Dawna Draper, Financial Manager, and husband Eric Draper, Funeral Director, purchased Freund Funeral Home in Cuero, TX, in 2010. As they were leading their staff, it was clear to them that most of their processes centered around paperwork required redundant tasks that they no longer had time for. They needed software that would help them with time and efficiency.

Once they learned about how Passare would benefit their business, they were immediately sold! With Passare, their team has saved countless hours on data entry and generating forms. Check out the full story on how things have improved in their funeral home since making the switch.

How long have you been with Passare? 

We have been with Passare since December 2016 but didn’t fully utilize all of Passare until early 2018.

It took us a couple of years to get in the groove and start using more of what Passare offers our funeral home. Now, we are at the point where we stay updated on new integrations and released features. Our whole team gets giddy when something new is released because we want to try it immediately.

What were some of the challenges you faced before switching to Passare?

For the longest time, we were still on ledgers for bookkeeping. We had so much on paper, and it was draining our time.

We entered all of the data for cases by hand. Our process involved creating Word templates, taking our handwritten forms, and inputting the information into the Word template. We were doing everything, and the templates helped with some of that, but there were still so many steps in our process.

Those steps didn’t even consider running all of that same information into an obituary to be ready when we met with families. There was so much extra work just to handle the normal functions of our job.

There was a lot of room for mistakes when putting the same information in seven different places. We couldn’t keep up with the repetitive nature and time-consuming demands of that work.

What was your motivation for switching to Passare?

When I first learned about Passare, I didn’t even need the whole webinar to convince me it was a smart business decision. I had more of the mentality of, ‘Yes, I’m sold. Sign us up as quickly as possible.’ From there, Kelly Gilgenbach, VP of Passare Sales, visited and told us even more about Passare. We were signed up within an hour.

Our main motivation for switching was primarily about improving efficiency and choosing software to help us adopt technology that could save us time. I came from a technologically savvy family and knew the benefits that technology could bring to our business, making it more efficient. I am all about efficiency and how to make processes easier and faster. We quickly discovered that Passare helps us do that.

Those benefits were big motivators to switch, as was the desire to get all our information over and on one platform. We wanted everything to be consistent.

What has been your experience working with support? 

The response time on form requests is incredible. Your team can take our materials and make things happen so quickly. We are used to waiting a couple of months, which doesn’t work in the funeral industry. We have found that whatever form request we submit, it is usually up and ready for us within 24 hours – sometimes not even that long.

We rarely have to check in on the status of something we requested. Your team quickly ensures that the forms they return to us meet our standards and fit our needs. They are always asking us, “What do we need to tweak? What else do we need to add?” Their communication is top-notch.

What is your favorite feature in Passare?

My favorite feature right now is the auto-fill documents and forms. It still amazes me that we can keep using our old forms.

We want to start using Planning Center for collaboration and get families to use it, but we must have everybody's buy-in first!

What kind of results have you seen since implementing Passare?

One of my favorite things Passare has done for us was regarding our permanent records. We asked for specific components to generate in our permanent records, and your team went in and made all of it happen.

We went from retyping everything and spending 15 or 20 minutes per record to less than 5 minutes overall. All the work that happens now is simply verifying that all the information matches and making sure everything is transferred over correctly. Time saved in that way has been impactful.

Would you recommend Passare to a colleague and if so, why?

Absolutely. Passare has been instrumental in making our funeral home more efficient. It saves time and is so easy to navigate. Even someone with limited technology skills can easily use the software to complete daily tasks. It's not difficult to understand, and it's not difficult to find things.

I think Passare has done a good job in figuring out the optimal workflow in a funeral home. It is so beneficial that your team knows how funeral homes think and work.

About the funeral home:

Dawna Draper is the Financial Manager at Freund Funeral Home. They operate out of one location in Cuero, Texas, serving approximately 125 families per year.

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