Sage Expense Management customer SEIU-USWW hero image

How SEIU-USWW Saved 44+ Hours Every Week with Digital Expense Reporting

Non-Profit 101–200 Employees Los Angeles, California, US

Nina Casarez

Payroll & HR Assistant

Essential Insights

48 hrs → 2–4 hrs/wk

Saved on weekly close

Days → 2 hrs/mo

Saved on card reconciliation

90%

Fewer expense mis-categorizations

SEIU–United Service Workers West represents approximately 45,000 service workers across California. Supported by over 100+ employees, the union manages statewide operations, including member outreach, site visits, and regular travel that generate ongoing operational expenses.

For Nina Casarez, Payroll & HR Assistant, managing these expenses required balancing administrative tasks with strict requirements for accuracy and audit readiness.

The Challenges

1. High Volume Card Tracking

Union officers and assistants carried American Express corporate cards and Mastercard's, with a high volume of transactions. They had to enter each card transaction manually into individual Excel sheets and match it against paper receipts.

2. Tedious Receipt Collection

Employees often placed paper receipts on office copiers, made copies, scanned the documents, and emailed the files for review.

Every expense had to document:

What was purchased?
Where, who, and when did it occur?
Why was it necessary?

The team manually checked for duplicate claims and confirmed that each receipt matched the reported expense amount.

3. Manual Mileage Tracking

With organizers traveling between worksites across California, mileage was logged on paper. The payroll team manually verified travel routes and calculated reimbursement amounts.

4. Delayed Reimbursements

Receipt submissions were often delayed due to the labor-intensive workflow, forcing payroll to process reimbursements only once a month.

Because it's all manual on paper, people wait up to three months to submit expenses, and we would only process and pay reimbursements once a month.

— Nina Casarez, Payroll & HR Assistant

The Transformation

The team needed a solution that would accommodate their existing processes while making expense details easier to review.

They were looking for:

An easy way to support staff daily with a digitized system.
More accurate mileage and per diem tracking.
Better visibility into corporate card transactions and missing receipts.
Reliable expense records to support audits and payroll processing.

Sage Expense Management stood out for its mobile-first design, automated mileage tracking, and robust compliance workflows.

Over the past year, Sage Expense Management has simplified my day-to-day operations by making the employee reimbursement process more organized, efficient, and easier to track.

— Nina Casarez, Payroll & HR Assistant

The Results

1. Effortless Corporate Card Management

With Sage Expense Management, transaction data for American Express and Mastercard flows directly into a single dashboard providing centralized visibility into corporate card spend. Transactions are also automatically mapped to the correct user, and receipts are auto-matched to corresponding charges.

This has reduced reconciliation time from several days to just 2 hrs per month.

For our organization’s credit card holders, they no longer have to manually enter each individual transaction onto separate expense Excel sheets. Our expense process is more organized, and much less time-consuming, allowing us to focus our time and resources on other important aspects.

— Nina Casarez, Payroll & HR Assistant

2. Simplified Receipt Tracking

Employees submit receipts via mobile app, text message, or email (Gmail/Outlook). AI automatically extracts merchant, date, and amount. Every expense is coded to the right cost center, and policy rules and spending limits are automatically enforced.

Mis-categorizations have dropped by 90% since adopting Sage Expense Management.

Sage Expense Management has reduced the need for manual paperwork and follow-ups by allowing employees to submit expenses and receipts directly through the system.

— Nina Casarez, Payroll & HR Assistant

3. Automated Mileage Reports

Built-in Google Maps integration automatically calculates trip distances and reimbursement amounts based on start and end locations, eliminating paper travel logs.

A major benefit is that manual calculations have been significantly reduced, which saves time and reduces the potential for errors.

— Nina Casarez, Payroll & HR Assistant

4. Faster Reimbursements

Submitted expenses flow into an approval queue for quick review, enabling faster reviews and payouts.

Today, >50% of all expense reports to be approved within 48 hours.

The Outcome

By replacing manual paper processes with automated workflows, Sage Expense Management enabled Nina and her team to reduce their weekly close time from 48 hours to just 2 to 4 hours.

We’ve moved from a manual, electronic filing process to a fully digitalized expense management system. Everything is more organized, easier to access, and much easier to track.

— Nina Casarez, Payroll & HR Assistant