Uline

BACKGROUND

Family-owned business Uline is America’s leading distributor of shipping, industrial, and packaging materials and has distribution centers in the US, Canada, and Mexico.

With many business travelers within Uline, managing corporate travel is no small task. Jacci Lentz, Events & Corporate Travel Manager, started looking in 2015 for a solution to solve two main pain points:

• Time consuming process of completing credit card authorizations for hotel bookings.
• Credit card fraud issues.

“We would typically experience fraud on our central credit card 4 – 5 times per year. The cleanup of that would take a month. So, it felt like it was always happening!” remarked Jacci Lentz.

SOLUTION

Uline was referred to Edenred Pay Travel by Adelman Travel, their corporate travel management company. They implemented Edenred Pay Travel in July of 2015, starting with a small beta group of approximately 30 travelers. This allowed them to see how the program worked, but more importantly allowed them to work through the reporting piece. Once comfortable all travelers were moved over in batches. As of May 2018, all corporate travel payments, for over 3,200 travelers in total, rely on Edenred Pay Travel.

“We have not experienced one issue with fraud on our business with Edenred Pay Travel!” said Lentz. “And an additional benefit is the credit card authorization process – to have this process automated is a huge efficiency for my team. We would have to manually call the hotel to get a form, complete it, fax it back to the hotel, call the hotel to confirm they received it, and more times than not – re-fax and re-call. Now it is all done for us. We have more time to book travel.”

Another big-time saver is the ease of reporting. They used to have to touch each charge item and code it for the AP department. With Edenred Pay Travel a transaction report is generated monthly for easy reconciliation. “This process used to take many, many hours. ”Asked to describe her experience working with Edenred Pay, Jacci Lentz responded: “The staff is very responsive! When we have questions, or issues they jump in and I never feel like they are not on top of it.”

HIGHLIGHTS

• Canada locations have their own account, using their own currency
• The AP department is very pleased with the reporting and ease of reconciliation
• Zero instances of fraud since the program started
• Saving an estimated 80 hours per month due to increased efficiencies