Case Study

Driving a 90% Workload Reduction

Vendor Management & Payment Automation

A multi-year strategic engagement that transformed a high-friction, "citizen-developed" Airtable ecosystem into a reliable, secure, and compliant fiscal sponsorship engine.

CLIENT CONTEXT

As a fiscal sponsor, the client faced a complex, high-volume environment managing unique accounting codes, compliance requirements, and diverse payment schedules.

CORE TECHNOLOGIES

AIRTABLE
GOOGLE (CLOUD RUN, VERTIX AI)
JOTFORM
RAMP
QUICKBOOKS

The P3 Diagnostic

The initial system was characterized by high-friction processes and siloed systems that were not conducive to scaling the client-base. That is that in the current-state more clients could not be taken on without scaling headcount due to the manual nature of processing transactions.

Process (The Workflow): We identified Unstructured Inputs—relying on manual data entry from emails and PDFs—which forced manual re-entry and caused inconsistent execution.
Product (The Tooling): The "citizen-developed" system suffered from Disconnected Datasets. Critical vendor data lived in a separate database from bill processing, leading to Accounting Delays and Reconciliation Issues.
People (The Resource Allocation): Highly skilled operations managers were spent on administrative data entry rather than core strategic work.

"Right now too much of our time is spent processing invoices and tracking down information, when that's not our core work. We want to get back to our acutal jobs."

The Strategic Roadmap

This effort was separated into multiple phases, with the first phase aiming to reduce the most amount of pain points.

PHASE 1: IMPROVE DATA INTAKE PROCESS

The first phase was a 6-week sprint designed to reduce the most pressing points through re-designing processes and creating user interfaces.

Normalize Data - The structure of the data coming into the system needed to exactly match the structures in the target system (Ramp and Quickbooks).
Project Portal - Launched an Airtable-based user interface and form system, allowing project managers to tag expenses to specific accounting codes at the source, ensuring data integrity from the start.

PHASE 2: INTEGRATION

The second phase and set of releases were designed to fully automate the creation of Vendors, Bills, and Chart of Accounts. These integrations were created using Google Cloud Run instead of inside of Airtable.

Authentication
Secret and Token Rotation
Longer Timeouts
Handles Higher Volume

PHASE 3: MIGRATION TO HYBRID

We are currently refining the User Experience of the portal while beginning to replatform critical back-end operations to move into a "Hybrid Architecture" where Airtable becomes an interface on a cloud-based database

Airtable as the "Operational Interface": In this architecture, Airtable is no longer the database; it is the Internal Reporting & Operations Tool. Staff interact with a user-friendly frontend while the cloud database handles the heavy lifting of data integrity and complex relationships.

Impact & Results

Core Process Automation

Automated Vendor Lifecycle: Eliminated the "headcount ceiling" by automating the creation of Vendor Profiles in Ramp directly from Airtable, reducing onboarding cycle times by an estimated 60%.
Unified Bill Creation: Streamlined the Bill Creation process by programmatically select multiple approved expenses to generate consolidated bills in Ramp, resulting in a 90% reduction in payment processing time.
Dynamic Chart of Accounts (COA) Coding: Implemented logic to automatically generate and synchronize COA names and codes between Airtable and QuickBooks, ensuring expenses are coded correctly at the source without manual lookup .

Enterprise-Grade Compliance & Traceability

End-to-End Audit Trail: Established a rigorous, non-profit-compliant audit path that tracks every financial action—from initial expense entry in the Project Portal to final payment in Ramp—supporting total financial transparency.
Automated Financial Reconciliation: Built automated reconciliation engines to clean and associate QuickBooks transaction data back to Airtable records, ensuring that "Funds to Report" balances are always accurate and audit-ready.
Data Integrity & Security: Moved critical logic to Google Cloud Run to handle secure authentication, token rotation, and complex error logging, mitigating the security risks inherent in poorly developed no-code tools.

Strategic Business Outcomes

90% Workload Reduction: Reclaimed several hours per week previously lost to administrative "friction," allowing the team to redirect focus toward strategic client-facing work.
Scalable Capacity: The transition to a cloud-based database allows the system to handle increased data volume and complexity without requiring additional administrative headcount.
Proactive Issue Resolution: Integrated advanced error-handling and "Troubleshooting Guides" directly into bill notifications, significantly reducing the time required to resolve system faults or payment failures.