“It’s a great tool offered with world-class support and a working line of credit at no cost to the business. What more could you ask for?”

Jet East is one of the nation’s leading aviation maintenance providers with on-demand and scheduled maintenance services for private jets accessible across the United States. Holly Davis is the Billing Manager over Jet East’s aircraft on the ground (AOG) division and started with Jet East in 2013 when there were only twenty-five employees. “Now, since merging with Gama Aviation, we have 700 employees in the U.S.”

In the AOG division, Holly manages the invoicing for customers and billing expenses for the technicians across 12 regions that are hired to work on the private aircraft. AOG – “Our team of mobile technicians provide services nationwide. We help business operators get their aircraft back in the air.” What makes AOG different from other divisions is Holly’s team deals directly with the customers building relationships with responsive customer service. “AOG is very different from our other divisions, we invoice all expenses directly to our customers after each job so there is no room for error.” And how was the AOG division handling these expenses? Through countless Excel spreadsheets.

“We invoice directly to our customers after each job so there is no room for error.”

To gather expenses each month, Holly and her team had to review every technician’s expense and add to the invoice system, resulting in over one hundred spreadsheets a week. “If I have one job with five technicians working that is five spreadsheets and if the job is 5 days long that is twenty-five expense sheets for one job. It really adds up. We had to wait for the technician to submit the expense sheet and there is room for error and not applying all expenses that have occurred during the job in addition late submissions delay invoicing.”

There was great lack of control and visibility into what cost code each expense had to be tied to for every job. At one point, Holly said her team had access to their bank credit card. When the companies merged Gama Aviation was utilizing a different third-party platform than Jet East. This caused more confusion with the billing team because we did not have access to all expenses.

With an overwhelming amount of maintenance jobs and technicians located across the country, the AOG division–as well as the entire organization–needed a financial shift. “We really needed the tools to create one complete system that merged both of our companies together, so that way we could be effective and efficient.”

“We really needed the tools to create one complete system that merged both of our companies together, so that way we could be effective and efficient.”

Enter BILL Spend & Expense. Jet East was now able to connect every division into a single, automated platform and get visibility into their expenses in real-time. “Spend & Expense was such a relief and very eye-opening. In the 10 years I have been invoicing customers, getting our expenses was very manual.” Every technician across the 12 regions has a virtual card to use out on a job.

Now, technicians can easily swipe their virtual card, capture the required information for the AOG Team, which is crucial to capture invoicing details such as aircraft number, work order number and FBO. The team easily reviews and applies the appropriate charges to the customer and approves payment for finance to view. “With Spend & Expense, the simplicity that the information pops right up on your phone is what my technicians need. What is easy for them not only benefits the billing team, but it saves the technician time from having to create Excel expense sheets and this benefits everyone in the process. Being able to bill our customers effectively, efficiently, accurately, and not take any loss in the process is important to me, my team, and the company.”

“With Spend & Expense, the simplicity that the charge pops right up on your phone is what my technicians need. And what is easy for them benefits everyone.”

Another welcome change was having real time insights into budgets for each region, something Jet East did not have before. “I think the AOG division probably has one of the largest budgets.” Before switching to Spend & Expense they had no historical data into what each technician in every region should be budgeted. For example, each technician receives a budget at the start of the month, but those that travel out past Florida to the islands more, their budgets need to be increased. But with no historical data to back them up, the AOG team had no way to know how much each month was going to cost. “What is great about Spend & Expense is can view on a daily basis and see whose budget is running low. Being able to see that historical data and send those funds ahead of time is an exciting thing.”

“BILL Spend & Expense is an expense management solution for an entire organization.”

Today, BILL Spend & Expense is utilized across the entire Jet East Gama Aviation organization. “Spend & Expense is an expense management solution for an entire organization. I can’t even imagine 9 or 10 years prior. Being able to capture expenses for the AOG business group real-time, correctly invoicing our customers, and maintaining the transparency of budgets, we are working smarter and faster, and there is less risk of financial loss with Spend & Expense.”