Why SAP Concur

SAP Concur provides Coulson Aviation with an end-to-end, globally scalable platform that unifies travel, expense, and invoice management. With crews operating around the world and rapid organizational growth, manual workflows were no longer sustainable. By implementing Concur Travel, Expense, and Invoice, Coulson has eliminated paper-based processes, improved visibility into spending, accelerated approvals, empowering employees to work more efficiently—no matter where they are.

About Coulson Aviation

Coulson Aviation is the global leader in aerial firefighting, operating across the United States, Australia, Chile, and Canada. With approximately 750 employees and up to 100 contractors, the organization requires a scalable, integrated solution for its travel, expense, and accounts payable processes to operate smoothly.

Manual Chaos Held the Mission Back

Before adopting SAP Concur solutions, Coulson’s travel, expense, and AP workflows were heavily manual and paper based. Assistant Controller Courtney Schut, who has been Coulson’s Program Administrator since 2019, remembers staff working through weekends to push through the constant stream of manual work as the company grew. Invoice approvals were managed by email, receipts were chased and filed in physical folders, and cycle times stretched from receipt to payment. In addition, receiving receipts and reports was a whole other issue. With crews constantly on the move, staff emailed or hand-delivered receipts to head office. This resulted in errors, lost documents, untraceable approvals, and unread emails. Chasing these details down slowed processes for the AP team and their employees alike. 
“This was at a time where we had maybe 30 credit cards,” Schut explains.

Now we’re well over 550. There was no way we would have been able to keep up with the growth doing it the old manual way.

Finding a smarter, scalable solution for integrated travel, expense, and invoice became essential for Coulson to be able to focus on their true mission – putting out fires!

“Our processes were  very manual and prone to error. The team didn’t  have the tools to do  their jobs in a consistent, repeatable way.”  -Michael Halhead,  VP of Finance at Coulson Aviation.

Choosing the Right Path for Invoice Automation

When the need arose for Coulson Aviation to find a solution to automate their accounts payable process, Concur Invoice checked their boxes and more. In addition, their existing experience with Concur Travel & Expense and their trust in the platform’s value made Concur Invoice a clear contender to meet their growing AP needs. With Concur Invoice, Coulson gained unified visibility into invoice data, global support for multicountry processes, and the ability to scale quickly with custom automations and approvals. Coulson Aviation ultimately chose Concur Invoice for its strong standalone capabilities—automated approvals, full AP visibility, three-way match aligned to their inventory and future ERP plans, and the scalability they needed. It was the clear best fit  for their AP operations. They also utilize ExpenseIt, available in the  SAP Concur Mobile App. This AI-embedded feature allows their travelers to start expense reports by simply taking photos of receipts as they spend! It turns receipts into expense entries automatically and has become essential for the crews at Coulson who need 24/7 access to bookings and real-time receipt capture.

“Being able to upload receipts in real-time helps our teams stay organized and focus on their real job—putting out fires.”  Michael notes.

“We’re able to get real-time data out of that program and match invoices as we receive them, significantly cutting down on the cycle times,” said Halhead.

hange Management  That Cleared the Smoke Courtney Schut led the program configuration and rollout, leveraging SAP Concur tutorials, and webinars available in the SAP Concur Community and the SAP Help Portal. She  also attended Office Hours with the Client  Success team and reviewed past Fusion  sessions to prepare managers and staff  ahead of implementation. The Coulson team  also emphasized change management  throughout the entire go-live process.

“With any implementation, communication is really the key; there should never be any unknowns for the user… If you think you’ve communicated enough, communicate some more,”  Halhead emphasized.

This approach helped to drive adoption  across departments and ensure their users could understand the new workflows from day one.

“When it’s set up right, the automation saves a lot of money, time, and frustration,” shares Michael

Clear Skies and Faster Turnarounds

Since implementing Concur Invoice, the Coulson AP team can match invoices in real-time, accelerating the path to payment. Courtney also noted that previously, their updates could get lost in emails where they would lose sight of invoices and POs  in a chaotic inbox. Now that’s a thing of the past and can’t happen in Concur Invoice.

“We can see exactly where a PO or invoice is in  the process. Nothing gets lost in email anymore.” Courtney explained.

Concur Invoice has helped transform Coulson’s accounts payable process, leaving manual matching, chasing down documents, missing approvals, and endless paperwork behind.  Their AP team also spends less time on data  entry and can dedicate more time to forwardlooking initiatives.

“Automation frees us up to focus on planning and where the company is headed,” says Schut.

Next on the Flight Path:  Deeper Visibility, Tighter Control

Looking ahead, Coulson plans to deepen its investment in the SAP Concur platform. The  team is pursuing broader integrations, including NetSuite and ADP Workforce Now, along with select partner solutions to extend automation. With an end-to-end, data-driven finance function now in place, Coulson is equipped to scale operations while maintaining strong control, visibility, and speed, and most importantly: focusing on the fires that matter most. As far as integrations and expanding their Concur product suite go, Halhead exclaimed, “We’ve only scratched the surface.”