Eastshore Alliance saves 10 hours a month by automating expenses with PEX + SAP Concur
About Eastshore Alliance FC
Eastshore Alliance FC is a nonprofit youth soccer club serving more than 1,000 players across California’s East Bay. With more than 60 teams, 50+ staff and a large volunteer network, the club develops athletes from age 3 through 19, from early skill-building to college recruitment and even professional pathways.
As executive director of finance and administration, Ted Steen oversees financial sustainability, strategic planning and day-to-day operations, ensuring the club runs smoothly on and off the field.
“I’m no longer fielding constant emails from staff or sorting through messy receipts. With PEX and SAP Concur, everything flows into one place and my workload is dramatically lighter.”
Ted Steen, executive director of finance and administration, Eastshore Alliance FC
The challenge
Tournament travel created heavy financial and operational strain for the club. Coaches routinely paid upfront for hotels, meals and transportation, between $250 and $1,000 per trip and waited for reimbursements at month-end.
Ted managed the entire reimbursement workflow manually through emailed receipts, shared folders and Google Sheets. For a staff of 50+, this meant hours spent sorting transactions, entering data by hand and resolving inconsistencies. The process was slow and frustrating for coaches who had to carry expenses on their own credit cards.
When the club adopted SAP Concur and connected it to QuickBooks, Ted began searching for a spend platform that could integrate cleanly with their new ecosystem. The team evaluated Ramp as an alternative, but found that Ramp’s platform was less structured, less aligned with their nonprofit workflows and could not be set-up to connect with SAP Concur to SAP Concur. They needed a partner that matched their systems, not one they’d need to work around.
The solution
Eastshore Alliance chose PEX because PEX provided a direct API integration with SAP Concur, and Ramp did not. With PEX Credit Expense, coaches no longer front trip expenses. They book hotels and purchase meals directly on their cards, and transactions automatically sync into SAP Concur, which then posts into QuickBooks. This end-to-end automation replaces the manual data entry and spreadsheet tracking that previously took Ted around 10 hours every month.
Receipt capture now happens in SAP Concur, a workflow made seamless because PEX schedules transactions directly into Concur. Coaches upload receipts on the go through the Concur mobile app, which removes the need for Ted to collect, store or track documentation across folders and emails. By the time he reviews expense reports, the spend data, receipts and business purposes are already attached and ready for approval.
The platform also gives the club the financial control it was missing. Ted uses category-based spend controls to ensure coaches can pay for hotels and meals but not off-policy purchases, even with more than 30+ active cardholders. These controls reduce risk of off-policy or non-business spending without slowing down travel. During a Thanksgiving tournament, a coach needed immediate access to additional funds and Ted used real-time card funding to load the card instantly, ensuring the coach could secure their hotel without relying on personal finances.
By integrating PEX with SAP Concur and QuickBooks, Eastshore Alliance eliminated out-of-pocket travel, gained consistent oversight across its staff and streamlined a process that once consumed hours every week, all while delivering measurable results.
The results
10 hours saved per month
Automation of transaction syncing, receipt capture and approvals gives Ted back about 10 hours each month, time he now uses for financial planning and operational improvements
30+ cardholders managed with consistent controls
More than 30 staff members use PEX cards, each governed by category-level spend controls that keep travel spend compliant without added administrative work
Zero out-of-pocket travel costs for coaches
Coaches no longer pay upfront for travel. Real-time funding ensures they always have what they need on the road, strengthening trust and eliminating reimbursement delays
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