Meet the Client
Palm Beach Gardens sits in the heart of South Florida’s northern Palm Beach County. Home to over 60,000 residents, this city is known for its championship golf courses, the Gardens Mall, and a thriving business community. With 600 city employees serving residents across multiple departments, the Finance team needed a way to handle growing travel request volumes without adding staff.
Daily Detour: Paper Trails That Led Nowhere Fast
Every business trip started with paperwork. Employees printed travel authorization forms from the intranet. Supervisors reviewed them. Then came the wait.
Finance staff sorted through stacks of paper forms. Each request needed approval from both a travel coordinator and finance coordinator. Check requests often got separated from their authorization forms. Employees submitted last-minute travel requests, creating urgent pressure on the accounts payable team.
The process ate up hours. Finance coordinators chased down missing signatures. Travel coordinators tried to match reimbursement reports with original authorizations. When someone needed an emergency check, the whole system had to speed up manually. Staff spent time hunting for documents instead of analyzing budgets or planning for the city’s financial future.
Questions piled up without answers. Where was a specific travel request in the approval chain? Had finance seen it yet? Did accounts payable know about the urgent check request? Nobody could see the full picture.
About our Client
CLIENT NAME:
POPULATION:
est. 63,000 residents
SOLUTIONS:
The Solution: Routing Requests with Intelligence
Palm Beach Gardens chose Laserfiche to automate their travel authorization and expense reimbursement workflow. Working with MCCi as their Laserfiche solution provider, the city built a system that handles both standard and emergency requests.
Here’s how requests flow now.
Employees still download forms from the intranet and complete them with their supervisors. Instead of walking forms between offices, they scan documents at any multi-function printer across city buildings. Laserfiche Import Agent monitors the network folder and pulls new documents into a processing inbox automatically.
When a travel request arrives, Laserfiche Workflow sends an email alert to the travel coordinator. She opens the document, reviews it, and moves any attached check requests to the front of the file. She applies the Finance Travel template and enters key data. Then she changes the Travel Coordinator Approval status to either Approved or Disapproved.
That single field change triggers the next workflow step.
Approved requests move to a Pending folder. Laserfiche Workflow notifies the finance coordinator about the new request waiting for review. The system checks whether someone marked the check request as ASAP. If so, accounts payable gets an immediate alert about the urgent payment need.
The finance coordinator reviews each request and updates the Finance Administrator Approval Status field. His decision launches a third workflow that handles different scenarios based on approval outcomes.
“Robust security settings allow only authorized personnel to perform certain actions on documents, such as update or enter new metadata.”
When both coordinators approve a request, the system renames the document using standardized file naming conventions. The approved request moves to the appropriate department’s Travel folder. If the request includes a check, Laserfiche creates a placeholder document in the Accounts Payable inbox and moves the check request page there. The system links the travel authorization and check request together. Accounts payable receives notification that an approved check is ready to process. Their separate check request workflows take over from there.
Requests that get denied follow a different path. The system copies comments from both coordinators into a Workflow Approval Comments field that employees can see. Even though security settings prevent staff from viewing coordinator approval fields directly, they can read why their request didn’t move forward. Denied requests return to the inbox with reset approval fields, ready for resubmission with corrections.
Staff receives notifications at every step. Travel coordinators know when finance completes their review. Employees learn about approvals or denials through email. Accounts payable sees exactly which checks connect to which travel authorizations.
The Results: Time Back for What Matters
Palm Beach Gardens eliminated the paper chase. Finance staff can track any travel request instantly instead of searching through file cabinets or email threads. When someone asks about their authorization status, coordinators pull up the document and see exactly where it stands in the approval process.
Processing time dropped significantly. Automated routing moves requests between coordinators without manual handoffs. Emergency check requests get flagged immediately instead of getting buried in paperwork. The accounts payable team knows about urgent payments as soon as travel coordinators approve them.
Accuracy improved. Laserfiche keeps check requests attached to their authorization forms through linked documents. Staff can trace every decision through approval comments. The standardized naming system means anyone can find historical travel records quickly.
Finance coordinators spend less time on administrative tasks. Instead of tracking down forms or sending status emails, they focus on reviewing actual travel requests and analyzing spending patterns. The city gained visibility into travel costs across departments.
Perhaps most important, employees get faster answers. They submit requests knowing the system will route them properly. They receive clear notifications about approvals. When something needs correction, they understand why.
The Laserfiche training and support MCCi provided helped Palm Beach Gardens customize workflows to match their existing approval hierarchy. The city didn’t have to change how coordinators make decisions. They just eliminated the busy work between those decisions.