Utah Jazz transforms their financial operations with BILL to save 10 hours a week

When you’re running an NBA franchise, your finance team can’t be stuck chasing receipts. The Utah Jazz needed a faster way to manage payments, and the seasonal nature of their business  made it difficult to stay on top of their spend. 

The 15-person finance team was bogged down by administrative tasks like data entry and chasing down expense reports, preventing them from focusing on strategic initiatives.

"We do everything from accounts payable, accounts receivable, to all the accounting and finance functions for the Jazz, which is a 600-person organization. It's a lot to manage," said Wesley Jurkatis, VP of Finance for the Utah Jazz.

The Jazz partnered with BILL to streamline their financial operations, save valuable time, and transform their finance department from a cost center into a revenue driver.

The challenge: a team drowning in paperwork

The Jazz’s financial process was inefficient and manual. Key issues they faced included:

• Manual payments: Accounts payable was a full-day task, with the team processing all payments by hand.
• A mountain of receipts: At the end of the season, employees would drop off boxes of physical receipts, leaving the finance team to reconcile them.
• Chasing expense reports: The team was spending up to 10 hours a week just tracking down employees to complete their expense reports.
• Lack of real-time visibility: The team lacked real-time insights into spending, which made it difficult to manage budgets and have proactive conversations with other departments.

"There are only 30 NBA teams," notes Jurkatis, "so there are a lot of unique things that we have to deal with financially. BILL's been invaluable in helping us manage that."

The solution: a seamless financial platform

The Utah Jazz implemented BILL and made it a central part of their financial workflow. Every employee now receives a BILL Divvy Card* on their first day, creating a unified system for managing company-wide spending. To date, the organization has over 600 cardholders.

"With BILL, we're not having to spend our time doing manual data entry or the stuff that typically clogs up a lot of finance teams," says Jurkatis. "We're able to be out helping the business grow. That's what I want from our team."

The team was able to:

• Reduce a full day's work to 5 minutes with payment automation.
• Save countless hours for the finance team by automating approval workflows and empowering departments to split-code their own transactions.
• Eliminate the need to chase down expense reports, saving the finance team over 10 hours a week, by automatically freezing employee cards if they're missing transaction codes after seven days.
• Gain more budget control and visibility by automating spend limits and streamlining pre-approvals.

"It's wonderful," adds Alexandra Garcia, Accounts Payable Manager for the organization. "It's been a game-changer for us. We had a full day that we would just focus on payments. Now, within 5 minutes, I can get them all taken care of. When we're paying things out of BILL, the coding is already in there, so I don't even have to take care of our virtual cards, which is a big plus. It has saved us a lot of time."

The results: from cost center to high-level finance

With BILL, the Utah Jazz's finance department has transformed. They're no longer bogged down by manual, administrative tasks, and the time savings allows them to focus on other growth initiatives.

"We've been able to reduce a lot of manual work with BILL," says Tyler Rump, Assistant Controller for the Jazz. "Essentially, we've implemented pre-approvals for spending limits for our users, and with BILL AP, we're able to automate or streamline that approval process and have the departments split code their transactions."

• Saved 10 hours a week on expense report follow-ups: The accounts payable manager can process all payments in five minutes instead of an entire day.
• Turned a cost center into a revenue generator: By running all expenses through the BILL Divvy Card, the Jazz is earning cash back on their spending.
• Implemented real-time spend oversight: The finance team can now view spending and budget status in real time.
• Started projecting spend day by day: "With BILL, we don't have to wait till the end of the month to know if someone was over budget," says Jurkatis. "We can catch issues early and have those conversations two days in if needed."

*The BILL Divvy Card may be issued by one of Divvy Pay, LLC’s bank partners (bill.com/bank-partners). The BILL Divvy Card is not a deposit product. For your specific lender, see your Card Agreement.