In today’s educational landscape, school districts face increasing scrutiny over their budgets, with every dollar spent needing to demonstrate value. Factors such as declining enrollment and the end of one-time federal funding have intensified these challenges, making efficient financial management more critical than ever. For Washington Court House City Schools (WCHCS) in Ohio, managing purchasing and invoicing for the district used to be a slow and paper-heavy process. Serving approximately 2,100 students, WCHCS had handled every request and invoice manually, leading to frequent delays, budget inefficiencies, and challenges with compliance management.
By implementing Euna Procurement’s Marketplace and Invoicing modules, WCHCS not only eliminated bottlenecks and streamlined approvals, but also positioned itself as a procurement innovator, shifting toward more strategic, tech-enabled purchasing.
Euna Marketplace
Challenges: A Manual Approach That Could Lead to Consequences
When WCHCS relied on paper requisitions and manual approvals, procurement was a lengthy process requiring multiple signatures and significant administrative effort. This created severe inefficiencies:
- Approvals could take two to four weeks, requiring multiple signatures and significant administrative effort.
- Teachers would have to pay out of pocket due to approval delays, impacting morale and leaving them financially burdened without reimbursement.
- Manual, paper-based systems increased the risk of errors and non-compliance, making it difficult to track spending and monitor adherence to approved contracts.
“Teachers often paid out of pocket for supplies because the approval process took so long,” Buckie Caulley, Accounts Payable Coordinator, recalls. “We had to do something about that.”
Action: Seeking a Marketplace Solution to Streamline Workflows
With efficiency as their goal, WCHCS sought a system that would automate approvals, eliminate paperwork, and integrate into existing financial workflows. They needed a centralized purchasing hub that could cut approval times, reduce manual errors, and improve tracking and compliance. WCHCS chose to implement with Euna Procurement’s Marketplace module, prioritizing:
- Automated workflows to significantly reduce approval times.
- Contract compliance enforcement with built-in alerts for pricing discrepancies and expiration dates.
- A centralized purchasing hub that allowed staff to order directly from approved vendors with real-time budget tracking.
To realize value as quickly as possible, WCHCS’s treasurer’s office opted for a “rip off the band-aid” approach, setting a firm deadline to eliminate paper requisitions. To ease transition concerns, the treasurer’s office provided hands-on guidance through in-person training sessions and direct staff support, ensuring that all staff felt comfortable with the system. Euna Procurement’s customer success team worked closely with the WCHCS staff to configure the platform and provide ongoing support to ease the transition.
“We knew we had to go with a cloud solution. Teachers and administrators were frustrated, and the delays weren’t sustainable. This was a major change, but we knew it would be worth it,” explained Buckie Caulley, Accounts Payable Coordinator of Washington Court House City Schools.
Results: Cost Savings Increased While Cycle Times Decreased
Once WCHCS adopted Euna Procurement’s marketplace solution, they saw significant results and improvements, such as:
- Approval turnaround improved by over 90%, reducing wait time from weeks to less than 24 hours.
- Staff could log in and access approved suppliers, conducting over $3.6M of purchases within the system in the first year. This provided a broader choice and enabled faster, more cost-effective purchasing.
- Compliance was strengthened with automated checks against contract terms, expiration dates, and pricing.
- 25% cost savings were achieved by utilizing the AI-powered savings advisor on items with replacement options, maximizing the district’s budget for other needs.
Implementing a Euna Marketplace brings a multitude of benefits across organizations, not just for procurement teams. Teachers can use an easy-to-navigate interface that mirrors popular online shopping platforms without having to conduct personal spending or wait weeks for supplies orders to be approved. Finance teams can ensure purchases remain compliant and aligned with budget forecasts. Agency leaders finally have a predictable procurement cycle that eliminates surprise expenses and strengthens financial oversight—leaving all stakeholders pleased with the process.
Invoicing
Challenges: Error Prone Process Led to Hours of Corrections
As WCHCS’s procurement grew, so did the demand for efficient invoice handling. “I used to spend days on end managing shipment invoices,” Buckie recalls. Processing invoices remained a slow, manual effort:
- Manual Purchase Order (PO) matching required Buckie’s team to spend days on repetitive tasks, diverting the team’s focus from higher-value work.
- Without a centralized system, accounts payable teams lacked visibility, making monthly and quarterly reconciliations complex and time-consuming.
- Manual data entry led to frequent errors, adding hours of correction work during high-volume order periods—especially during back-to-school season when order volume surged.
Faced with these persistent inefficiencies, WCHCS recognized the need for a more streamlined, automated solution to improve their invoice management process.
Action: Automating the Invoicing Process with a Cloud-Based Solution
To bring order to the process, WCHCS expanded their suite in 2021 with Euna Procurement’s automated and centralized invoicing module, which offered:
- Automated PO matching, reducing human error and streamlining approvals.
- A centralized invoice hub, improving visibility and simplifying reconciliation.
- Bulk invoice processing, allowing the team to handle multiple invoices simultaneously instead of individually.
With assistance from Euna Procurement’s support and onboarding teams, the system was optimized to meet WCHCS’s high-volume needs, enabling WCHCS to process frequent invoices efficiently and reduce their workload.
Results: Process Time Decreased from Weeks to Days
With everything now managed on a single platform, the Accounts Payable team gained many significant process improvements:
- Centralized invoice management on a single platform simplified tracking, reduced administrative workload, and provided full visibility across accounts payable.
- With Euna Invoicing, WCHCS reduced processing time by 60%, from weeks to days, through automated PO matching and consolidated invoicing, cutting workload and errors.
- Automated PO matching and validation minimized manual work, which Buckie describes as “no-touch accuracy.” This helped reduce human error and allowed Accounts Payable to focus on higher-value tasks, particularly during high-volume periods with hundreds of packages arriving weekly.
- WCHCS processed nearly 1400 invoices annually in the first two years, demonstrating the value of a clear, organized system that unifies invoice processing.
- Streamlined approval workflows consolidated multiple items into single invoices, significantly decreasing the invoicing overhead and improving processing efficiency.
Today, WCHCS handles its invoices with far greater accuracy and efficiency. This not only freed up time for accounts payable staff but also ensured more accurate cash flow forecasting, helping district leadership avoid delays in supplier payments and manage end-of-year budget reconciliations more effectively. The accounts payable team is no longer bogged down by time-consuming manual entries, enabling them to maintain a steady workflow while reducing errors.
Conclusion
WCHCS showed that modernizing procurement doesn’t have to be as complicated as it seems. The district’s approach reflects a broader trend where schools prioritize efficiency, compliance, and vendor reliability just as much as cost.
By adopting Euna Procurement’s Marketplace and Invoicing modules, WCHCS transformed its purchasing and invoicing processes, making them faster, more efficient, and easier to manage. Teachers get supplies without delays, approvals take less than a day, and finance teams have a clearer view of spending and compliance. For district leadership, this means better financial forecasting, more effective allocation of taxpayer dollars, and greater confidence in long-term planning—ensuring WCHCS continues to meet both operational needs and fiscal responsibility standards.
By embracing Euna Procurement’s data-driven solutions, WCHCS is not only saving money and improving efficiency but also giving district leadership better data to optimize budgets, plan for future expenses, and ensure financial resources are directed where they’re needed most. With these insights, the district can now make data-backed decisions on supplier contracts, bulk purchasing strategies, and long-term financial planning.
Their success shows that with the right solutions, schools can reduce inefficiencies, lighten administrative burdens, and focus on what matters most—supporting students and teachers.