Rescuing Waldorf University’s overwhelmed business affairs department from tracking countless purchases by 130 managers from more than 70 departments
In prior years, Waldorf University relied on its parent company to manage procurement processes. When the Waldorf Foundation purchased the private liberal arts school in December 2022, the Business Affairs department was tasked with managing procurement themselves which involved a steep learning curve. The new responsibilities now suddenly required them to track every purchase for their main campus in Forest City, Iowa and its online divisions.
“Things would fall through the cracks, and we did not have a one-size-fits-all solution,” recalls Business Affairs Manager Julie Keely who oversees the university’s accounts payable (AP) and accounts receivable (AR) elements. “We had lost or missed invoices, incomplete forms, and didn’t have a way to track people down.” To add weight to the challenges they were facing, there are 130 separate budget managers from more than 70 departments with a countless number of providers and needs to manage. All of this attributes to the number of late or missing AR/AP assets.
While the university already used Amazon, staff members made purchases on personal logins or set up individual accounts. “It was a logistical nightmare,” says Julie, who also assists with auditing and reconciling all university accounts. “We could not control when and if people made purchases or track the receipt of the products. We then had to reimburse for items we couldn’t be sure were even purchased for university use.”
Finding Lost Invoices and Incomplete Forms Automatically
Julie knew Waldorf needed to provide a centralized solution for all the university’s employees to purchase and receive the products they required in a timely fashion. Since employees were already familiar with the ease of ordering from the Amazon experience, switching to Amazon Business and signing up for Business Prime* was, as she says, “a no-brainer.”
Ever since Waldorf implemented Business Prime, Julie now has that one-size-fits-all solution she needed. Amazon Business helps consolidate invoices and simplifies reconciliation, making purchasing easier.
“We have fewer invoices to keep track of now, says Julie. Our team is much more confident that we are getting things handled in a timely manner.” Amazon Business also accomplishes another goal for the university: streamlined payments using monthly invoicing. “We now pay once a month to one source instead of many times to many sources,” she says. Additionally, Business Prime’s “easy-tosearch” process has allowed the university to identify cost savings with their purchasing and experience shipping savings.
Another goal was to make sure any purchase followed their internal approval processes. “A multiple-step approval system is good business practice,” Julie explains. “Nonprofit institutions must follow a specific set of rules to maintain their status. We need multiple points of verification and a clear audit trail. Business Prime provides this.” For example, a Business Prime feature called Guided Buying steers buyers to the right products or suppliers and identifies product categories that employees shouldn’t purchase, helping with approval workflows and adherence to their internal buying policies.
Building a Unique Approval and Spending Process to Track Purchases from Ordering to Payment
To assist with budgeting, Waldorf University worked with Amazon Business to build into their account eight main groups and over 70 subgroups with their own unique approval and spending processes. Each group contains numerous departments. For instance, Academics is a group and each individual department is a subgroup, such as “education” and “history.” Another example: The Athletics group contains the “hockey” and “softball” subgroups.
“This makes my job easier by not having to search for approval or additional paperwork,” says Julie. “Tracking a purchase from ordering to payment is now all in one place.”
As a nonprofit, Waldorf University follows the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) format to standardize reporting. The format helps higher ed administrators like Julie drive cost efficiency, accurately and consistently classify their expenses, and measure and benchmark against other colleges and universities, while providing these institutions with reliable internal and external reporting. “For-profit institutions may want to use a different structure as advised by their Finance department and Auditing team,” says Julie.
Empowering Waldorf with Management and Oversight Capabilities
Setting up, implementing and training staff to use Amazon Business only took about a month, in part, because most of the staff was already familiar with the Amazon interface.
The process involved Julie reviewing and properly setting up the divisions and departments with her Amazon Business representative Jim Stroud remotely. During this time, Julie gained a full understanding of the processes and can now troubleshoot minor issues herself should any arise.
Julie also helped solve an early issue during implementation where an account was set up under one department without the finance office having any knowledge of it. “We worked together to successfully merge the two without losing any data,” she recalls.
Saving Time to Streamline and Automate Other Processes
After about a year of use, Amazon Business has already saved Waldorf a great deal of time. “Every minute we can save using Business Prime is used to look at other ways to streamline and automate our processes.
“Amazon is a name that can be trusted and the system is user-friendly,” she adds. “It instills confidence in the finance department that they are getting the information they need in a concise, easy to use format. It just makes sense.”
*Business Prime is a paid membership.
To learn more about smart business buying for higher education, go to https://business.amazon.com/education
