95% Accuracy, 80% Time Savings: North Bend’s Case for Smarter Invoice Management

For years, the finance department at the City of North Bend, Oregon, was buried under paper. Ten different departments submitted bills, which were then printed, stamped, routed for approval, and finally filed away in bulging cabinets.

According to Jeff Bridgens, CPA and Finance Director, the team was efficient at paying vendors, but the system came with a hidden cost. “After we’d get them all paid, we would just have loads and loads and loads of paper to file. And so we had a lot of filing cabinets in our office as well to store all that. And so we spent a lot of time just simply filing.”

It was a familiar story: work got done, but the process was cumbersome, risky, and draining staff capacity. The city needed a way to modernize without overburdening employees already stretched thin.

Before implementing Revver, every step in accounts payable was manual. Department heads carried invoices across town, approvals were routed on paper, and misplaced documents weren’t uncommon. The filing process alone consumed hours each week.

Jeff described the situation bluntly: “Everything was in paper or printed out from an email or from a PDF of an invoice… we spent a lot of time just simply filing.”

This wasn’t just about inefficiency. Paper-heavy workflows introduced risk, lost invoices, late fees, and the constant possibility that crucial information was sitting on someone’s desk waiting for attention. Even when everything went right, the system wasted time that could have been spent on higher-value financial work.

The city’s path toward change began with the rollout of Revver and Caselle’s Smart Extract AI with Pending Invoices. The promise was straightforward: eliminate repetitive manual work, reduce reliance on paper, and give departments real-time access to financial documents.

Jeff recalls that onboarding wasn’t difficult. Weekly calls with Revver’s implementation team helped the city set up workflows and answer questions as they went. Within just a couple of calls, the system was live and producing results.

What impressed Jeff most was the system’s flexibility. “I think there’s many ways to get to the same goal, and I really appreciate that because we have people in our city that do things in different ways… just a ton of flexibility in it, which I appreciate.”

Rolling out a new system across ten departments could have been daunting, but Jeff approached it methodically. He introduced the process during a weekly department head meeting, then followed up with one-on-one sessions.

The training worked. “I’ve probably gotten to like 8 of the 10 so far, and it’s been pretty easy for them to just learn and then start implementing and doing,” Jeff explains. Notifications that invoices were being uploaded confirmed adoption was taking hold.

Even staff who had spent decades working with paper adjusted. North Bend’s accounts payable clerk had been paying bills for 25 years. Transitioning her to electronic workflows came with a learning curve, but the intuitive system made the change manageable.

The real breakthrough came when the finance team realized how much time they were saving. Revver’s Smart Extract AI reads invoices and automatically populates key fields like invoice number, date, amount, and descriptions.

Jeff estimates accuracy at around 95%. Most entries require only review and approval, not manual data entry. “It is saving a ton of time in data entry. We’re not doing a lot of the basic data entry that’s happening to set up an invoice.”

This automation also meant continuity when staff were absent. “My AP person can be out of the office, and the process is still happening,” Jeff explains. “As long as people are dropping in their invoices… I know that they’ve been uploaded now to Caselle and there’s a pending invoice there that when she’s back, she’ll be able to pop open.”

For a city with limited staff, the ability to keep AP moving without delays proved invaluable.

One of the most significant changes was the new self-service capability for department heads. Instead of contacting finance for copies of invoices, they could now drill down into Caselle to access supporting documents themselves.

Jeff sees this as one of the biggest wins: “Now that we’re using the electronic documents, all of that is being attached to transactions… Our department heads in their financials in Caselle have the ability to drill down on and pull those documents and see. And so they’re going to be able to do more for themselves instead of having to email us or give us a call.”

This shift not only saved time for the finance team but also gave managers faster access to the information they needed to make decisions.

For North Bend, accounts payable was just the start. The city is already applying Revver to other areas, including payroll and human resources.

Jeff highlights one recent success: “We just set up a process to take the check vouchers now from Caselle once the AP batch has been paid. You just send an Adobe file over to a file on your computer, and it automatically will read all that and put it into every vendor’s file… It was very easy to set up. I think our account rep and I set that up in about an hour this week.”

He’s also exploring how to digitize cash receipts and bank deposits, as well as other processes that still generate stacks of paper. The vision is clear: a government office where paper files are no longer the default.

The impact of Revver + Caselle has been felt across the organization:

• Time savings: With most invoice data captured automatically, staff spend less time typing and more time on meaningful work. 
• Continuity: Invoices continue to move through the system even if AP staff are away. 
• Self-service: Department heads can access documents directly, reducing calls to the finance office.
• Eliminated filing cabinets: Once-physical archives are now automatically organized in digital vendor files.

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Perhaps most striking, Jeff had already budgeted for an additional staff member in accounts payable. Now, he’s reconsidering. “I also have in my department another FTE scheduled. And now I’m wondering if I need to even hire another person or not. And so it’s really kind of kicked off a wait-and-watch period now as we’re learning more and more what the efficiencies are.”

For Jeff, the outcome is transformative. “Day to day, it’s cleaning up a lot of stacks of paper around my office, which is nice just to begin with. But the key is making it easy for them so they’re not having to… make it really easy for them to get the information they need, and then they can focus on their departments and their work.”

Jeff says: Not all software investments have delivered value, but this one has.

“I’ve used other softwares—not for digital filing, but for other things—and haven’t gotten a lot of what I felt was a lot of benefit for how much I was paying for it. Relatively speaking, I felt like Revver was fairly priced, and already worked very well with our Caselle system… Just the huge time saver more than makes up for any of the cost, which it really is, in my opinion, fairly nominal.”

For the City of North Bend, adopting Revver + Caselle wasn’t just about upgrading technology. It was about rethinking how work gets done. From eliminating filing cabinets to enabling managers with real-time access to information, the shift has freed staff to focus on higher-value tasks and built a foundation for long-term efficiency.

What began as an effort to streamline accounts payable is now rippling outward, touching HR, payroll, and beyond. The city’s finance office is no longer defined by stacks of paper but by flexibility, speed, and accuracy.

As Jeff reflects: “Anywhere you have a stack of paper, our process and Revver can help.”