Celigo > Case Studies > Automating Cash Applications: A Case Study on Frontline Education

Automating Cash Applications: A Case Study on Frontline Education

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Technology Category
  • Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Event-Driven Application
Applicable Industries
  • Education
  • Finance & Insurance
Applicable Functions
  • Maintenance
  • Product Research & Development
Use Cases
  • Personnel Tracking & Monitoring
  • Time Sensitive Networking
Services
  • Training
About The Customer
Frontline Education is a SaaS provider that develops software for K-12 educational institutions. Their school administration software features everything from recruiting, hiring, time tracking, absence management, professional development, special education and interventions to give school systems elevated insights into their students and staff. The company is headquartered in Malvern, PA, USA. Amanda Rompola, Sr. Accounting Manager, manages a modestly-sized team of staff accountants and senior accountants to handle AP/AR for Frontline Education. Most of the company’s IT resources are allocated to product development, with a very lean team dedicated to internal systems administration.
The Challenge
Frontline Education, a SaaS provider for K-12 educational institutions, was facing a significant challenge in managing their cash applications. The process was manually performed by uploading payee information sent from the bank into Excel spreadsheets, and matching them to NetSuite accounts in another spreadsheet. This process was not only time-consuming, requiring a staff accountant's time over multiple days, but was also prone to errors. The situation was further complicated by the company's business model. As a SaaS company serving education institutions, invoices are renewed annually to coincide with the beginning of the school year. With over 12,000 customers, Frontline’s finance team was dealing with a massive transaction volume in a small amount of time. The manual cash applications through Excel spreadsheets were not keeping up with the pace, and expanding the team was not a feasible solution.
The Solution
To address this challenge, Frontline Education turned to Celigo, a company that Amanda Rompola, Sr. Accounting Manager at Frontline, had worked with in a previous role. Celigo’s Cash Application Manager to NetSuite was implemented to automate Frontline’s cash application process. The solution retrieves payment information from Frontline’s bank, and immediately matches it to customers in NetSuite. This automation significantly reduced the time and effort required to process invoices. Before adopting the Cash Application Manager, Frontline used to dedicate an entire staff accountant’s day to performing cash applications. Now, everything from cash applications to bank reconciliations only takes two hours per day. Additionally, the elimination of spreadsheets and the ability to more efficiently review outputs substantially cut down on errors.
Operational Impact
  • The implementation of Celigo’s Cash Application Manager has not only improved efficiency and accuracy in Frontline Education's cash application process, but it has also increased overall job satisfaction within the finance department. With the automation of the majority of the cash applications, the staff accountants have been able to engage with more interesting projects, rather than spending their time with manual data entry. Furthermore, despite being non-technical, Amanda’s team is able to maintain their own integrations, thanks to the quick turnaround and guided support from Celigo’s customer success team. This has made troubleshooting and maintenance simple endeavors, further enhancing the operational efficiency of the team.
Quantitative Benefit
  • Reduced the time required for cash applications and bank reconciliations from a full day to just two hours per day.
  • Automated two-thirds of the cash applications, reducing the need for manual checks.
  • Significantly reduced errors by eliminating the use of spreadsheets for cash applications.

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