How Health & Behavioral Dimensions gets visibility into spend
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About Health & Behavioral Dimensions
With eight group homes, Behavioral Dimensions (HBD) is a nonprofit organization that provides residential, habilitative and behavioral services for those with autism, intellectual and developmental disabilities, and mental illness. PEX was able to help better organize transactions across the group homes and eliminate the need for cash and paper receipts. With over 80 prepaid and charge cards in use, HBD was able to streamline and easily manage spending in one simple platform.
“It was a game changer for us. Managing all the individual’s allowance and overall group home expenses - for anyone in a similar situation or organization - just use PEX. There’s just no better way to go. Just get it.”
Amanda Rodriguez, Accounting Director
The challenge
The greatest challenge as an Accounting Director that Amanda faced was having to use cash to manage expenses across the group homes. As she says, “There was a ton of cash just sitting around or going through people’s hands; from staff to the individuals who needed help with their spending. Plus we had to bring the cash to the locations so another concern was the safety of hauling large sums of cash around.” Additionally, keeping track of receipts and transactions was also difficult.
“Cash was just really hard to track. Trying to get receipts for all [our transactions] was a total nightmare So we went looking for another option. What can we do to improve the situation? And we found PEX.”
The solution
Setting up PEX has helped Amanda eliminate cash and paper receipts and give her a better handle on the many transactions that she and her team manages. Each house manager has moved to a PEX Credit Expense account to accommodate the larger spend needs while continuing to use PEX Visa® Prepaid Cards for each individual’s needs. Moving to PEX Credit Expense provided the additional benefit of having all the cards on one platform.
As Amanda explained, “Managing the bookkeeping and tracking of all the spending and across our different card types was really tricky as we were using PEX [prepaid] and then a separate credit card company for larger expenses. However, the other card company didn’t have a good way of posting or uploading receipts so when PEX announced the credit expense option I was all over it.”
Additionally, Amanda is able to better organize all the individuals accounts with the PEX platform and manage reconciliations in real-time. As she explains, “For individuals in the group homes, we have accounts for each of them and all their allowance/Social Security goes into that account. I have to keep separate ledgers for each person so having the email notifications that I have set up from PEX tell me each time new spend comes through is great. I’m able to input new spending on their ledgers and keep up with that on a daily basis.”
Amanda has set up over 80 PEX cards at HBD and has removed the headache of managing cash. As she says, “The biggest benefit is just knowing even if we don’t get the receipt, at least we have some sort of idea where that money went based on the transaction information from the card. Before, with cash, if we didn’t have a receipt for it, there was just no way to track where it went.” With PEX cards and platform in place, the team at HBD is able to strive towards their mission to support individuals in need.
The results
Tracking and insights
Precisely track and control spending by employees and volunteers. Payments are more transparent with the PEX solution.
Streamline reconciliation
PEX works with your General Ledger codes and integrates with most accounting software, allowing transactions to be easily allocated to different projects, events, travel, etc.
Enable funding in real-time
You have the option to either directly fund and defund cards or automate the process. Set up alerts to instantly know when a card is used or a transaction is declined.
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