How TCS Guernsey Reduced AP Tasks From 3 Days to 10 Minutes
Founded in 2019, TCS Guernsey supports local businesses with outsourced bookkeeping and payroll services.
Understanding that business owners didn’t start their companies to manage paperwork and reconcile accounts, TCS Guernsey removes the stress of bookkeeping and takes on these time-consuming tasks, allowing their clients to focus on what they do best: growing their business.
As one of just a few bookkeeping companies on the island, they take pride in supporting small, local businesses. With a team of 6, including Director Tim Chilestone and Operations Manager Millie Goubert, they manage every aspect of their clients' bookkeeping.
Each client uses different accounting software, including Xero, Sage Business Cloud, and QuickBooks, but the team seamlessly navigates these systems to provide accurate, reliable results.
The bookkeeping business now uses Lightyear to automate the accounts payable (AP) and bookkeeping processes for 37 clients, mainly in the hospitality and retail sectors. For TCS Guernsey's bookkeepers, this has eliminated hours of manual data entry and strengthened client relationships through faster, more personalised, and reliable service.
The Challenge: The Never-Ending Statement Nightmare
Working with hospitality and retail clients results in a high volume of invoices to process, with some spanning over 10 pages. This led to time-consuming, labour-intensive, and manual accounts payable processes. Manual statement reconciliations, in particular, proved to be cumbersome for TCS Guernsey.
''I used to hate the start of the month ends because everyone would send their statements, and I’d spend 3 days straight reconciling them." says Millie.
To eliminate these manual challenges and provide a faster service to their clients, the team decided to adopt an AP automation solution. The team at TCS Guernsey explored several AP automation solutions, but none provided the features and flexibility they were looking for.
"I'd explored other AP automation software like Dext before, but either it was terrible for invoices or the line item data extraction was awful. Then we discovered Lightyear and were impressed with its line item data extraction. Plus, it doesn’t charge per client or user. That’s when we're like, hang on a minute. That's the solution." says Tim Chilestone.
Statement reconciliation time has reduced from 3 days to approximately 10 minutes.
The Solution: Faster Processes With Greater Client Focus
Implementing Lightyear saved the team significant time, reducing manual data entry and allowing them to focus on clients' other needs.
Tim shares a common struggle for bookkeeping practices managing hospitality clients: “Sometimes we get papers that are all crumpled up, or someone will have spilt a pint of Guinness on them, and then they can't be read. Smart Extract has definitely helped extract data from such unreadable documents.”
Beyond data extraction, Millie highlights how Lightyear’s automated statement reconciliation helps them keep clients' accounts up to date.
“The automatic statement reconciliation saves us a lot of time. We can instantly see what's missing and automatically email a request for the missing invoices.”
Empowered Clients with Real-Time, Actionable Data
The TCS Guernsey team highlights that Lightyear not only saves time but also helps generate customised reports for their clients. This enables their clients to track supplier costs and make informed sourcing decisions.
“Our clients, like pubs and bars, need to track stock price increases to adjust their prices. With Lightyear, we can easily monitor these changes even on 10-page invoices with hundreds of items and inform our clients.” says Millie.
Tim further adds that the reports can be generated on the same day rather than waiting till the month’s end.
“If a client asks for data from the last six months, we can provide everything processed right up to today without waiting for month-end.”
Low Cost, More Value & Greater Returns
Although the number of TCS Guernsey clients has grown over the past 6 years, the team saw essential cost savings with Lightyear, which made it more affordable as they scaled.
"We have a few clients who shut down for a month over Christmas. But with Lightyear, that costs us nothing because it doesn't charge us per client or user," adds Tim.
We are impressed with Lightyear's line-item data extraction. Plus, it doesn't charge per client or user.
The Results: Turning a 3-Day Task Into a 10-Minute Process
''Now we barely notice the month-end because it's so automated. What used to take 3 days now only takes 10 minutes.''
The time saved through Lightyear’s automation allowed the team to focus on training members for more strategic and complex tasks.
''Data entry used to take a full day, but with Lightyear, an Accounts Assistant now spends just 3 hours on it. For the rest of the time, we can train them on more complex bookkeeping tasks and dealing with clients.'' explains Millie.
When asked about AP automation potentially taking away AP roles, Millie emphasised that:
''I don’t think it's taking away the jobs; it’s just a quicker way of doing things. We still need Account Assistants, and they still have a lot to learn. Automation means that they have more time with the clients.''
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