Kolter Hospitality
Fewer check payments result in additional revenue and improved efficiencies for hotel management company.
BACKGROUND
Kolter Hospitality is an industry leader in hotel management and development, with a reputable and award-winning portfolio of hotels in Florida’s most thriving markets. From the company’s inception in 2014, everything from an AP and payments standpoint was being processed using paper checks.
While their business was experiencing rapid growth and success, their accounts payable process was lacking the higher-level efficiency they needed.
Somebody was required to be at their desk processing the paper, monitoring the check stock, and changing the printer toner. A two-signer check policy also required that they locate the appropriate authorized managers to manually sign each check before mailing. The incidence of lost checks in the mail was also costing the AP department a significant amount of time and money.
“We wasted so many hours each month on the manual process of printing and mailing paper checks.” said Mark Roland, VP of Accounting & Finance. “Our team was inundated with tracking down missing or delayed vendor payments on a daily basis, but we just accepted it as normal business practice.”
When Mark and his team discovered Edenred Pay and learned how their Payment Automation Platform could streamline their AP processes, the decision to make the transition was immediate.
“In the beginning we thought the initial savings would be time-focused but once we started using Edenred Pay’s Payment Automation Platform we quickly saw the additional cost savings as well as a new revenue stream in the form of a rebate.”
SOLUTION
Kolter Hospitality uses the M3 Accounting Software, which integrates seamlessly with Edenred Pay’s Payment Automation Platform. They made the transition and effectively started making electronic vendor payments within 30 days. And required just one GoToMeeting per property for training.
For Mark and his team, the ultimate goal was to move as far away from paper checks as possible. They wanted to get all of their vendors enrolled to accept electronic payments. Edenred Pay assists in this effort with ongoing vendor enrollment initiatives.
“A major advantage to working with Edenred Pay has been their continual commitment to working with vendors on our behalf. They proactively reach out to those still using paper checks and educate them on the benefits of electronic payments.”
RESULTS
Kolter Hospitality is now using Edenred Pay’s Payment Automation Platform at their corporate office as well as at each of their hotels. Payments that once took hours to execute can now be completed in as little as 30 seconds. Significant savings have been created in terms of manual employee labor. And the costs associated with paper check materials across all of their AP departments and limited-service hotels are also reduced.
“You can instantly recognize that people are doing more value-added tasks instead of just sitting at their desks stuffing envelopes.”
Edenred Pay’s Payment Automation Platform offers monthly cash rebates on spend volume allowing Kolter to receive the added benefit of a new revenue source. As more vendors have signed up to receive electronic payments, the monthly rebates have continued to grow.
While some vendors still prefer to receive paper checks, the majority of their payments are completed using electronic methods. Resulting in reduced manual processes and costs, increased employee productivity, saved time on tracking payments, and a new revenue source.
