The Challenge

“We’d end up with thousands of dollars worth of expenses at the end of the month and only half of those would have receipts - if we were lucky.”

Windarring, a community-based disability service provider headquartered in Central Victoria, was facing a daunting challenge. With 180 staff spread across six different locations, their manual expense reconciliation process had become a burden for Corporate Services Manager, Beth McIlwain.

Prior to implementing Weel, all financial processes including board reports, relied on labour-intensive manual spreadsheets. To complicate matters, staff members were sharing a limited number of debit cards and small office expenses were being made without obtaining receipts. As a result, Windarring was racking up $25,000 in expenses at month-end, of which only half were backed by receipts (if they were lucky), leaving a glaring financial gap in Windarring’s financial reporting.

"It was a complete mess."

The manual nature of this process was having a serious impact on the month-end close process, with the Finance Manager spending up to a week reconciling various cards in Xero, often with no receipts to reference. This lack of proper tracking also meant that Windarring was missing out on opportunities to recharge expenses incurred on behalf of their NDIS participants.

The Solution

"Weel was by far the easiest, most intuitive system to implement, and we saw early adoption across the board. We were blown away by the simplicity and the practicality of the application and how easy it was."

As Windarring began exploring spend management solutions that could help streamline their processes, Weel's unique features made it the standout choice. With 22 different reporting categories, job costing was critical for Windarring, and Weel was the only solution that offered this feature.

The accessibility of Weel’s spend management platform quickly replaced the need for cumbersome spreadsheets, allowing Windarring's staff to break free from manual data entry.

"I can't remember the last time I've had to deal with a spreadsheet. It's very refreshing to step away from that."

After experiencing Weel for themselves, Beth and her team were thoroughly impressed by the simplicity and practicality of Weel's application and recognised the potential for transformative change within the organisation. As Beth put it, "If we can do it differently and better, why not do it?"

The Result

“We love Weel. It's life changing.”

Within just three months of implementing Weel, Windarring’s expenditure dropped from $25k to $12k. Over time, they managed to further reduce it to an average of $9k to $10k per month. In addition, expenses without receipts came to a halt entirely.

Weel has continued to deliver substantial savings for Windarring, amounting to an impressive $200,000 annually. This impressive return on investment has been a game-changer for the organisation's financial health.

"We love Weel. It's life-changing."

As well as simplifying Windarring’s expense management process, Weel has also enabled the organisation to better serve their NDIS participants. By significantly reducing expenses and improving compliance rates, Windarring can now ensure that every cost is accounted for and rechargeable.  This in turn has led Windarring to be able to provide more services and events for its participants, and fulfil their mission of putting NDIS participant’s needs, choices and life improvement first.

Looking to the future, Weel is set to remain a stalwart of Windarring’s finance stack.  "Weel isn't going anywhere in this business,” adds Beth. “From the board, to the leadership team, to the staff, everyone loves Weel."

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