When Jason Hershey, VP of Finance and Accounting, joined the Hospital Association of Oregon, he was replacing a seasoned CFO of 30 years. “We had lots of really good processes in terms of a clean accounting process, but we didn’t have modern systems and tools in place,” says Jason. “Everything was done manually.”

That “everything” included expenditures, bill pay, and reimbursements. “We would send invoices as email attachments for approval and do paper vouchers for check runs,” says Jason. “We would email the list of checks for approval, and then we would stamp the checks, lick the envelopes, and put them in the mail.” 

“The whole payments process was really inefficient,” says Jason. “We’d send invoices out for approval, but the return email saying ‘approved’ usually wouldn’t have the invoice attached, so we’d have to go back and match up the invoice that was sent.” This was highly time-intensive and created opportunity for error. “Our payment vouchers were not directly tied to the accounting system, so we had to hand-key everything twice. We spent a lot of time hand-keying, and a lot of time double checking that everything was keyed correctly.”

In his new role, Jason saw an opportunity to drive some organization-wide efficiency and reduce manual effort with finance and accounting technology.

Jason came across Ramp early on in his tenure at the association, and right away he recognized its potential to reduce much of the manual time his team was spending on finance and accounting. The association worked with Ramp to modernize its corporate card program and automate its reimbursements, and bill pay. 

“We’ve fully embraced the corporate card aspect of Ramp,” says Jason. “We’ve issued virtual and physical cards and really relied on the system to help us with tracking expenses and getting memos and receipts in. Ramp makes turning in receipts easy for employees—so they do it,” he says. 

Across the organization, department heads use Ramp to approve invoices and are active in reviewing the spend they’re responsible for. The whole spend program moves seamlessly with Ramp, according to Jason.

Since deploying Ramp, the association has created a more efficient, less time-intensive accounting process. “Introducing Ramp was a big time-saver in many ways,” says Jason. “It allowed us not to have those bottlenecks of having to get all of the AP done in a weekly check run. Now we can have things approved in the system and have payments issued as approvals are made.” 

This has been especially helpful given the association’s hybrid work arrangement. “That was probably one of the biggest ‘aha’ moments for me,” he says. “Employees can submit expenses, they can be approved by their manager, and then they can receive payment within a few days. No paper vouchers or checks need to be printed, and all of that can happen without batching a weeks’ worth of transactions together. Ramp has really streamlined that whole process in a nice way.” 

Eliminating some of that email traffic has created much more margin for Jason and his team. “You have all these small disruptions when you get an email from someone that you need to go deal with,” he says. 

Ramp has reduced email back-and-forth while also cutting back on manual work. “Before, our team would spend all day doing data entry and preparing the batches on Monday,” says Jason. “Then I’d be in the office on Tuesday and would probably spend a good hour and a half to two hours reviewing, stamping, and mailing things. And then after checks were all mailed, we would have to go and file everything.” 

Now, with Ramp, the finance team can enter everything directly into the platform, then send it out for approval—and that’s it—Ramp gathers the approvals and processes the payments. “Doing it the old way probably took a good 10 hours per AP batch,” says Jason. “Now it just takes a couple of minutes between getting an invoice entered, approved, and processed.” 

Shifting from a manual system to a more automated one has saved time, but it’s also improved the association’s audit-readiness. “If you think about our old process, it was all paper-based,” says Jason. “We didn’t scan all of our invoices, so we kept that paper copy of the invoice and the voucher and the check stub in our filing cabinets in our office.” At audit time, Jason and his team would have to manually search through paper files to find invoices. “This year, since we’d had Ramp in place for the full year, it was nice to just download everything we needed directly from Ramp and email it to the auditor,” says Jason. “It’s a lot faster to find things. We don’t have to be in the office or refile things afterward.” 

With the time saved and efficiency gained from implementing Ramp, the association has been able to focus on other areas to streamline and processes to improve. “In the last couple of years, we’ve been really focused on introducing new tools, like putting a new payroll system in place,” says Jason. “Now we’re working on updating our accounting system.” 

The team now has the bandwidth to turn its attention to these important new implementations. “Ramp is such a valuable time-saver, especially in an environment where you’re maybe a small or one-person finance shop,” says Jason. “With Ramp, you can feel a little bit more comfortable that the system is going to help you do those things you’re worried about—and it handles those things well.”