First Baptist Church Umatilla simplifies finances with PEX and Aplos
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About First Baptist Church Umatilla
The First Baptist Church Umatilla (FBCU) is an essential part of the Umatilla, FL area through its faith based programs, daycare center and spiritual guidance to the community. Pastor Mike Ellis has been with FBCU for over five years with three of those years as the Executive Pastor. Given that the role was previously held by one person for over 20 years, there were many processes that were outdated when Mike took the position.
With over 50 employees and volunteers, First Baptist Church Umatilla needed to modernize and streamline their expense management procedures to accommodate all the transactions of the church’s different entities. PEX helped create efficiencies with effortless fund requests and ability to tag spends to the correct programs at point of purchase.
“The convenience for your employees, the convenience for your accounting department as well, especially if you are using Aplos [integrated] platform with PEX... it makes it so much more efficient.”
Mike Ellis, Executive Pastor
The challenge
With the church’s recent consolidation of its key entities – the church itself, a daycare center and a thrift store – Mike had to manage over 50 employees and volunteers with only one credit card for their expenditures. Not only did each department need to request the physical card for purchases but with a credit line of only $4,000, the financial team had to constantly oversee and manage paying off the card to ensure funds were available for their needs. After failed attempts to secure additional credit cards, Mike searched for alternative ways to organize expenses for his team.
The solution
Mike’s goal was two-fold: make it easier for employees to access the funds within their budgets while also enabling the administrative side a more efficient process of managing the financial aspects of reconciliation and other needs. Mike tested PEX with an initial batch of cards and saw immediate benefits. “It was a whole lot cleaner and a lot easier. Just the efficiency with how we are doing the accounting side of things and how our employees are able to get the funds. It just made things so much simpler.”
Mike’s team also found efficiencies by using the PEX app for effortless fund requests and tagging spends to the correct programs. FBCU uses Aplos to manage their accounting and discovered a more simplified bookkeeping process with the Aplos/PEX integration. “The convenience for your employees, the convenience for your accounting department as well, especially if you are using Aplos [integrated] platform with PEX… it makes it so much more efficient.”
PEX enabled Mike’s team through a cleaner, easier and more efficient way to access funds. As Mike says, “Ease of use and efficiency has been the biggest [improvements] that we’ve seen on our side from where we were.” With almost 20 cards in place, Mike is ecstatic with the results especially the customer service aspect, “We’d definitely recommend it first of all. It’s been a very good experience for us. Customer service has been very, very good. If you’re worried about how the service is going to be after the sale, it’s going to be good.”
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