The Agència Catalana de Notícies (ACN) is a public, multimedia news agency that was founded in 1999. The ACN provides news coverage in Catalonia, Brussels and Madrid, where it has offices.
The problem
The Agència Catalana de Notícies (ACN) is formed by a team of journalists that has a very high mobility index, with continuous contingencies related to unexpected news events that arise daily, therefore requiring a major effort to maintain adequate and controlled management of the large volume of expenses that are generated every month.
Before implementing Tickelia, managing the expense reports was an extraordinarily costly and barely automated process. One person spent a full business week every month on classifying, coding movements and filing the physical receipts. Expense reports were classified and recorded based on the physical vouchers that the employees submitted, and posting in the books was done by manually entering the data in an Excel spreadsheet that was then uploaded to the ERP. Moreover, physical filing of the documents took up a large amount of space.
The solution
In the mandatory public tender process at public enterprises, the ACN positively viewed Tickelia’s flexibility to fit within the ACN’s workflows. One of the functionalities positively assessed by the company’s managers as a critical part of the solution was the automation of expense reports. This was key when making the decision, given the efficiency that it gave to the reporting process: employees do not have to enter any data. They only have to take a photograph of their receipts, and the system automatically captures all the information on the receipt and stores it in a database.
Another important factor for the company was the ability of Tickelia to be integrated with the ACN’s ERP system. This allowed a flow of expense information that was completely integrated with accounting.
A relevant factor that the ACN highlighted was Tickelia’s official approval by the Tax Agency, given that this meant the complete elimination of paper in managing expenses and no paper filing, with receipts digitised using the Tickelia App, which stores the receipts as certified images that are completely valid in the event of an audit.
Finally, another very attractive element for the ACN was the ability to streamline the validation dialogue. Previously, the rejection of a type of non-admitted expense took place monthly in arrears, after users had sent in the expense vouchers. Currently, the rejection of an inappropriate expense is done in a very short period of time and online, such that users adjust more quickly and amicably to the admitted expense guidelines.
The results
With the implementation of Tickelia at the ACN, the expense management process has changed completely. From having one person engaged for one full business week entirely on the administration process, in which expenses were reported monthly, they have gone to having expense reports generated automatically using Tickelia, and the control and review process now takes place through a completely digitised platform.
“The administrative load has been streamlined so significantly that it allows the staff to spend time on other tasks of greater added value, and at the same time it allows shortening the expense processing and settlement times”, states Jordi Badal, CFO of the Agència Catalana de Notícies (ACN).
Likewise, acceptance by the employees has been very positive. Doing away with storing and sending in physical documents has been an unexpected boon to the day-to-day professional tasks, in which saving time and simplifying procedures are considerably important.
