Solution

Goals

Problem

Deliverables

The organization had no standardized way of storing and approving Reimbursemsent requests. This left members frustrated as they had no insight into when Reimburesment decisions would be made, and often requests were lost and forgotten about.

The introduction of a Zapier workflow which is triggered when a Reimbursement is marked as Approved / Rejected in a central, cloud based spreadsheet. This workflow would notify the member about the decision of their reimbursement and my what payment method via a dynamically drafted, automated email.

To introduce a Zapier Workflow which will send dynamic, automated emails to the member to notify them of the decision of a reimbursement request in a consisent, standardized way.

  • Reduction in lost Reimbursement Requests

  • A reduction in time spent by the Treasurer communicating Request decisions

  • Faster decision times

Reimbursement Request Decision Notification

The Zapier Workflow:

Workflow Breakdown

1: The Approve / Reject Trigger
Reimbursement Approved Path

  1. According to the Source Data, does this member want paying by Zelle or Cheque?

    1. If Zelle, write an email to the member saying their reimbursement has been approved and they will be paid using Zelle. Pull the member email, Reimbursement Amount and Request Date from the original submission form with the Details stored in the central Spreadsheet.

    2. If Cheque, write an email to the member saying their reimbursement has been approved and they will be paid using Cheque. Pull the member email, Reimbursement Amount and Request Date from the original submission form with the Details stored in the central Spreadsheet.

Reimbursement Rejected Path

  1. As the Reimbursement has been rejected, send an automated email to the member saying the request has been rejected. Pull the member email, Reimbursement Date, Amount & Description from the Source Data spreadsheet.

Reimbursement Disagreement Path

  1. As the Reimbursement Requests require Dual Authentication, there may be situations where the President approves a Reimbursement and the Treasurere rejects the Reimbursement (or vice versa). When this occurs, it is important that the President & Treasurer and notified that there was a disagreement. If the decisions do not match, both the President and Treasurer and notified via SMS so they can reach a consensus.

  2. Once the responses are changed, the workflow restarts and divides down the Approval or Rejected branch.

  1. Reimbursement Requests are sent through a Google Form which automatically populates a Google Sheet as seen above. The workflow triggers when both the Treasurer Status and President Status column have been populated by the relevant people. Depending on what is contained in those columns will dictate which path the workflow follows (see below)

Record Keeping

Full Statement

Analytics

Using the important range function alongside a Filter on the status column, I produced a full statement of all the approved reimburesments. This statement will also facilitate future analytics by including the description and member name columns so the organization can breakdown what most reimbursements are spent on and by who.

Attached to the statement is a live summary table which provides a monnthly breakdown and average by month. This is aimed at providing the organization with an insight into expedniture trends to assist financial forecasting.