Executive summary

The Club at Admirals Cove is a private country club in Jupiter, FL, offering world-class amenities, including golf, tennis, pickleball, a private marina, multiple dining options, and wellness facilities. Each month, the finance team at Admirals Cove processes thousands of invoices from a large network of goods-and-services suppliers. In the past, invoices were processed manually, which was a labor-intensive process that left little time for higher-value work.

The Club at Admirals Cove has modernized its accounts payable process with Ottimate. The team manages invoice processing, virtual card payments, statement reconciliation, and corporate cards through a single AI-powered platform that catches discrepancies before they leave the building and integrates directly with its ERP. Partnering with Ottimate has saved time, increased capacity for strategic work, cut costs, and allowed the team to build a flexible, 24/7 AP function that works around differing staff schedules.

About The Club at Admirals Cove

The Club at Admirals Cove is a luxury private country club in Jupiter, FL, known for providing a world-class experience for its members and guests. The waterfront club, which first opened in 1986, now offers an array of amenities including 45 holes of golf, tennis and pickleball courts, a private marina, several dining options, and modern wellness facilities.

The challenge

Like many country clubs, the Club at Admirals Cove relies on strong partnerships with a variety of goods and services suppliers, ranging from food and beverage and sports equipment to landscaping and property maintenance. In the back office, that means processing thousands of invoices every month, which was once a very manual process for the finance team. 

“There was tons of paper, and we were always running around the club chasing invoices,” said  Trevor Vecellio, Senior Staff Accountant at Admirals Cove. “Statement reconciliation would take hours, and manual checks were brutal.”

Processing check payments was particularly painful. In a typical month, the finance team processed hundreds of checks, which left Paula Hunt, the Club’s CFO, buried in piles of payments to review and sign for twice-weekly check runs. 

“There would sometimes be 600 checks sitting on my desk to sign,” said Hunt. “Reviewing all of that would sometimes take eight hours.”

Staff scheduling was another major challenge. Admirals Cove has 26 departments, each led by a director with a unique schedule and responsibilities that often take them away from their desk. This made it difficult to keep invoices moving.

“For our directors, accounting isn’t 8 to 5 without weekends,” explained Hunt.

While the team was happy with its core accounting platform, they knew there were opportunities to use AI and automation better to close gaps where errors and costs were slipping through.

The solution

The team at Admirals Cove set out to find a solution that would give them real control over their AP process. Ultimately, they chose Ottimate because it offered AI-powered invoice processing that flags errors before payment — not just scanning and data entry — along with flexible approvals, payments, and tools that would work alongside the club’s existing accounting system.

“It had everything I was looking for,” said Hunt. “It had the AI features. It had the scanning. We weren’t taking advantage of scanning before.”

Ottimate’s statement reconciliation capabilities also stood out to Admirals Cove. 

“I’ve looked at multiple other competitors, and they don’t offer the features that Ottimate has,” said Vecellio. “A big thing for us is the statement reconciliation. That separates them from absolutely anything I’ve ever seen in the market.”

Once Admirals Cove chose Ottimate, the two teams worked closely throughout implementation. One of their top priorities was making sure the platform integrated smoothly with the Club’s core accounting software. 

“Ottimate backed us the whole way of trying to integrate with our software seamlessly,” explained Vecellio. “At this point, we can now upload all invoices with no problems.”

Today, the team uses Ottimate to process invoices, make virtual card payments, and reconcile statements.

“Ottimate’s role in our accounting lifecycle at the club is very diverse,” said Vecellio. “We use every feature that Ottimate offers.”

More recently, Admirals Cove began using Ottimate for corporate credit cards. 

“That’s absolutely going to change our lives,” Vecellio said.

Finance staff and department directors have come to rely on Ottimate’s mobile app to keep work moving despite their different schedules.

“People can use it anywhere they are,” explained Vecellio. “They can be walking around the club approving invoices or submitting invoices, even from home or wherever they feel comfortable. That’s a feature we love.”

The results

Time savings have been one of the biggest impacts of partnering with Ottimate. Hunt estimates that Ottimate saves about 25 hours of staff time each week, which gives them more time to focus on analysis, reconciliations, and other strategic work that supports the business. Vecellio has experienced this shift firsthand. 

“Trevor was an accounts payable coordinator,” said Hunt. “In the last three years, he’s now a senior staff accountant doing general ledger reconciliations and bank reconciliations. He’s furthering his career, and that’s benefited the overall financial efficiency of our department.”

Moving to Ottimate has also driven direct financial savings for Admirals Cove. Because the team uses fewer paper checks, their paper, postage, and check stock costs have dropped significantly. 

Additionally, Ottimate has provided finance staff with more flexibility.

“It changed my life considerably because I can have my day at work, come home, take a shower, and then open up my iPad,” said Hunt. “I can scroll through approving invoices leisurely, calmly and thoughtfully, rather than just signing and trying to get things out the door.” 

Department directors have also benefited from greater flexibility. Today, directors can review and approve invoices from anywhere, and the AP team doesn’t have to wait for everyone to be at their desks to keep invoices moving forward. 

“We got Ottimate, and we’re 24/7 in accounting now, and we work around everyone’s schedules,” Hunt concluded.