How Exdia reduces expense admin and builds better client relationships with Weel

The Challenge

4 hours per month spent reconciling expenses per client

For most churches getting the corporate cards needed to pay for day-to-day expenses is incredibly painful. This is because traditional providers don’t want to approve churches for corporate cards due to the perceived complexity of a church's beneficial ownership structure.

As a result, Ed’s clients used their personal cards to pay for expenses or would share cards around the office.

“At one of our clients the office admin had to take out a personal credit card in her name which was shared around the office. We would then have to rush to reimburse her before the interest free period ended.” - Ed Johnson

This was problematic because once the payment was made, Ed’s clients would then have to submit expense claims and receipts via email or Dropbox. “You’d have people handing off receipts and chasing reimbursements. Paper was flying around all over the place”.

Frequently, Ed would find that a submitted expense claim was unclear. To resolve this, Ed would check in once a month with each client about all unclear claims.

Once Ed had everything he needed (a process which took 3-4 hours every month per client) he would then create bills in Xero to reimburse staff members from the client’s bank accounts.

The Solution

An all-in-one virtual card, expense management and budgeting tool with a powerful Xero integration

Ed and his team knew they had to find a digital solution to streamline their clients expenses. Searching high and low, Ed eventually found Weel.

“I thoroughly researched other solutions. Weel was the first solution that had card issuance, expense management, budget control and a Xero integration in one tool.”

Weel's virtual cards allow Ed’s clients to make the payments they need to keep their businesses running without having to share company cards or use their personal funds. Which according to Ed “has made everyone happy, particularly the office admin who was using her personal credit card.”

Weel's budgets keep Ed and his clients in control of spending. Ed and the client’s finance teams use budgets to set spending limits on staff member’s card. Whilst all spending is recorded against a weekly, monthly or annual budget limit in real-time.

Mobile expense reports have eliminated the need for follow ups. Now, all Ed’s clients need to do is snap a photo of their receipt and select an expense category from the Weel app.

Using Weel's Chart of Accounts Mapping tool, Ed has assigned specific categories to each individual, reducing a list of 20-30 accounting codes to just 5 per person. Keeping the list of selectable codes small mitigates any coding mistakes by staff members and ensures that Ed and his team no longer need to follow up for additional expense data.

All expense data can be reviewed by Ed and his team the moment it’s recorded from a live transaction feed. This transaction feed exports all expense data into Xero automatically via a Bank Feed. The end result is that Ed and his team can quickly reconcile all expenses made with Weel.

Onboarding each client takes Ed less than a week. All Ed needs to do is set up the business’ budgets and map their chart of accounts to Weel's categories. The remaining implementation, training and ongoing support is handled by Weel.

The Result

4 hours a month saved on expense admin and stronger client relationships

Whilst Weel saves Ed and his firm 4 hours per client every month, it saves his clients just as much time. This frees up staff and volunteers to focus on what they do best.

Delivering such an improvement in efficiency along with the ability to offer a generous Weel Partner Discount helps Ed and his team build strong relationships with his clients. This in turn helps Ed to continue working closely with his clients well into the future.

“I love our clients. For me, it’s like I’m a part of their team, and I feel honoured to be working with them. Every client is different, but I guess we’re all the same in this way: we want to use the resources and experience we have and do the very best with them”