How Crossings Community Church upgraded its procurement process with Ramp

For years, Crossings Church relied on traditional banking and Concur to manage purchase orders and payments. However, dependence on legacy software prevented its finance professionals from gaining granular data and high visibility into spending. 

“Everybody does procurement differently,” says Mandy Mobley, the Finance Invoice and Expense Coordinator at Crossings Community Church. “We're a nonprofit. Procurement needs to be transparent and customizable for audit purposes.”

But preparing for external audits was only part of the story. Crossings Church lacked a flexible, but fully controlled workflow. A multitude of manual processes resulted in tedious and time-consuming tasks across purchasing, accounts payable and employee expenses. Minimal customization or editing in coding in Concur also created an additional workload. Technology limitations would extend hours spent on paying bills and generating reports. 

The team at Crossings Community Church partnered with Ramp to accelerate invoice processing  and streamline its procurement workflow. Several Ramp products offered the ability to automate, simplify, or gain visibility into complex accounting processes.

“We brought on Ramp for the Bill Pay,” says Mandy. “I had to cut hundreds of checks each week, because Concur didn’t offer this payment method. With Ramp, check payments are fully automated. On top of that, Ramp’s cards had cashback and rewards. That was a huge selling feature for us.”

Another critical point was rolling out an efficient and transparent procurement process. Ramp’s procurement offerings enabled Crossings Church to automate the manual processes of requisition approvals, purchase order matching, and vendor renewals and empowered the team with more control over the entire workflow.

One of the most significant transformations from using Ramp was time savings. By automating the entire procure-to-pay process, Mandy and the team saved up to 15 hours per week.

“Me specifically? I am saving so much time. I worked 40 hours a week just on these tasks before Ramp, and now I only spend 10 to 15 hours on these tasks,” notes Mandy. “It’s opened time for more projects.”

Now that the team has automated its procurement and much of the payment process, it can rapidly process an average of 80-100 invoices a week. This also enables them to better manage vendor documentation, including contracts, for timely renewals and cost comparisons. The ability to quickly look up information for individual vendors and maintain clear communication strengthens relationships. 

“Thanks to Ramp, I can review questions about specific invoices, and it'll probably take me a matter of hours as opposed to weeks,” says Mandy.”

At the same time, the team has gained in-depth insights into the cash flow, enabling more accurate budgets. 

“Before, the manual reporting processes meant that the budget reports were never accurate and always delayed,” says Mandy. “Now our communications team has a broader, more accurate view of everything, such as staff and vendors.”

Thanks to Ramp, Mandy and her team at Crossings Church can free up time from manual, tedious tasks for high-value activities. At the same time, they can better forecast cash flow, better plan programming, and effortlessly maintain records for audits. 

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