How The Vikings Group Made AP Process 99% More Efficient
Vikings Group has been a cornerstone of community and hospitality in the Tuggeranong Valley since its beginnings as a local rugby club in 1979. Today, the group operates four vibrant licensed clubs that bring people together through dining, entertainment, sport and social connection, while proudly reinvesting in local communities and supporting thousands of members and athletes each year.
As Vikings Group expanded their hospitality offerings and community reach, the finance team faced growing pressure from manual data entry and inefficient accounts payable (AP) processes. These challenges slowed invoice processing, increased the risk of errors, and limited the team’s ability to maintain robust financial oversight. To streamline their financial operations, Vikings Group integrated the Lightyear AP automation solution with their accounting platform Xero, enabling automated invoice capture, improved data accuracy, and greater financial control.
A Full Plate for the Finance Team
James Managuelod, Accounts Payable Officer at Vikings Group, explained that with a finance team of 6, processing 1000+ invoices every month, their main focus was automating manual and time-consuming AP tasks.
“We were manually encoding a large number of invoices every day, and with that volume, errors would occur, details were missed, and invoices weren’t always coded correctly. This created inefficiencies across our AP process.” says James.
He further highlighted that manual entry slowed down their invoice processing, and approvals were often delayed because requests were spread across emails rather than managed in one central place.
“The team also had limited visibility over invoices, which made it difficult to know which were pending, approved, or overdue.”
Vikings Group needed a solution that could centralise approvals and give the team real-time visibility. This led them to adopt Lightyear as their AP automation solution.
We receive a lot of invoices every day, and when processing them manually, some details and coding can be missed.
Clearing the Table for Efficiency
“Lightyear has centralised all our documents by integrating seamlessly with our accounting system, Xero. The system automatically captures all the invoice details, helping us to reduce errors and accelerate the entire AP process.”
James explained how Lightyear makes it easy for them to track the progress of invoices and identify who needs to take action, providing full visibility and control.
“Unlike our previous process in DocuPeak, which relied on sending emails manually through Outlook, Lightyear’s automated functionality sends reminders and notifies venue managers directly when invoices need approval, streamlining the workflow significantly.”
Moreover, by automating routine AP tasks like statement reconciliation, Lightyear has provided them with time to enhance guest experiences.
“Previously, reconciling statements could take an entire day, as we had to search for each one individually. With Lightyear, it’s now fully automated and takes less than 5 minutes to check all statements, not just for one supplier, but for all of them.”
With Lightyear’s intuitive dashboard, the team can clearly see all invoices and their status.
99% Efficient AP Processes
“With Lightyear, our AP process efficiency has increased by 99%.”
The efficiency and time savings have enabled the finance team to focus on creating unique experiences for guests.
“We used to receive 50 to 100 invoices a day, which took 6 to 7 hours to process manually. With Lightyear, the same workload can now be completed in just 10 to 20 minutes.”
When asked what advice James would give other hospitality finance leaders looking at Lightyear for AP automation to increase efficiency, he said:
“Choosing Lightyear makes life easier, particularly when it comes to the accounts payable process. It reduces the time you need to process invoices and helps you minimise the errors that often occur with manual data entry.”
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