About Vantage Point Church
Vantage Point Church is a religious organisation welcoming individuals from various backgrounds and ages. Located in Donvale, VIC, the church has in-person gatherings every Sunday and serves its community through multiple youth, children, and community programs.
About Budgetly
Budgetly is an Australian prepaid corporate card and expense management software provider. We’re committed to making expense management easy for all companies and improving their processes. Our service is adopted by many NDIS service providers, aged care providers, charities, and businesses across Australia.
Overview
Vantage Point Church runs multiple events, webinars, and gatherings for the community each year. To support this, the church employs a few staff members to run its day-to-day activities.
Staff would be assigned a monthly or yearly budget to manage expenses depending on their role. Each staff member would spend using a credit card and fill up their expense details using a form and attach a receipt. The finance team would then enter all these transactions in a spreadsheet at the end of the month, and upload this into their finance system.
This manual expense management method proved to be challenging because:
- Receipts were lost. Because of their busy schedule, it was difficult for staff to keep track of their receipts, which resulted in many of them being lost. Finance teams would also have to chase staff for receipts when going through their transactions.
- Lack of visibility on transactions. Staff were assigned a budget beforehand, but there was no visibility on how much was spent and how much remained of the budget. Finance teams could also not see transactions quickly, so staff had to track their expenses in a spreadsheet.
- Tedious reconciliation. Finance teams would download a transaction report from the bank and go through each transaction to match them with the appropriate receipt. This was a tedious process that consumed a lot of time every month.
- Hassle in uploading transactions to Xero. After reconciling these expenses, finance teams would then have to upload them manually into Xero - which proved to be another time-consuming process.
Staff and finance teams at Vantage Point Church were spending too much time on manual administrative work, which could be spent on other higher-level tasks. So as the Shared Services Manager, Marcella Hernandez knew it was important to search for a more viable expense management solution.
Our Solution
Vantage Point Church gained better control and visibility over their budgets thanks to Budgetly’s preloaded cards and expense management software that’s usable on a mobile app, desktop, and laptop.
Using the mobile app, church staff can now skip the manual process and make purchases using their Budgetly card and capture a picture of the receipt using their phone. These transactions are recorded and automatically reconciled on the Budgetly app - automating a key finance process.
Example of the Budgetly app
Besides automatic reconciliation, finance teams can also view all transactions in real time, which provides better control and visibility than a bank debit card. In addition, staff can also check their budget balances in the app and desktop application.
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Example of Budgetly’s system
Example of Budgetly’s system
As for the church’s Xero issues, all recorded transactions in Budgetly can be easily reconciled with Xero. As a result, finance teams no longer need to enter the transactions into the accounting system manually.
Example of Budgetly’s system
With Budgetly, Vantage Point Church can now:
- Instantly edit budgets by adding or reducing funds
- Set budgets to roll over or reset for the next month, fortnight, weekly, or one time
- View all employee transactions and budgets in real-time on the dashboard
- Instantly issue an unlimited number of cards and eliminate long wait times for credit cards
- Cancel or block cards immediately without waiting on the phone for the credit card company to do it
- Set spending limits on staff cards so they don’t go over budget
Results
Vantage Point Church managed to take control and create a better expense management system with Budgetly. For Marcella Hernandez, its Shared Services Manager, using Budgetly has allowed her to eliminate receipt loss entirely.
“Previously with credit cards, we had to chase staff for receipts, and we couldn't see what receipts were missing on the spot. But now, we can see that live in Budgetly and remind people to provide a receipt a day later instead of waiting a month to remind them. Now no more receipts are lost.”
Marcella Hernandez, Shared Services Manager
Budgetly has also helped the company save at least 8 hours a month on manual tasks and enabled staff to focus on the jobs which really matter.
“With Budgetly, all staff can now see how much money they have in their account instead of tracking their budgets themselves on spreadsheets. The app empowers our staff to make their own decisions on purchases and manage their spending. It also keeps staff accountable for managing their funds and capturing their receipts.”
Marcella Hernandez, Shared Services Manager
Moving to the Budgetly system was easy with the help of the Budgetly team, and Marcella would recommend using Budgetly.
“We were sent an email from the Budgetly team and saw the benefits immediately. The level of support we got from them has been amazing. They make us feel supported and valued whenever we do call, and we have built a rapport with them. We’d absolutely recommend Budgetly to others.”
Marcella Hernandez, Shared Services Manager
For more information on Budgetly and how we work for businesses, schedule a demo with us today, or watch a 10-minute recorded demo
