners, Jen Rose, was introduced to BILL Spend & Expense at a trade show. She shared this with Helton and together they made a decision to try out BILL Spend & Expense and never looked back.
The change was immediate. “BILL Spend & Expense has turned out to be the most amazing thing,” Helton says. “I really enjoy it, and it lets me do my job single-handedly.”
Now instead of using Excel and tedious manual processes, the team can easily sync BILL Spend & Expense with QuickBooks, and according to Helton, “That makes a world of difference.” She says it saves a lot of time, and makes the process much easier.
In addition, Helton can monitor expenses daily. “I can check what employees are spending on, and set their limits,” she explains. “Thanks to BILL Spend & Expense, we know our employees can’t go out there and spend frivolously.”
“BILL Spend & Expense has turned out to be the most amazing thing. I really enjoy it, and it lets me do my job single-handedly.”
Emergency Plumbing Heating & Air also works with Ohio based accounting firm Klepec & Klepec run by married couple George and Keisha Klepec. Helton explains, “Keisha was telling me the other day George was initially very skeptical because it’s all the new craze. But because of you and I, he has been able to see the positives in the system and he really likes the benefits of it for our company.”
This new outlook has been nothing but positive. “They both really love it,” Helton says. “They are so excited that we made the switch, and they say it was a smart move. It's worked out great for us.”
Keisha likes Spend & Expense because it makes her job easier. “I take care of 90% of the expense work before it even gets to her,” Helton says. “I'm able to make sure expenses are categorized before they even hit QuickBooks. So it's helped our accountants out tremendously. And we can sync with QuickBooks and upload our own chart of accounts, which makes it so much easier. I love that.”
“We use a lot of virtual cards—I love the virtual card features,” Helton says. She finds virtual cards helpful for vendors with recurring charges, making payments online, and creating single-use cards. “It makes it very easy,” she explains.
It’s also useful for giving customers refunds or compensation. We use virtual cards for our vendors, suppliers and parts that we order at the shop.
Emergency Plumbing Heating & Air gives everyone on the team their own BILL Divvy Card powered by Visa.* As Helton explains, “We have budgets set up so that all of our field guys are on a field budget. And they have a set amount assigned to their card to spend on whatever their expenses are.” This makes it easy for them to spend on the go. “They just select what type of expense they're making,” Helton says. “So if they're spending on fuel or parts or whatever, they just select the right category.”
Assigning budgets has been a great way to avoid overspending. “We have a marketing budget and a field budget,” Helton says, “and then certain people have their own budgets. I have a certain amount of digital cards just for myself that I have in my own budget. This is great for online buying and uniform purchasing—things like that.”
The company uses BILL Spend & Expense as part of their unique bonus structure. “Employees have 24 hours after spending to get receipts in,” Helton explains, “and if they don't have those receipts in that timeframe, it could affect their bonus. So 95% of them get their receipts in on time, and that makes a big difference.”
This process means all of their receipts are tracked and categorized in BILL Spend & Expense, so they’re easy to reference later. “When we have to do returns or find a receipt for something from four months ago, it's the easiest thing,” Helton shares.
“I don't have to dig through files of papers with BILL Spend & Expense. Once I had to find a receipt from a whole year ago, and now, this is so easy.”
Helton also loves the rewards she receives from BILL Spend & Expense. “We haven’t used our rewards yet, but we plan to use them for our Christmas party this year,” she says. “We’ve earned several rewards for referrals, over a thousand dollars, so that’s also a great incentive.”
Overall, BILL Spend & Expense has made a massive impact on automating the financial operations for Emergency Plumbing Heating & Air. They were on Excel, comparing balance sheets to spending, and manually making sure everything matched up in QuickBooks. “I'm telling you, I love the way BILL Spend & Expense is—it's worked great for us,” says Helton.
*BILL Divvy Card is issued by Cross River Bank, member FDIC. This is not a deposit product.
