Overview
Yes Drive is an Australian vehicle rental business running spend across multiple branches, with 30 staff and a team of managers who buy on the road every week.
Before Budgetly, Yes Drive ran on a single shared business card. With branches spread across the country, the finance team could only see spend after the fact, and only once managers handed in their receipts. Every transaction was then categorised by hand and keyed into a spreadsheet before it reached Xero.
After moving to Budgetly, Yes Drive gave each manager their own Visa debit card, saw branch spend in real time, and let receipts reconcile straight into Xero. Weekly transaction admin dropped from three to four hours to under one.
Challenges
Before Budgetly, the shared-card process created friction for finance and the branches alike. The biggest challenges were:
- No control across branches. One shared business card gave managers no individual limits and finance no way to attribute spend by person or branch.
- Receipt chasing across locations. Visibility depended on managers remembering to hand receipts in, across multiple branches.
- Manual reconciliation into Xero. Each transaction was categorised by hand, matched to a receipt, and entered into an Excel spreadsheet before it reached the accounts.
What was at stake
Without a better process, the team risked:
- Hours lost every week to categorising transactions and re-keying them into a spreadsheet.
- Weak spend control as more branches meant more spend on a card nobody could see in real time.
Why Budgetly
Sanal had used Budgetly at a previous business, so the decision was quick.
“The main reason I went with Budgetly was to see all the transactions and track the spending. The previous company I was with used Budgetly as well. So when I came into this one, I thought I might as well go with Budgetly because I’ve already used it before.”
— Sanal Perera, Yes Drive
What sold him was the automation.
“It is easy for us to upload a receipt and then it automatically reconciles. That automation will help develop our business much more easily than manually processing each transaction or getting the staff to send us receipts.”
— Sanal Perera, Yes Drive
The solution
Getting started was fast. After Sanal submitted the requested documents, Yes Drive was up and running in two to three days.
Budgetly helped Yes Drive:
- Give each manager their own Visa debit card instead of sharing one business card.
- See every branch transaction in real time, before and after spend.
- Capture receipts on the app and match them to transactions automatically.
- Reconcile straight into Xero through the integration, with no spreadsheet in between.
Results
1. Transaction admin down from 3-4 hours a week to under 1
The old process meant waiting on managers, collecting receipts, categorising each transaction, and keying it into a spreadsheet before anything hit Xero. That ran three to four hours a week at minimum.
“With the manual process, it would take around three to four hours per week at least to categorise the transactions, get the receipts, then put it into an Excel spreadsheet. Now we can do that within an hour.”
— Sanal Perera, Yes Drive
2. Every branch transaction visible in real time
With one card per manager instead of a shared business card, Yes Drive sees spend across every branch as it happens, not at month-end.
“The ability to see transactions in real time and not having to chase receipts anymore.”
— Sanal Perera, Yes Drive
3. Receipts reconcile straight into Xero
Managers capture receipts on the app. Budgetly matches each one to its transaction, codes it to the right account, and syncs to Xero through the integration.
“Now everything is automated and it’s going straight to the correct account, and it gets into Xero automatically because of the integration.”
— Sanal Perera, Yes Drive
4. Support rated 10/10
Early on, one of Yes Drive’s cards was not reaching a manager in Hobart. A quick call sorted it: the old card cancelled and a replacement sent straight away.
“Every time I had an issue, I would send an email or call the support team and they’d be pretty quick to respond. The user experience, onboarding, everything was perfect. If I could give a rating, it would be 10. You guys have been great.”
— Sanal Perera, Yes Drive
That stood out against other providers Sanal had dealt with.
“I’ve had issues with certain other providers. After they get us onboarded, there’s not much support. And even if you ask something, you need to wait for two, three days to get a response.”
— Sanal Perera, Yes Drive
About Yes Drive
Yes Drive is an Australian vehicle rental business operating across multiple branches, with 30 staff.
About Budgetly
Budgetly is an Australian spend management provider. We give businesses individual Visa debit cards, real-time budgets and controls, receipt capture, and automatic reconciliation to accounting systems like Xero, MYOB, and QuickBooks. Trusted by 1,200+ Australian businesses, with a 4.9 rating on Capterra.