How Douglas Chemists Significantly Enhanced the Efficiency and Compliance of Their Financial Operations Using Weel.

The Challenge

“It was such a messy process. Something needed to change.”

Douglas Chemists is one of Australia's longest and most established pharmacy networks. As a multi-entity business operating over 30 pharmacies across the country, their manual spend management processes were proving problematic for General Manager of Finance, Christine Lee. 

Having been brought into the business in 2023, Christine inherited an outdated and unscalable finance function. Faced with managing the finances of 30 individual pharmacies, each with its own unique set of transactions, invoices, and budgets, Christine set out to digitalise Douglas Chemists’ financial processes and streamline their spend management. 

Previously, all purchases across the business were made using a single credit card. This approach posed serious security risks, as sensitive card details were being shared with all 30 stores, and was also causing huge inefficiencies in the month-end process. 

Each month, Christine's team was having to collect invoices from each store, manually reconcile them, and upload them to a spreadsheet for processing. The team would then need to on-charge the separate entities, a problem Christine was looking to solve and remove entirely. End to end, this process was taking between two to three days and had resulted in significant amount of unallocated expenses. 

“Something needed to change”.

The Solution

"Everything was seamless. Weel was so easy to work with."

Douglas Chemists initially implemented Weel as a way to streamline their operations and improve financial accuracy. Despite initially looking for a solution to replace their incumbent card system, it soon became clear that they needed a more comprehensive spend management solution. 

In choosing to create a separate Weel account for each pharmacy, Christine was able to eliminate the need to on-charge. Previously, all 30 pharmacies were making payments through one single account, which was adding an unnecessary layer of complexity to their month-end process. Implementing Weel immediately resolved this problem, paving the way for a more efficient expense management system and a smoother month-end.

Together with Weel’s dedicated Customer Success Manager and support team, Christine was able to implement Weel and issue cards to all 30 pharmacies in just two weeks.

“After we were onboarded and all of the teams were trained… the platform itself was so simple to use. It’s so intuitive that we didn’t need to do much training.”

The Result

“Our month-end process for cash management has become 90% more efficient.”

Weel's spend management capabilities have provided newfound transparency and accountability for company spending within the business. Since implementing Weel, Christine has observed a substantial improvement in accuracy and efficiency of their month end process. 

“It’s as quick as downloading an app.” 

Empowering individual pharmacies with Weel cards has not only streamlined financial operations but also placed inventory control back into the hands of the pharmacy owners. Rather than waiting for payment from head office, which often resulted in delivery delays, pharmacy owners are now able to order and manage inventory themselves, ensuring essential items are always in stock and reducing wait times for their customers.