ZeroCater reduces invoices by over 50x

Keith Bowles, IT and Operations Manager at ZeroCater, manages its four offices.

The problem

Invoice overload: Recording and processing invoices took hours every month

Lack of spend visibility: Limited visibility into what employees were purchasing

Chronic rogue spend: No approval or budget system led to rogue spend

To keep track of spending across ZeroCater’s vendors, Keith maintained a tedious process of recording and paying receipts and invoices. He recounts, “Doing receipts and invoicing was the bane of my existence – it took at least one to two business days a month.”

Visibility was minimal: “We had many situations where we had to ask questions like ‘what website did that employee purchase that thing from?’” This was further complicated by a lack of a budgeting and approvals system which resulted in rogue spend. Keith recounts, “We really needed an upgrade from Slack and spreadsheets.”

The solution

In June of 2018, Zerocater retired it’s scattered purchasing and payment processes and found Order.co.

With Order.co, Keith and the ZeroCater team can checkout across vendors, and their projects only require one order and invoice: “If I have a project and I need a bunch of products, I just add them [to the Order.co catalog], check out, and get one invoice. In the past, I would have had to go to a million places and add it all together.”

Now, unmanageable accounts payable, limited spend visibility, and rogue spend are a thing of the past.

The outcome

More time for what matters

The ZeroCater team’s favorite feature on Order.co is the Chrome Extension, allowing them to browse any vendor on the web and instantly add products to their Order.co catalog and cart. He explains, “[It] allows me to shop anywhere and has really lightened my workload, giving me more time to do other things.”

ZeroCater also takes advantage of scheduling orders to arrive at a time that works best for them. Keith’s team now receives products before they need them: “Before, we would just notice that we were out of something and place an order. Now, our products show up automatically when we need them – it’s like we’re always ahead of the curve.”

Detailed spend visibility

Order.co revolutionized AP processes for ZeroCater, cutting down the number of invoices by over 50x, giving instant visibility, and providing controls and budgets on spend.

Keith’s team, formerly overwhelmed by the multitude of invoices from each vendor, saw immediate improvements. Keith says, “For Amazon alone, we went from 200 invoices a month to maybe 3 or 4.”

Compliance became easy with real-time analytics and set budgets for each employee. “If someone is over-spending their limit,” Keith describes, “I can see exactly what they spent the money on. I can track down issues and get reports to help with forecasting and making budgets.” He summarizes, “It’s a breeze. I have everything right here to look at.”