Yeshiva Derech Hatorah Improves Budget Control with PLANERGY
- Company Overview
Yeshiva Derech Hatorah School is a private co-educational Jewish school in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. A thriving institution in Ohio with multiple divisions, it has a strong commitment to operational excellence in all areas.
Like many schools, its finance team struggled with siloed purchasing, limited visibility across departments, and inefficient approval workflows. When their previous procurement software was discontinued, Controller Leah Bienstock led the search for a modern solution. They found it in PLANERGY.
- Why PLANERGY
The school needed a centralized, transparent platform that could unify procurement and accounts payable processes across multiple departments and campuses.
PLANERGY delivered seamless integration with the school’s accounting system, department-specific budgets, and intuitive workflows. With its automation, transparency, and reporting capabilities, PLANERGY empowered staff to work smarter while giving leadership the real-time visibility and control they had been missing.
Key Challenges
- No integration with accounting software meant purchase orders had to be re-entered manually, slowing processing and introducing errors.
- Departments had no visibility into budgets or approvals, leading to confusion and overspending.
- Purchasing and approvals were handled by email, creating delays, inefficiencies, and duplicate payments.
- Reporting was frustrating and fragmented, requiring spreadsheets to be pieced together from multiple sources.
Key Benefits
- Direct integration with accounting software eliminated manual re-entry and reduced processing errors.
- Real-time budget visibility gave departments clear insight into available funds before making purchases.
- Automated approval workflows streamlined processes, reduced bottlenecks, and prevented duplicate payments.
- Centralized reporting provided accurate, instant data for leadership, month-end, and audits.
The Story
Customer
Yeshiva Derech Hatorah School
Key client
Financial Controller
Industry
Education
Company Size
250+ employees
Before PLANERGY
Before PLANERGY, Yeshiva Derech Hatorah relied on outdated systems that failed to keep pace with the school’s growing needs. The finance team faced constant frustration with manual, error-prone processes that slowed down day-to-day operations and made strategic decision-making difficult.
Departments and administrators were left in the dark when it came to budget visibility. Teachers and staff frequently asked, “What’s left in our budget?” but the finance team had no way to provide accurate or timely answers.
Controller Leah Bienstock recalled, “There was no easy way to track or manage spend across the school.” As a result, purchasing decisions were often made without full knowledge of available funds, increasing the risk of overspending and poor financial control.
The approval process was equally problematic. Approvals were handled through email, with requests getting buried in inboxes or delayed for days.
This lack of structure created confusion and sometimes resulted in duplicate payments when multiple people attempted to process the same invoice. Vendors were frustrated, staff wasted time chasing down approvals, and the school’s finance team had no reliable way to ensure accountability across departments.
Reporting was another major pain point. Instead of having access to clean, centralized data, the team had to piece together spreadsheets from multiple sources to create even the simplest reports. Month-end closing and audit preparation became drawn-out, stressful exercises that consumed hours of digging through paperwork and reconciling discrepancies.
The result was a system that lacked visibility, wasted staff capacity, and created constant uncertainty for leadership trying to manage budgets across multiple divisions and campuses.
After PLANERGY
With PLANERGY, Yeshiva Derech Hatorah transformed its entire procurement and accounts payable process. What was once manual, fragmented, and time-consuming is now structured, automated, and transparent.
Every department has real-time visibility into its budget, which means staff know exactly how much they can spend before submitting a request. Approvers have the same visibility, enabling them to make faster, more informed decisions.
As Controller Leah Bienstock explained, “It’s incredibly transparent. Everyone knows what’s been spent and what’s left. It’s changed the conversations we have—earlier and more data-driven.”
Seamless integration with the school’s accounting system eliminated the need for duplicate data entry, reducing errors and freeing up hours of staff time each week.
Processes that once took hours of digging through records or reconciling spreadsheets are now completed in seconds with PLANERGY’s reporting and search capabilities. “What used to take hours of digging and cross-checking now takes seconds. Running reports, tracking expenses, spotting duplicates—it’s all streamlined,” Bienstock said.
Audit preparation and month-end close, once dreaded tasks, have become far simpler. With all purchasing, approvals, and invoices stored in one central platform, documentation is immediately available, saving the finance team and auditors significant time.
Duplicate invoices and unnecessary purchases have also been prevented, giving leadership greater financial control and reducing waste. As Bienstock noted, “We’ve definitely caught a lot of duplicate invoices thanks to PLANERGY. It’s also helped us have smarter conversations about what’s being purchased and whether it’s really needed.”
Staff adoption has been fast and enthusiastic. User-friendly features like request replication and PLANERGY’s powerful search function make the system intuitive for both finance staff and non-finance users across divisions.
According to Bienstock, “The interface is so intuitive. Our staff transitioned quickly. They love features like the search tool, which is so much more forgiving and efficient than our old system.”
The impact has been substantial. From secretaries to finance leaders, everyone is saving time and gaining clarity. With duplicate payments reduced, budget oversight restored, and powerful reporting in place, the school has improved accuracy, efficiency, and accountability at scale.
PLANERGY has allowed Yeshiva Derech Hatorah to shift from reactive, error-prone processes to proactive, transparent financial management—equipping the team to focus more on supporting students and less on chasing paperwork.
Testimonials
PLANERGY lets us have smarter, faster conversations about budgets and spending. That’s invaluable in a school environment.
Leah Bienstock
Controller
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