Aalborg District Heating: New App for Managing Expenses and Process Optimization Ready in One Day

Aalborg District Heating is comprised of a number of supply companies owned by Aalborg Municipality. Aalborg District Heating supplies its customers with district heating, cooling, gas, and water, as well as managing waste water, collecting waste, and offering energy advice.

In close collaboration Delegate and Aalborg District Heating have created an app that optimizes the process of handling expenses.

Challenge

Aalborg District Heating needs to optimize their processes, particularly those related to expense management within the organization. The company has multiple credit cards and users for each card, and at the same time, numerous administrators for each card handle the balancing and accounting of the cards. This means that the administration spends a lot of time collecting receipts and handling and distributing expenses.

Solution

Previously, the process of handling expenses was managed through multiple different Excel sheets and emails with pictures of receipts sent back and forth. The process could have been more convenient, full of manual follow-ups, and prone to errors.

Therefore, Delegate and Aalborg District Heating established a one-day hackathon to devise a solution based on Power Apps.

At the hackathon, we collectively established a data model in CDS (Microsoft Dataverse), a model-driven app for expense administration, and a canvas app that card users could use on their phones.

Result

The workflow has now been significantly improved - users simply take pictures of their receipts and record relevant information about the expense. Administrators can immediately see the cost and balance and allocate expenses.

After the hackathon, only the final touches were missing, and then the presentation for the users, after which the first version of the solution was ready to use.