How Australian Retail Council Saves 10 Hours a Week with Centralised AP Automation
The Australian Retail Council (ARC) is Australia's peak body for the retail industry, formed through the merger of the Australian Retailers Association and the National Retail Association. Representing tens of thousands of retail businesses across the country, ARC champions the interests of retailers through advocacy, industry events, government-funded training programmes, and policy development.
Behind the scenes, a 4-person finance team was managing a constant flow of invoices each month through a manual email-based process. Tracking what had been sent, to whom, and when meant constant inbox archaeology and frequent follow-ups. Since adopting Lightyear alongside Xero, ARC’s finance team now has full visibility of every approval at a glance, with Rachel reclaiming up to a 25% of her working week from manual AP tasks.
1.5 Days a Month Lost to Manual Data Entry
Before Lightyear, Rachel and the finance team were managing the entire AP process through email.
“I would send an email to the approver, with the bill attached. I'd wait for them to come back, and when they would, I'd enter the approved bill manually into Xero. It was a cumbersome process,” says Rachel Duflou-Weymouth, Finance Assistant.
Processing around 100 invoices a month, this workflow added hours of admin each week.
“I spent roughly 7 minutes per invoice — drafting approval emails, chasing responses, and manually keying data into the accounts system. It was nearly 1.5 days every month just on manual data entry.”
But the time cost was only part of the problem. The bigger challenge was visibility across approvals.
“The hard part was trying to keep track of approvals. I'd be searching through emails, trying to remember when I sent that bill to that person. How long ago was it? When should I follow up?”
Audit season brought its own pressure. With government funding comes mandatory annual audits, and without a centralised record of bills and approvals, preparing for them meant manually gathering documents from across the business.
I was spending over 11 hours per month on just manual data entry.
Seamless Integration That Made Audits Smoother
Lightyear had actually come recommended from within the business. Mike, ARC's Director of Finance and Risk, had used the platform at a previous organisation and brought it with him when he joined.
“Mike's the one who introduced us all to Lightyear. He'd used it in a previous organisation, had found it really good, very agile, very customer-centric.”
With Lightyear and Xero working together seamlessly, ARC finally has the audit-readiness it genuinely needed.
“The export from Lightyear to Xero is really good. The auditors can go into Xero and see the Lightyear bill right there attached to the transaction. Or they can go into Lightyear directly with auditor access. It's made audit season a lot easier.”
As for the fragmented approval process, generic emails are replaced by dedicated notifications so approvers know exactly what's being asked of them.
“For a busy person, approvals would tend to get lost in their email system. Whereas if they're getting an approval notification from Lightyear, they know it's a bill they have to approve. Also, it's easy for me to go into Lightyear and send approval reminders.”
ARC's approval chains often involve more than one sign-off. Lightyear's notes feature has made that multi-step process straightforward for everyone involved.
“If we require a second approval, I'll just add a comment using Lightyear’s notes feature, then send it to the approver. The person doing the final sign-off can go into Lightyear, look at the note, review the document, and then go ahead and do their step. It's a lot less clunky and a lot more streamlined.”
I'm impressed by how much Lightyear has developed its data extraction tool. It can extract from different formats within seconds!
10 Hours a Week Reclaimed
“At least 50% of my week was spent on AP before. Now with Lightyear, I only spend 1/4 of a week on AP tasks. That's roughly 10 hours a week back.”
With time freed from manual AP work, Rachel has been able to focus on the parts of her role that actually move the business forward.
“Overall it just helps me to get onto tasks quickly and prepare earlier. Payroll, for example, I used to be in a little bit of a rush with that. Now I can start planning several days ahead. And I can spend more time chasing up our debtors, so I'm more on top of accounts receivable too.”
When asked if Rachel would recommend Lightyear to other businesses for AP automation, she said:
“Definitely give it a go. It's just convenient on many levels. If you want to find a bill from several years ago, you can go into the archive and find it in less than a minute. It works really well with Xero. It makes things very easy from an audit perspective, too.”
Ready to reclaim time lost to manual AP?