Case study: Coulson Aviation keeps crews focused on the fireline with Concur Invoice, Expense and Travel

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

Why Coulson Aviation Chose SAP Concur for Expense Management

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 organisational 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.

Coulson Aviation case study

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

- shares Michael Halhead, VP of Finance at Coulson Aviation

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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.

"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."

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.

"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.

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!

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 multi-country processes, and the ability to scale quickly with custom automations and approvals.

"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.

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 utilise ExpenseIt, available in the SAP Concur Mobile App. This AI-embedded feature allows their travellers 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 organised and focus on their real job—putting out fires.” - Michael notes.

Change 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 emphasised 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 emphasised.

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

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 forward-looking 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.“ 

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