The challenge
Since its launch in 2005, AJ Tutoring has grown from a small operation to an organization with 16 locations and more than 300 tutors. As the company expanded, its leadership team added tools to support its back-office processes on a larger scale, including a time-tracking system for tutors, a customer relationship management (CRM) platform for salespeople, and accounting software for its finance staff.
These applications met specific business needs, but they weren’t all connected, and AJ Tutoring’s staff was left performing a lot of manual processes, which included:
- Setting up a new customer by creating a custom contract inside the CRM and emailing it to the customer, who had to print out, sign, and bring the agreement to the initial tutoring session
- Transferring data for roughly 29,000 customer accounts from the CRM system to the accounting platform
- Keying in credit card payments for all transactions and calling customers directly for a new number if a card was declined
- Processing thousands of recurring customer payments on a biweekly basis
“It was incredibly time-consuming, repetitive work that took away time our finance staff could have used on more important projects,” says Aaron Andrikopoulos, AJ Tutoring Co-Founder.
The solution
AJ Tutoring ran into a roadblock when evaluating a new merchant account for accepting and processing electronic payments. The new account couldn’t integrate with the company’s accounting software, and the team received a referral to Invoiced.
“We were really impressed with Jared and the Invoiced team from the very beginning,” says Andrikopoulos. “Their knowledge of our accounting software and ability to listen to how our back-office procedures worked, and propose a flexible integration, really sealed the deal for us.”
Over the next six months, Invoiced built and implemented the following functionality for AJ Tutoring:
- Integrations between the company’s CRM, accounting software, and Invoiced A/R environment
- An online signature workflow for the company’s customer contracts
- A secure, PCI-compliant customer billing portal
- Automated workflows for credit card payments (both recurring and standalone)
- Dunning management tools for declined credit cards
“The automation Invoiced brought to our invoicing processes has made a huge difference for our accounting team. It saves us time, gives us peace of mind, and allows us to focus on more urgent matters. Invoiced is a scalable system we can stay with for a long time.”
Aaron Andrikopoulos, Cofounder, AJ Tutoring
The results
By teaming with Invoiced, AJ Tutoring has realized significant quantifiable benefits. First, the company’s accounting staff performs core processes 20% faster. And second, the organization maintains a collections effectiveness index (CEI) of 97% (a CEI of 80% or above indicates an efficient collections process).
With the Invoiced solution in place, AJ Tutoring transformed key sales, accounting, and customer workflows, including:
- Setting up new customers. Now, the company’s sales directors enter customer data directly into the company’s CRM, which notifies the Invoiced platform to send an online signature request to the customer.
- Processing credit card payments. The company automatically processes credit card payments based on each customer’s contracted schedule.
- Serving customers. Customers can now access an online billing portal to access historical invoice data, make payments, view invoices, and update credit card details.
- Managing failed transactions. If a credit card transaction fails, an online workflow sends customers an email for new card details.
