- Customer Success Stories
- Customer Success Story The Reserves Network
Customer success story
The Reserves Network
"It’s a no-brainer”: How The Reserves Network automated AP and expenses with Continia
The challenge
When Concur was too complex – and too costly in time
Before Continia, The Reserves Network implemented SAP Concur to manage invoices and expenses. While the platform offered robust functionality built for large enterprises, that ultimately became part of the problem: it was more complex than they needed and harder to manage than expected.
“Their customer support was terrible, and it just was honestly too much for what we needed.”
On top of that, the solutions slowed down financial processes, instead of speeding them up.
“We had a lot of issues with the connectivity and the data transfer of the different reports, holding up processes,” she says.
Looking for a better fit, Controller Angela Holland turned to their Business Central partner and wider network for advice. The response was unanimous: talk to Continia.
“Our partner basically said: it’s a no brainer, you have to talk to Continia," she says.
That recommendation carried weight because Continia offered exactly what had been missing: seamless integration without the data feed issues they had experienced before.
About the company
The Reserves Network is a full-service staffing agency operating across 34 U.S. states, with around 200 internal employees and 3,000–3,500 temporary employees on payroll each week.
For Angela, it became clear that manual processes were getting in the way:
“We realized that we were spending a significant amount of time on manual processing,” she says. “We had one full-time employee that only processed accounts payable invoices, and a manager was spending a significant amount of time processing those invoices as well.”
The solution
Embedded in Business Central: A smoother way to handle AP
The Reserves Network implemented Continia with support from their consultant and Microsoft partner.
“One of the biggest reasons they recommended it was the way Continia is directly integrated with Business Central,” Holland explains. “So we’re really only setting things up inside Business Central. Everything flows over to Continia automatically.”
For accounts payable, the change is visible every day. Invoices arrive via email and move through OCR and rule-based recognition, reducing the need for manual entry. For high-volume, repetitive vendors such as background check providers, templates handle most of the heavy lifting: GL codes, descriptions, vendor branches, and amounts.
“You’re taking a manual process of somebody having to sit there and key all that information into the system, to recognizing it automatically with maybe one or two clicks.”
If they receive fifty background check invoices, they can be out for approval within minutes. At the same time, the AP team has been able to move away from data entry.
“We now have our full-time accounts payable person helping with bank reconciliations, journal entries for month-end…instead of just focusing on only entering invoices.”
Holland emphasized about Continia, “Hands down, one of the easiest implementations that I’ve ever been through.”
“Hands down, one of the easiest implementations that I’ve ever been through…because of the direct integration with Business Central, we’re really only setting things up inside of Business Central. Everything flows over to Continia automatically.”
The result
Better approvals, fewer errors – and fraud under control
On top of data capture, The Reserves Network uses Continia’s web approval portal to enforce consistent controls. Approvers receive email notifications twice a day and can review and approve invoices from their phones – without being dependent on sitting at their desk.
“We have it set so that a branch manager has this dollar amount for approval. If it’s over that, then it goes to their manager. If it’s over that, it goes higher – we have a hierarchy on invoice approvals,” Holland says.
This has had a big impact on coding accuracy and internal charging – so local branches aren’t charged for incorrect invoices.
It’s also a critical line of defense against fraud.
“About once a month we get an invoice from ‘the owner’ that says to pay this right away,” Holland explains. “Without that level of approval, we would be losing thousands of dollars on fraudulent invoicing, so now we’re able to catch those issues.”
Additional outcomes
Expense reporting and Visa reconciliations, all in one place
Internally, almost every staff member submits an expense report. On top of that, branches and traveling staff use company Visa cards. Continia Expense Management, embedded in Business Central, ties this together.
“We average around 150 expense reports a month,” Holland says. “Our accounting staff is only in one system. They don’t have to go out and log into another system to accomplish this.”
Visa card transactions feed into Expense Management daily. The mobile app notifies employees of new charges, so they can attach receipts on the go.
“It is nice that they get notifications on their cell phones through the expense app,” she explains. “They’re walking through the airport traveling, snapping pictures of receipts. When that expense hits, they’re able to add that receipt into that report.”
Managers approve expenses in the same way as invoices, with clear visibility of coding and allocations across branches. That combination of real-time data and approvals has even helped catch card fraud quickly – making it easy to spot incorrect charges and shut down compromised cards.
Month-end Visa reconciliations are now almost instant:
“Once they’re all turned in, I would say a minute – maybe five minutes from top to bottom – to do that reconciliation inside the system,” she says. “Everything auto matches.”
“You’re taking a manual process of somebody having to sit there and key all that information into the system recognizing it automatically with maybe one or two clicks.”
In summary
“Hands down, our best decision”
Looking back, Angela is very clear on the impact Continia has had on The Reserves Network.
“I say, hands down, our best decision that we made with our expense automation. It’s going to save your organization time, it’s going to save your organization money, and it’s going to create those levels of controls that auditors love.”
For a busy staffing company managing thousands of employees each week, that combination of automation, control, and ease-of-use has become essential.
“It just makes sense to automate your AP… it’s a no-brainer with Continia,” Holland concludes. “We literally found the perfect fit. And we have not been disappointed since. We could not be happier with our decision.”
Continia Document Capture & Expense Management
Automate invoice processing and streamline expense reporting in Business Central. Reduce manual work, lower costs, improve accuracy, and keep approvals moving with fully integrated, easy-to-set-up solutions.
Explore our solutions