Science World uses Quadient AP to futureproof its accounts payable

When Science World — Vancouver’s waterfront science center and one of the city’s most beloved landmarks, came to the brink of closure during the pandemic — notable names including Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry immediately came out in support of their fundraising campaign, ‘The World Needs More Nerds’. 

Science World is able to lead such projects with confidence knowing their internal infrastructure is secure with the latest tools. “The pandemic is forcing everyone to change their business model. Every single vendor is asking for electronic payments,” says Douglas Chow, finance supervisor at Science World. “With Quadient AP, making these payments is much easier.” 

Before switching to AP automation, Science World’s accounts payable (AP) processes were managed entirely on paper. “Physical invoices were taking up so much room that we were running out of office space,” says Chow. “Our CFO was always surrounded by a growing stack of invoices and checks to approve – more than 250 every week. We didn’t want filing cabinets full of AP invoices,” he adds.

Science World couldn’t afford to spend hours searching for invoices inside boxes or circulating them around the various departments before they were finally approved. According to Chow, managing AP like “they did in the old days” was becoming untenable. It was clear that they needed a forward-thinking approach.

Quadient AP transformed Science World’s AP processes and helped the organization prepare for the future. Implementing Quadient AP in 2017 brought more control and much-needed simplicity. “The biggest benefit is the ease of finding invoices,” Chow says. Now, he can just type in the invoice number, dollar amount, or vendor name, and track information even while working remotely. “It makes finding reports a lot faster,” he highlights.

“The most money we save is with EFT/ACH – saving the cost of postage and time involved in stuffing envelopes. We’ve saved a lot of money on labor. Without Quadient AP, our AP position would be two people.” 

– Douglas Chow, finance supervisor at Science World.

Real-time access

Since the start of the pandemic, Science World’s accounting has been working predominantly from home. With their previous AP model, this sudden change would have seriously impacted the workflow. Thankfully, with Quadient AP, they can retrieve all AP documents online, from wherever they’re based.

Quadient AP maintains one-to-one reconciliation with their accounting system, Sage 300. This means payments are sent directly from their bank account to the vendor through their preferred method of payment – in most cases, EFT/ACH.

The ability to pay vendors electronically is a big bonus for the finance team. Most of Science World’s vendors requested electronic payments during the pandemic. Fortunately, their AP team already had Quadient AP in place to meet these needs. Chow says: “It’s very rare that an electronic payment gets lost. With checks, there’s always the risk of them getting lost in the mail or delayed during a crisis like COVID-19.”

Moving away from paper checks has brought a whole host of additional benefits. Not only is the Science World staff enjoying more time, but they’re also saving costs. “The most money we save is with EFT/ACH – saving the cost of postage and time involved in stuffing envelopes. We’ve saved a lot of money on labor. Without Quadient AP, our AP position would be two people,” Chow notes.

With real-time access to AP data, Chow has been running internal audits himself – sometimes from home – and keeping a tab on their monthly spend. Science World was also able to complete their annual audit remotely for the first time.

Remote approvals

For Science World, securing manager approvals while working remotely became easy with Quadient AP’s approval channel delegation feature. Chow was able to customize the approval channels and re-route invoices automatically.

Among approvers, vendors, and between employees, the switch to Quadient AP has significantly improved productivity. “Paper has mostly been removed from AP,” Chow summarizes.

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