St Johns Bowling Club Cuts Processing Time from Days to Hours
St Johns Park Bowling Club has been a cornerstone of the local community, offering not only a premier lawn bowling experience but also a diverse range of hospitality services. The parent company oversees 6 sub-clubs, making it a prominent hub for leisure and social activities. In addition to lawn bowling, the club operates a bistro, cafe, bar, TAB, and poker machines, providing a vibrant venue for their members and visitors.
With a wide-reaching operation and multiple facets to manage, the club's main challenge was the manual processing of invoices, which took more time than they could afford. This issue hindered their ability to deliver top-tier service and maintain efficient operations. To quicken the invoice processing and adopt an effective auto statement reconciliation software, the team sought an AP automation solution that integrated well with their ERP system, Adept.
1 Invoice, 3 Days of Manual Work
Linda Kaiyum is an integral part of the finance team of 4 at St Johns Bowling Club. She explains that before implementing Lightyear, the team's biggest challenge was the long time it took to process an invoice. It involved several manual steps, including printing invoices from emails, sorting, coding, and obtaining department heads' approval.
"Each invoice had to be manually entered into the system for every sub-club. During the weekly payment run, which could take a full day to prepare, we could only batch up to 13 vendors at a time, and every batch required final approval from the CFO, CEO, and a Board member. It was a very time-consuming process."
Linda also highlights the operational costs associated with paper invoices.
"After 3 months, the paper invoices are archived and sent to an external facility for storage and eventual destruction. This added unnecessary costs to the business."
To eliminate these manual challenges and process invoices faster, the team adopted Lightyear as their AP automation solution.
Bowled Over by Major Time Savings
"Lightyear integrated well with Adept, and the team training sessions also gave us a much better understanding of the system."
Implementing Lightyear saved the team significant time, reducing manual data entry and allowing them to focus on valuable tasks.
"The first 3 days of the week used to be spent on manual processing, but with Lightyear, we have reduced that time. The automatic statement reconciliation feature has been the most beneficial for me. It saves so much time on reconciliation."
Linda further adds that one of the biggest time savers was the ability to speed up approvals by sending reminders to approvers, helping to keep the process on track.
"Once the approvals are done, I can easily export everything to Adept. It’s a big time-saver. Now, I only need to track down what hasn’t hit Lightyear, which only takes an hour each day. Overall, the whole system has been a huge time saver for our business."
The system is fantastic for the clubs and hospitality industry
Processing Time Reduced from 3 Days to 2 Hours
The total time taken for the St Johns Bowling Club finance team to process an invoice is reduced significantly.
"A couple of hours each day is all it takes to track everything and export to Adept for the payment run. I can also keep the process moving by sending quick reminders to approvers when needed. It has been a huge time saver."
Faster approvals have helped the team pay suppliers on time and complete monthly statements more quickly.
"With statements now much quicker to complete, I have more time to focus on value-added tasks that I couldn’t get to before."
When asked what advice Linda would give someone looking at Lightyear for AP automation, she said:
"It’s a no-brainer that the system is fantastic for the clubs and hospitality industry. I’ve worked with similar systems in other industries, but often, they don’t suit the business, and we end up spending more money reprogramming them. I’m glad we found the right fit."
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