How Bright & Duggan cut month-end close from 2 weeks to 4 days and scaled expense management across 17+ entities with Weel

Bright & Duggan is one of Australia's leading strata management businesses, having grown rapidly through acquisition to support an expanding national footprint.

What began as a more traditional, "mum-and-pop" style operation evolved quickly as the business acquired new strata firms to fuel growth. Each acquisition brought new bank accounts, new credit facilities, and new complexity.

When Pascaley Vicario, Financial Controller at Bright & Duggan, joined the business three years ago, the organisation was already managing 17 separate legal entities, with more acquisitions still to come.

The challenge: rapid growth without scalable financial controls

As Bright & Duggan scaled, expense management struggled to keep up.

At the time Pascaley joined:

• Credit cards were shared across teams, often with no clarity on who made a purchase
• Receipts were frequently missing or unallocated
• There was no formal expense policy, spending was largely trust-based
• Finance spent up to two weeks closing the month, often working weekends

One of Pascaley's biggest frustrations was how difficult it was to manage cards through the bank.

"If we needed to issue or cancel a card, I'd have to call the bank, sit on hold listening to the music, and hope someone could help. It was incredibly time-consuming."

As the number of entities grew, so did the administrative burden and it became clear the existing approach wouldn't scale.

Leadership gave Pascaley full autonomy to fix the problem.

Searching for a scalable solution

With no prior experience using expense management software, Pascaley began researching solutions from scratch -speaking with providers, testing workflows, and evaluating tools from an end-user perspective.

Weel stood out for several reasons:

• Exceptional customer service during the evaluation process
• A simple, intuitive user experience, which Pascaley tested by trialling a small "coffee card" use case
• Native Xero integration, critical for managing multiple entities
• The ability to instantly issue, cancel, or replace cards without relying on the bank

After testing the experience firsthand and securing leadership buy-in, Bright & Duggan chose Weel.

The solution: control, flexibility, and speed

Weel replaced shared cards, bank calls, and spreadsheets with:

• Shared budgets and individual cards with clearly defined spend limits
• The ability to issue or remove cards in seconds
• Real-time visibility across teams and entities
• Mandatory receipt capture and expense categorisation
• Seamless syncing into Xero

As Bright & Duggan continued acquiring new businesses, Pascaley could easily spin up new Weel accounts to support additional entities without adding operational overhead.

Change management: explaining the why behind expenses

Introducing Weel also meant changing long-standing behaviours.

Employees were used to spending freely without understanding why finance needed receipts or accurate categorisation. Pascaley focused on education, helping teams understand:

• The tax and audit implications of poor expense data
• The financial risk created by missing receipts
• Why expense controls protect the business, not slow it down

"Once people understood why finance cares about expenses, especially from a tax and audit perspective, adoption came much more naturally."

Because Weel was simple to use, teams adapted quickly and accountability became part of everyday spend.

The results: faster close, stronger accountability, and a more strategic finance team

The impact for Bright & Duggan was immediate:

• Month-end close reduced from two weeks to four days
• Finance no longer works weekends
• Budget owners now have clear accountability over their own P&Ls
• Spend is visible in real time, not retrospectively
• Finance has shifted from a reactive function to a proactive, strategic one

"It used to take us two weeks to close, and I'd be working weekends. I've now got my weekends back thanks to using Weel."

With manual reconciliation and receipt chasing largely eliminated, the finance team can now focus on higher-value, forward-facing work -supporting budget owners, partnering more closely with the business, and improving financial decision-making, rather than constantly looking backwards and trying to keep up with transactions.

"We used to spend most of the month looking backwards - it felt like month-end was always happening. Now we can be far more forward-looking and proactive."

For Pascaley and the Bright & Duggan finance team, Weel hasn't just solved today's problems; it's created a foundation that supports ongoing growth.

As the business continues to acquire and scale, finance now has the tools, visibility, and flexibility to stay in control while spending more time on strategic decision-making, without adding complexity.