Ketchum saves over 100 staff hours a month to make every taxpayer dollar count
“In the public sector, every hour and every dollar belongs to the taxpayer. We can't afford to waste either. Ramp ensures we don't.”
Finance Specialist, City of Ketchum
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Ketchum, Idaho, has always been a place of firsts. Home to Sun Valley—the world's first destination ski resort and the site of the world's first chairlift—this mountain community has long drawn movers and shakers who saw possibility beyond convention. For generations, leaders have chosen to build here, proving geography doesn't dictate ambition. Innovation, it turns out, isn't just for private enterprise.
Today, the City of Ketchum manages over 4,000 vendor relationships and resort infrastructure that rivals cities ten times its size, all with a finance team of just four. When Carly Ching returned home for her first job out of college as the fourth member of this team, she walked into a system for how money moves that had stood for decades. But she saw an opportunity cost and hours the city couldn't afford to lose, to reclaim busywork that kept a government from doing strategic work that mattered to its citizens.
A place that had always been first would be first again—this time in proving what public sector finance could look like when technology worked as hard for taxpayer dollars as the people who served those taxpayers.
The opportunity cost of not embracing change
When Carly Ching joined City Hall's finance team, the first thing she noticed was the stacks. Manila folders piled on desks, stuffed in filing cabinets, passed hand-to-hand across departments—an entire city's finances moving on paper. "I was literally running around the building with manila folders, chasing down receipts, spending days reconciling credit cards," she remembers. Credit card reconciliation alone consumed 30 hours a month. Every line item entered manually one-by-one, every physical receipt hunted down and matched to statements.
Invoices were even more of a hassle: printed in batches, sorted into department folders, hand-delivered to offsite locations, then manually keyed into the ERP. "It felt like I was toiling away in paperwork that should be automated instead of the kind of work that would actually move the city forward," Carly says.
For the finance team, the bigger issue wasn't just how long it took—it was when oversight happened. The city's traditional bank cards only meant spend was only reviewed after the fact, surfacing any issues after the purchase was already made. That meant no real-time visibility, no point-of-purchase controls, and no way to stop an issue before it occurred.
For department heads, the stakes were different but just as real. "Missing invoices keep me up at night. Contractors not getting paid, people not getting reimbursed, keeps me up at night," says Director of Public Works, Ben Whipple. The system demanded administrative discipline from people whose job was to plow snow and fix roads, not manage expense reports.
Carly mapped the entire workflow—every handoff, delay, and bottleneck—and compared the current state to what Ramp enabled. The result: 70% of the process could be automated or eliminated. When Brent Davis, Ketchum’s Director of Finance, saw this analysis, the decision was obvious.
From post-spend cleanup to pre-spend control
Ramp gave Ketchum functionality that their bank cards could not: enforcement before the transaction, not reconciliation after. Automated merchant restrictions ensured every purchase aligned with city policy. Real-time spend limits by department gave budget holders autonomy with accountability. Custom approval workflows matched the city's accounting requirements. Mobile receipt capture meant field crews could snap a photo at the pump and move on—no more chasing receipts or sitting down to do expenses weeks later.
On paper, the case was clear. But any new system has its skeptics, especially in government. So Carly and the team made a bold bet: they'd pilot with the people most likely to say no. "Picking the most resistant people was critical," she explains. "If they can adjust to the change, everyone can."
Brent provided the air cover. "Our job is to make taxpayer dollars go further, and that means always looking for new ways to be more efficient," he put it.
Carly leaned into Ramp's robust Help Center—live trainings, on-demand resources, forums—to make getting everyone up to speed fast and easy. As the pilot unfolded, she took the early learnings to create laminated cheat sheets from Ramp's guides, customized for each department.
What won over the skeptics wasn't the training materials—it was the first time they actually used Ramp. They discovered it took just seconds, not the administrative burden they’d grown used to before. "I was shocked," says Ben from Public Works. "I snap a picture of the receipt, Ramp handles the rest like magic, and I move on. Gone are the days of sitting down to do expense reports."
Cards and expense management were rolled out across 100% of the city’s 18 departments with enthusiastic adoption in just over a month. Bill pay followed weeks later. All in sync with approval workflows tailored to match the city's unique needs, and every step timestamped and tracked for audit-readiness and accountability.
Carly and the finance team were freed from chasing paper or questioning what might’ve gotten lost in the shuffle— it all flows through Ramp and seamlessly into their ERP.
The difference between managing paperwork and serving residents
That first month-end close changed everything. Credit card reconciliation dropped 90%—from nearly a week to under five hours. Invoice processing went from days to same-day. Across City Hall, over 100 staff hours a month were reclaimed.
The transformation rippled across the organization and across the city. Field crews snapped photos at the pump and got back to work. Department heads gained real-time budget visibility instead of waiting for month-end reports. Audit prep, once a quarterly ordeal, now took a single day. Every transaction carried a complete digital trail—continuous audit-readiness, rather than scrambling to compile documentation months later.
For Carly, the gift was time—time to lead the kind of work she discovered she was built for, like driving projects to build new systems that help the city operate even more efficiently.
For department heads like Ben, the nights worrying about missing invoices were over. Contractors got paid on time, every time. No disruptions to city services that keep Ketchum and its citizens moving.
For city leaders like Mayor Neil Bradshaw, the decision to adopt Ramp was like the city's Main Street rebuild—not just a surface upgrade, but a fundamental infrastructure transformation. "We upgraded the 'plumbing' around our financial accounting," he explains. "We automated tasks that were labor intensive, and added financial transparency that helped residents understand where their tax dollars were being spent. Municipal governance is all about the efficient allocation of scarce resources—Ramp gives us the ability to make more informed financial policy decisions. It was one of the best decisions we've ever made."
"In government, you can't just throw bodies at a problem. The question is always: how do we serve more people, faster, without the need to add headcount? Ramp gave us that answer. We got the operational capacity to double our output and advance more strategic initiatives."
— Brent Davis, Director of Finance, City of Ketchum
The legacy of daring to be different
Carly didn't set out to become a change agent. At 22, fresh out of college, she simply saw a better way and refused to accept that her city's government couldn't have it. What she built became her legacy—not just cleaner books or faster closes, but proof that one person with conviction can transform an entire organization. The kind of work that gets noticed. The kind of decision that defines a career.
"You don't need decades of experience to drive real change," Carly reflects. "You need to see what's possible, build a clear plan, and have the courage to bet on it."
For Brent, backing Carly's vision was the easiest call he ever made. "What we've built is a modern system of record for how money moves. When finance runs on one platform, the entire organization moves faster, smarter, and more transparently."
The stacks of manila folders are gone. The late nights chasing receipts, the month-end anxiety—all relics of a previous process. In their place: a finance operation built for the future, and teams that have more time to serve their city.
For every finance leader who wonders if transformation is possible in government, Ketchum's answer is simple: it is, if you're willing to challenge how things have always been done.
"Government can get stuck in its own way. This was a classic case where we dared to be different—and with Ramp, we hit a home run. Change is hard, but so is watching your team drown in manual work when better tools exist."
— Brent Davis, Director of Finance, City of Ketchum
