Meet the Client
Calleguas Municipal Water District provides water to nearly 75% of the residents in Ventura County. The District imports and distributes water to several water suppliers who, in turn, sell it to Ventura County consumers.
Daily Detour: When document chaos costs time and money
Calleguas MWD needed to expand its Laserfiche system to integrate with its financial system, implement more efficient approval processes, and automated retention management across multiple departments.
The District faced three pressing issues. Their document storage wouldn’t integrate with New World, their financial system. Accounts payable was drowning in paper invoices that frequently went missing. Employee reimbursements arrived in random formats, with some staff even handwriting information on printed forms.
Shared drives held documents with no tracking for retention schedules. Staff working offsite struggled to submit expense reports. The finance team spent hours chasing missing information through email chains.
The Solution: Forms, workflows, and intelligent automation
MCCi implemented three key improvements using Laserfiche Forms and Workflow.
Retention Management Workflow
The team built automated retention workflows for Accounting, Human Resources, and the General Manager’s office. Two custom searches now identify documents ready for destruction and those approaching their retention deadlines. Reports generate automatically.
“The retention workflow has made our document storage consistent,” said Sue Taylor, Accounting Supervisor for the District, “the Metadata is also more uniform and makes finding a file much easier.”
Smart Reimbursement Forms
MCCi created dynamic forms with dropdown menus for different reimbursement types: Boot Allowance, Expenses, Personal Mileage, Travel, and Tuition. The form fields change based on which option employees select. Field staff can now submit reimbursements easily without a computer.
Enhanced Accounts Payable
The District integrated Laserfiche with their New World ERP system. Invoices now flow through digital approval workflows instead of moving from desk to desk.
“Submitting the invoices into a workflow has significantly streamlined the approval process, where our employees can review/approve digitally, and it is much more efficient in tracking the approval status of an invoice,” according to Rachelle Gin, Accounting Technician with the District.
The Result: Less paper, faster approvals, zero lost invoices
The District eliminated lost invoices completely. Approval tracking became visible to all stakeholders. Finance stopped sending follow-up emails for missing reimbursement details. Staff working in the field gained simple access to submission tools.
Looking ahead, Calleguas MWD plans to expand Laserfiche Forms to additional departments and extend retention workflows across the organization.
See it in Action
Get more good days done with Laserfiche’s complete toolset for securing documents, automating repetitive tasks, and meeting compliance requirements.
The retention workflow was created for three departments: Accounting, Human Resources, and the General Manager, and includes two custom searches: one searches the repository for documents eligible for destruction, and another searches for documents nearing destruction. A report is generated displaying the results of each.
The use of Forms for expense reimbursements has saved on frustration at all levels. Before the Laserfiche solution, expenses were scanned in and received in different formats, with some employees printing and handwriting in the information. With Laserfiche Forms, the reimbursement process is more user-friendly than before. Most District employees work offsite and not at a computer, so it was important that the new reimbursement process be easy to use. They were able to customize the reimbursement form with various criteria, which has allowed the Finance Department to get all the required information without a lot of “back and forth” emails.
Calleguas MWD improved its AP process by implementing Laserfiche workflows that enable digital invoice approvals and real-time status tracking. The District integrated Laserfiche with its New World ERP system, eliminating lost invoices and reducing paperwork while providing instant access to backup documentation.
The District plans to expand by adding more forms to their Reimbursement Workflow, extending the Retention Workflow to additional departments, and assessing other departmental needs for Forms templates.
