$ case-study --asis-gsx --reconciliation

“It’s faster. It’s more accurate. And I don’t have to chase the details anymore.”

Lauren Koleszar, CMP · Meetings Manager, ASIS International

GSX is the Global Security Exchange: thousands of attendees, several internal departments, a four-part GL structure and very little room for budget surprises. The team moved specs, budget and reconciliation into Pholeo, and walked the show floor without a binder for the first time in fifteen years.

The event

GSX · Global Security Exchange

Flagship event: GSX, the Global Security Exchange
Thousands of attendees, exhibitors and several internal departments
Four-part GL coding: expense type, department, activity, sub-activity

24–36hourssaved reconciling the AV, décor and F&B bills
6–8hours per invoicewas what each major bill took to parse and recode, before
3.5months outwhen version one of the spec packet reached vendors
15yearsof colour-coded binders, until this show

Figures as Lauren reported them for GSX. Every event is different, and so will yours be.

the hero

Who ran it

Lauren Koleszar, CMP

Meetings Manager, ASIS International

Lauren builds most of GSX’s specs when the budgets are due, carries the reconciliation of every major vendor bill against a four-part GL, and for fifteen years ran the show from a colour-coded, tabbed binder.

Flagship event: GSX, the Global Security Exchange
Thousands of attendees, exhibitors and several internal departments
Four-part GL coding: expense type, department, activity, sub-activity
High F&B spend, multi-room activations, exhibit hall events, board and leadership functions
Budget season starts months before vendor specs go final

Before

The way GSX used to get built.

Smartsheet for specs. Tax worked out by hand. Several spreadsheets rolling up to the budget, and a vendor-ready function book that took days to assemble. Every adjustment meant touching the same fact in more than one place, and the gaps between those places were where the risk lived. Reconciliation was the hardest stretch: each large AV, décor or F&B invoice took six to eight hours to parse, recode and reconcile against four GL parts. Onsite, the event travelled in a binder.

Lauren, on calls with Pholeo

“Six hours per bill. AV, deco and food and beverage, those are the three big ones.”
“We never really got the AV pricing into Smartsheet or the deco pricing into Smartsheet.”
“I have to reconcile every single hotel bill. All 26 hotels sent me a PDF of our invoice. Not helpful.”
“For 10 years I was doing my specs in a Word doc.”

What the fix had to do

Specs and budgets together in one place
Estimates built from actual vendor pricing
Service charges and tax calculated automatically
Multi-layer GL coding that matches finance
Budget cuts made quickly, without searching hundreds of rows
Clean exports for reconciliation
No onsite binder
All of it without adding headcount

How Pholeo fit

The event moved onto one record. Everything else followed.

01
From rows to records
One line in a spreadsheet became a card that holds the whole function.
Lauren described the shift as moving from a row to a visual record with the menus, the AV and the details on it. Easier to build, easier to review, and easier to find the right service when something changes.
02
Budgets in budget season
Estimates built from real vendor pricing, with service charges and tax baked in.
That removed the extra spreadsheet work of rolling numbers into other finance trackers. When a separate finance-system issue opened a $100,000 gap late in the cycle, the team made targeted cuts fast, trimming coffee breaks and bar spend without scrolling through hundreds of rows.
03
An iPad instead of a binder
Floor plans, room sets and function details on the floor, a click away.
Lauren and an onsite teammate walked the venue with an iPad. She called it a major shift: the first time in fifteen years she arrived at a show without a binder.

What changed

The results, in the order they showed up.

01/

Faster reconciliation

Bills that took six to eight hours each to parse and code dropped sharply once exports could be sorted by budget code. Across AV, décor and F&B, Lauren estimated 24 to 36 hours saved.

02/

Budgets that held

The team stayed “spot on” against the early budget inputs, with fewer surprises later in the cycle.

03/

Vendors ready earlier

Version one of the spec packet went out in late May, about three and a half months before the show, so the summer was tweaks rather than rebuilds.

04/

Binderless onsite

No printing, no tabbing, no colour coding to survive room checks. The event was on the iPad, and it was current.

“I know the budget. I know that our biggest expense is that happy hour or that coffee break.”

Lauren, on where the cuts come from

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The other story · URMIA

“For 25 years I was stuck translating spreadsheets and mail merges into something venues could understand. Pholeo changed that.”

Jack Voorhees, Senior Director of Events, URMIA

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Where this lives in Pholeo

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