Wishlist is the official charity of the Sunshine Coast Hospital and Health Service, supporting five hospitals across the region. For 25 years, it has raised community funds to bring better healthcare closer to home – funding medical equipment, 44 rooms of patient accommodation, a therapy dog program, clown doctors, and palliative care support.
The finance team was managing a broad set of spending needs: coffee shop managers, accommodation staff, grant recipients, and ward nurses – all buying things on Wishlist’s behalf, but without their own cards to do it. That meant a handful of shared bank cards doing the rounds, with staff saving up physical receipts for months before dropping a stack on the finance team’s desk.
“The team would save up their receipts for like six months and send a gigantic stack. And then we’d have to check each page and add them all up.” – Tara Osborn, Finance Officer, Wishlist
Getting a new physical card issued took up to six weeks – so sharing was just the reality. The finance officer was spending eight hours a month manually reconciling everything. Individual managers were spending six hours each just sorting their own receipts.
“It would take me probably eight hours a month to sort through and manually enter everything. One of our old managers reckoned she spent about six hours a month just sorting out her receipts. And that’s just one person.” – Tara Osborn, Finance Officer, Wishlist
The solution had to handle a genuinely diverse group of cardholders – not just internal staff, but external grant recipients and hospital nurses who don’t work directly for Wishlist but need to spend funds on its behalf. The platform had to be easy enough for anyone to pick up, and robust enough for a finance team accountable to community donors. Key requirements: virtual card issuance without the six-week wait, real-time receipt capture, the ability to issue cards to people outside the organisation, and meaningful time savings for a small team.
Virtual cards could be issued almost immediately, with a set budget attached – making it simple to give a nurse or grant recipient exactly what they needed without handing over a shared card or waiting weeks on procurement. The platform’s ease of use meant no complicated rollout. It worked straight away, for a wide range of people and purposes.
What began as an internal finance tool quickly expanded well beyond that. Wishlist now uses Weel across six distinct use cases: internal team members, managers across three charity-run coffee shops, accommodation facility staff, hospital nurses on permanent cards for palliative care supplies, short-term grant recipients purchasing equipment, and funding applicants sent out to buy approved items on behalf of hospital departments.
That last use case is particularly telling. Wishlist funds equipment grants for hospital wards – but the nurses who need the equipment work for the hospital, not Wishlist. Previously, this meant a Wishlist staff member managing a shopping list on their behalf, or waiting for a stack of receipts at the end. Now, Wishlist issues a virtual Weel card loaded with exactly the grant amount, the nurse buys what’s needed, receipts are captured in real time, and the card is closed.
“They have a permanent Weel card just for buying supplies and coffee – for people whose family member’s passing away.” – Tara Osborn, Finance Officer, Wishlist
“We thought when we first got it, it would just be good for in-house. But we use it for so much more.” – Tara Osborn, Finance Officer, Wishlist
The hours previously spent manually reconciling receipts and entering data have been largely eliminated – both for the finance team and for managers across the organisation. Over 25 hours of monthly admin recovered across the business. Month-end close is faster, cleaner, and no longer dependent on chasing months of accumulated paperwork. Card issuance that once took up to six weeks now happens the same day.
“Whatever money you spend, you make back tenfold in time saved. I tell anyone who listens, you’ve got to get Weel.” – Tara Osborn, Finance Officer, Wishlist
For a community charity powered by donor funding and community goodwill, every hour counts. Weel has given Wishlist’s small finance team back meaningful time every month – and unlocked ways of working that simply weren’t possible before. The therapy dogs still need their walks. The finance team finally has time to focus on what matters most.
If your team is still chasing receipts or waiting weeks for card issuance, book a demo to see how Weel works.
