Office supply distributor saves 50+ hours using Vault

Company name: Office Central

‍Contact: Steve - CEO

Location: Richmond Hill, Ontario

Founded: 1987

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About the company: Office Central is one of Canada's largest independent office products dealers. The company operates out of a 100,000-square-foot facility in Richmond Hill, Ontario, with multiple hubs throughout Ontario and across Canada. The team of 100+ Canadian employees supply over 20,000 businesses in Canada with office supplies, furniture, industrial supplies, breakroom supplies, coffee services and more. 

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The Problem: 

Sharing credit cards with low limits, losing receipts, and manual expense reports

Over the past 5 years, Office Central has been hyper-focused on modernizing operational and financial processes through new software tools. Before Vault, Office Central struggled to gain a single source of truth regarding corporate card spend. 

They only had one credit card which was floating around the office between different departments, receipts were lost in the shuffle, and it seemed like there was no easy way to effectively manage spend. Employees had to constantly request the card from management which wasn’t easy to locate at times.

Steve told our team, “Operationally, having one card without controls presented a huge challenge. It’s difficult to know in real-time who is spending on what and ensuring the receipt is matched to that purchase at the end of the month.” 

Steve also mentioned that their credit card company instituted spending limits that didn’t make sense for a growing business and it was heavily lacking on any benefits like cashback. Steve told us, “Paying our bill every 5-10 days was a pain, but the real challenge was limiting the number of times Facebook ads were shut off because of limits being reached”. 

With receipts living within a mix of desk trays and inboxes, Steve said “the finance team was spending 5-10 hours every other week manually reviewing charges in Excel and hunting down receipts”. 

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The Solution

Vault’s platform improves Office Central’s spend management and reconciliation process in 4 main ways: 

1. Real-time spending visibility: Team members are now issued their own physical and virtual cards with expenses immediately submitted to the platform
2. Managing Limits: Admins can now effectively budget per employee while ensuring spend is within card limits. If the budgets increase or decrease, this is a click away
3. No more hunting down receipts: Vault’s text and email receipt upload feature eliminates receipt difficulties by allowing employees to capture receipts instantly. 
4. Fast, easy accounting: Reconciliation is now done in minutes. Manual data entry is eliminated thanks to the Vault platform’s integration with the QuickBooks Online accounting system.

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The impact

Since starting their journey with Vault a few months ago, Office Central has forgotten all about the world of archaic banking. Steve said, “Not only do my employees now feel empowered with their own cards, but our cashback benefits as a company have gone through the roof!”. The finance team can finally spend their valuable time focusing on high-value tasks to help grow the business, which Steve says is a massive win for everybody!