Managing a successful funeral home business requires a lot of effort, regardless of its size. When Companion Funeral & Cremation Service started growing, they realized their current software wasn't helping them manage their business.
Tired of inefficiencies, Mike McDowell, Chief Operating Officer, and Trae Cody, Owner and Funeral Director, went on the hunt for software to help them increase productivity and stay organized as the business continued to grow.
Passare checked all the boxes.
Read Mike and Trae’s full story to see why Passare stood out and how the software has made their team more efficient.
Mike: We were about to open our third funeral home location when we realized our current software wouldn’t scale with our growth. We needed functionality that our software didn’t have.
Trae: We had experience using two different software systems, and neither would’ve kept up with our growth. We realized we needed something more robust and flexible.
Mike: We met the Passare team for the first time at ICCFA in Kansas City. If a software company had a booth at that convention, we stopped by. And when I got back from the convention, I probably sat through at least 15 software demos. We looked at just about everything on the market.
Passare stood out immediately. And it wasn’t just the features; it was also the way the system worked. I could tell the software was built by people who understand the funeral business.
Trae: Several things about Passare stood out to me. For example, Passare integrates with other services and constantly updates the software. The team at Passare has also been great at responding to requests and making the software as user-friendly as possible.
Mike: One of my biggest concerns about switching software systems was having half of our case information in one system and half in another. I knew at some point we’d need to do state reporting and reviews, and I wondered how that would work with our data everywhere.
Erin and Kaylan with Premium Launch resolved those concerns. They took us through implementation, and I couldn’t have imagined our information and system getting set up any faster. Two other software companies told us it would take a year or a year and a half to be fully onboarded and implemented with the software. I think the Passare team had us fully integrated in about four months.
Trae: Switching to Passare was as painless as it could have been. Premium Launch was really great to work with the entire time. They made it seem no more complicated than switching your bank account or something like that.
How did your team handle learning a new software system?
Mike: The speed at which our team was able to transition to Passare was outstanding.
Passare is also easy for our funeral directors to use. I could show Passare to a 60-year-old who is used to handwriting case files. If someone can use an iPhone, they can figure out Passare.
We have directors in their 20s to 60s, and they have all learned Passare very quickly and now use the software every day.
Mike: With our previous provider, working with support was always complicated. I remember this one occasion when I needed a custom fillable PDF created. I had to write an email to support that was up to 4 pages long just to explain what I needed and provide them with the code they needed to create it. There were no simple requests. It was far too complicated to make simple changes.
With Passare, the turnaround time on requests has been incredible. Now we know how to create our own forms in Passare, but when we asked for our first custom form from the support team, I think we got it back within 15 minutes. That alone shows that Passare is different from other software companies. They put resources behind the things that matter, such as development and support.
What successes have you seen in your business since switching to Passare?
Mike: Passare was a game-changer for us from an organizational perspective. We are significantly more efficient with Passare than any other system we've used. I think part of that is because our entire team is using the Passare mobile app. We can see details on every case, whether at our desk or on the go. That’s been incredible.
Additionally, we recently launched a care center, and our entire back office staff is now doing cremation and embalming in a different location than all of our funeral directors. So, we need to be able to see in real-time when cremations are complete, when death certificates come in, or when we get cremation permits. With Passare, no matter where we are, we get instant updates on everything that’s going on at the care center. It's made everything more efficient.
Mike: Passare’s barcode tracking is miles ahead of everyone else's. Many software companies have tracking, but Passare’s tool delivers. With the mobile app, we can simply snap a picture of an article of clothing and let everyone know that item just got brought in, along with its location. You don’t have to go through some complex process just to make an update.
We also track transfers. For example, if a staff member picks up cremated remains from our care center and drives them to our Chattanooga location for pickup, all of that activity gets logged. Then, when the family comes into the funeral home to pick up the cremated remains, we log that the loved one is no longer in our care. Before, we didn’t have a good way to specify things like that.
Tracking has made everything significantly easier for us and made us much more efficient. Nobody has tracking like Passare.
Mike: Tracking has saved us on multiple occasions. If a family calls claiming they brought in a necklace, I can go into Passare and see every article of clothing, every pair of glasses, or anything else a family may have brought in. If there’s not a necklace, I can be confident the family didn’t bring one in because we don’t have it tracked.
And when it comes to serving families, it has made a world of difference. I can answer a phone call for a case at Chattanooga, Athens, or Oak Ridge - it really doesn’t matter where - and I can easily provide answers because I can see in Passare what’s been brought in, where it is, or what we have and don’t have. That’s a big deal.
Trae: With our previous software, we couldn’t integrate all our other services with our software. Passare’s integrations have simplified internal payments with the payment integration, and we can easily upload photos to our website using the Tukios integration. The Public API in Passare allows any company we work with to integrate with the software, and that’s been huge.
Passare’s goal is to be the number one provider of service in our industry, and you can tell. They’re accomplishing that goal by allowing us to pump everything through our case management software with integrations.
Plus, Passare’s mobile app is great. We have information at our fingertips, and we’ve seen great benefits from using it.
Mike: Passare has helped us manage financials in more ways than one.
First, we have the payment integration set up that allows us to run credit card payments and have them automatically apply to the correct account. There’s no more confusion or incorrect payments, and our bookkeepers aren’t logging all the day’s payments at the end of each day. It’s so much easier for them to let everyone on our team know the status of a payment.
We also use the Planning Center, where our families make payments online. Families' payments are then automatically applied to the case, and we get an email saying the payment has been made. Before, a family might’ve paid the front office staff, but that information wouldn’t make it to the back office staff until the end of the day. Many times, this would cause the back office to call a family who had already paid because they were not getting the updates in real time.
We don’t have any of that confusion anymore. We get updates in real-time, and it has cut down on a lot of inefficiencies in our organization.
Trae: Another thing we struggled with in the past was building contracts in software and making sure everything was logged correctly. In Passare, we can easily build custom contracts, so our staff can’t overlook or miss anything.
We can also trace all of our financials back to Directors Business Solutions (DBS), which we have integrated with Passare. Not many accounting services understand the funeral business as well as DBS. With that integration, we get data on a monthly basis that allows us to see our financials and performance.
We can then share those reports with all of our directors, and they can see how they’re doing. It helps morale and gives people a pat on the back and extra motivation.
Lastly, to see specific financials and how we’re performing on an industry basis, or even on a state basis, is incredible. It can be difficult to know if your margins are good or if you should be spending less in certain categories. But the DBS integration gives us a benchmark on all of those things. It eases our mind on financials and encourages us to sharpen in the areas we need to.
Mike: Absolutely. I couldn’t imagine running our business without Passare at this point.
Trae: Not to our competitors - because it would help them run their business better! All jokes aside, we definitely would. We recommend Passare to anyone looking for a total funeral home software solution. Because while Passare has great case management, it’s also a full business solution. We’re still discovering new features and ways to improve our operations.
Companion Funeral & Cremation Service has 4 funeral home locations and 1 cemetery. Each year, they serve around 3,000 families in Athens, Chattanooga, Cleveland, Oak Ridge, and surrounding areas in Tennessee.
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