When the sector you serve has been left behind by technology, you can wait for software to catch up, or you can help build it. The Breakthrough Office chose to build.
The Breakthrough Office (TBO) is an outsourced, end-to-end finance and governance firm that works with charities and not-for-profits across Australia and New Zealand, from community services to Aboriginal community controlled organisations. It includes software in the services it provides, so every platform it chooses has to work for the sector.
We sat down with Mikayla Fitzgibbon (systems) and Tobias Fitzgibbon (accounting and innovation), who both sit on TBO's executive team, to hear how the firm partnered with Weel to build workflows that work for its own team, its clients and the sector.
The challenge: a sector left behind, and tools cobbled together
"The not-for-profit sector traditionally has been really underserved by technology. It's often fallen behind what's available to the commercial market and there's even software providers who are just not accessible to not-for-profits for different reasons." - Mikayla Fitzgibbon, Executive, The Breakthrough Office
Inside TBO, that showed up as tools "cobbled together, different options and different things to just make it work," in Mikayla's words. Systems did not talk to each other, so information was typed in once, then again, which Tobias says was "too big of a risk for us."
For TBO's clients, receipts were a massive burden. Tobias says the team had to manually pull a list of outstanding receipts out of several systems, then manually email clients to chase each one, constantly asking them to upload receipts.
Card spend was just as hard to see. The card system sent all of TBO's transactions across as one single contact, so, as Tobias puts it, the team and its clients "weren't easily able to extract spend by vendor reports," which made it difficult to see trends over time.
The solution: testing Weel before asking clients to trust it
TBO had spent years looking for one platform that handled complete spend management. When it found Weel, it did not switch straight away. Tobias says the team wanted to "really test it and put it through its paces," so TBO ran Weel internally for a number of months across all of its locations around Australia. It then rolled Weel out to a test group of clients, heard the same feedback (simple and intuitive), and has since moved its whole client base across. Cards, receipts and approvals now run through one platform, with a global dashboard that gives TBO a clear picture across every client.
Rolling it out: from a remote Northern Territory team to 50 volunteers
One client has about 30 team members spread across the Northern Territory. Before Weel, only managers had cards, and even getting a manager a new one was a long process. People out in community delivering services were often out of pocket, waiting to be reimbursed. Now the whole team has a Weel card. It has been "an absolute game changer for them," Mikayla says, because they have "complete control of their expenses" and it has enabled "so much impact in those communities."
Another client needed 50 volunteers set up with a Weel card for the length of a conference, and every one of them was ready in a matter of days. Mikayla says anyone can start using a card "no matter their level of tech literacy," and that you are not compromising controls because "you know exactly where every dollar is being spent and who's approved for it."
The results: month-end in days, and time back for the work that matters
TBO's team now enjoys their work a lot more without manual, repetitive admin. Clients log in and see exactly which receipts are outstanding, and card blocking locks a card while a receipt is outstanding. For many clients, Mikayla says, receipts have gone from "a huge headache" to something that "happens automatically."
"This used to take us a couple of weeks, and we used to be closing the books more towards the middle of the month for month end, whereas now we're able to do this in the first couple of days of the month." - Tobias
Clients now receive their financial reporting on time, with real-time data on how they are tracking against their grants and programs. TBO also runs reports by contact, so clients see how funds are being spent over time.
Since moving to Weel, TBO's people spend more time on work that excites them than on receipt follow-ups, and its clients spend less time on receipts and approvals because it all sits in one place.
Built together: from cards and receipts to accounts payable
Once cards and receipts were running well, TBO wanted accounts payable on Weel too. Accounts payable has traditionally been a very manual, admin-heavy process for the not-for-profits TBO serves. Tobias describes how it used to work: approvals in one system, a manual export to Xero, a batch file created by hand, an upload to the bank, a manual email asking for approval inside the bank, and finally the bank's approvers. "That was a multi-step manual solution," he says, "which is now solved entirely through Weel."
About a year ago, Mikayla says, TBO started talking to Weel about what a perfect process would look like and what would really serve the sector. It became "a journey of working with their product team of building something that would really work both for us as an external accounting firm but also for many organisations."
Tobias says TBO asked how Weel could "revolutionise the way that we do AP throughout our whole client base." Working alongside Weel's product team, TBO has helped shape everything from automatic payment the moment an invoice is approved to BPAY, batch payments with their own approval step separate from invoices, credit notes and purchase orders. That old chain now runs through Weel approvals with a clear audit trail, so TBO can make sure it is still spending and approving in line with each client's expense policy.
"Weel has been happy to hear all of our ideas and product requests that come from not only us internally but also from our clients. And now we can look back on the app and see all of these different features and updates have come through. And our clients are so happy getting to see all of their ideas come to fruition." - Tobias
Mikayla says the partnerships team "always pick up the phone," and Tobias says TBO can see Weel "constantly working on their product."
The outcome: a sector closer to the front of the tech space
For TBO, the partnership is a means to an end. Mikayla asks how the sector can "be at the front of what technology is available in Australia," and says TBO loves partnering with Weel "for that reason." TBO's value, she says, is in the professional services it specialises in, not in chasing receipts or doing admin work.
The Breakthrough Office is a Weel partner, helping charities and not-for-profits across Australia and New Zealand run cards, receipts and accounts payable on one platform.
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