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Company Overview
CTL|Thompson (CTL) is a full-service geotechnical, structural, environmental and materials engineering firm renowned for its expertise in commercial, residential, and industrial projects. Established in 1971, CTL has earned a reputation for technical excellence, industry experience, and high standards of performance and professionalism. Headquartered in Denver, the firm has additional offices in Fort Collins, Pueblo, Colorado Springs, Glenwood Springs, Summit County, Colorado; Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Bozeman, Montana.
Ashley Gomez, Accounts Receivable Manager, has been with CTL nearly 21 years, witnessing substantial growth and process changes. In 2018, CTL implemented EleVia’s Electronic Invoicing module to automate their manual monthly billing process. This transition, along with the recent implementation of EVPay, has brought significant benefits to the firm’s financial processes, detailed further below.
Challenges
Before implementing EleVia Electronic Invoicing, CTL's billing process was entirely paper-based, involving draft invoices, printouts, manual markups, and extensive paper shuffling between the finance team and Project Managers. This cumbersome process required Ashley to dedicate 40-50 hours each month to handle the 300-500 monthly invoices. Additionally, colleagues in other offices contributed more hours of manual effort, further lengthening the invoicing process. The switch to Electronic Invoicing has considerably reduced this time and labor-intensive workflow.
Another challenge that CTL was dealing with was collecting electronic payments from customers. They were using a third-party payment platform that required clients to call in to make credit card or ACH payments. The finance team then had to manually process these payments, send them their receipt, and reconcile the transactions within Deltek. This process wasn’t secure, created unnecessary work for the finance team, and failed to meet client requests for a more convenient solution.
Why EleVia Software
Streamlining the Invoicing Process with EleVia
Ashley and her team were looking for an easy-to-use solution that would allow them to access all invoices in one location, quickly email invoices to clients, and speed up the invoicing review process. After exploring options on the marketplace, they settled on EleVia’s Electronic Invoicing module for a few main reasons:
- Time is Money: What used to take Ashley 40-50 hours a month of manual work now just takes a few minutes per invoice. It’s had a dramatic impact on Time to Invoice (TTI) and Days Sales Outstanding (DSO).
- Ease of Use: The feedback from PMs has been overwhelmingly positive. Because Electronic Invoicing is easy to use, easy to train, and highly configurable it makes adoption a breeze. The flexibility of Electronic Invoicing means CTL can follow the invoicing process they want, while still using Deltek Vantagepoint as their core ERP.
- Centralized Access: Both the finance team and Project Managers like having one single view into open invoices. They can be reviewed, marked up and approved from one location, then sent digitally to clients for payment.
CTL Revolutionizes A/R & Collections with EVPay
In 2020, EleVia introduced EVPay in response to customer demand for a secure, efficient payment processing solution. Integrating seamlessly with EleVia’s Electronic Invoicing and A/R Management and Collections modules, and offered without annual software costs, EVPay was an easy choice for CTL. Ashley highlighted three key benefits:
- Client Convenience: EVPay answers requests from CTL’s customers for a payment portal they can use to make payments at their convenience. It eliminates the time and risk involved in calling in to settle payments.
- Cost & Time Savings: It saves the finance team time not having to talk to customers to take payments, send payment confirmations, and manually enter cash receipts. Additionally, monthly credit card processing fees through EVPay were 85% lower than their old third-party payment processing system.
- Effortless Collections: The ability to send overdue invoices to clients with a “Pay now” link eases collections efforts and gives clients an easy way to settle overdue payments immediately.
Conclusion:
By implementing EleVia’s Electronic Invoicing and EVPay solutions, CTL Thompson has greatly enhanced their invoicing and payment processes, leading to faster invoicing, quicker payments, and significant cost savings. This transformation underscores the efficiency and effectiveness of EleVia’s products in addressing and overcoming the common challenges finance teams endure.
“I use Electronic Invoicing and EVPay for collections too. I just resend overdue invoices to our clients with a pay now link and it makes it very easy for them to settle overdue payments immediately.”