Success story: Approval automation for early-stage businesses
Portt & Co act as an outsourced finance function for ambitious and innovative small businesses. Their clientele is typically based in London and the South West but Portt & Co do also serve clients across the country.
The company works particularly well with early-stage businesses who have external investors and need to establish meaningful system and performance reporting.
Key challenges early-stage businesses typically face include:
- Accomplishing continuous process efficiency, particularly in accounting
- Implementing clear and robust financial controls, and transparent spend management
- Setting up a well-defined authorisation process and keeping it on the surface
- Making approval decisions traceable and ensuring audit readiness
As a finance outsourcing organisation serving such clients, Portt & Co need capable tools:
- A cloud system of records – an online accounting platform with cloud-based pre-integrated apps keeps all data accessible on demand
- Data and process automation – getting rid of paper- or email-based systems reduces manual intervention to a minimum
- A trusted app stack – employing pre-integrated and seamlessly connected apps enables smooth end-to-end process flows
Approval automation by ApprovalMax
Initially, ApprovalMax was chosen because a client wanted Portt & Co to email all invoices and ask for their approval. Introducing ApprovalMax for this task made a real difference as it cut out the need formanual email distribution – and the subsequent processing.
Today, ApprovalMax is Portt & Co‘s go-to product whenever it’s about managing purchase orders, or if multiple team members are involved in the approval of sales invoices/bills.
Typical usage scenarios
“With regard to typical business cases and usage scenarios, our clients usually have department heads who are responsible for a particular area of the business and need to stay in control of a budget. So it’s vital that a cost can only affect their budget if they’ve seen and approved the respective purchase order/invoice beforehand,” says Matt Portt, Owner at Portt & Co.
We configure approval workflows based on each person being responsible for a certain nominal code. This way, all invoices marked with a particular code are automatically routed to the corresponding budget holder to collect the approval.
Additionally, if an invoice amount is higher than a set level, the approval request will go to the business owner for their superior approval.
Benefits and results
“The biggest benefits ApprovalMax has unlocked for us and our clients are significantly increased efficiency and much better control over expenditures. We’re really impressed with the automation capabilities, and getting approval requests pushed to the responsible managers right-away makes things so much easier,” says Matt Portt.
Approval automation by ApprovalMax effortlessly delivers:
- Higher process efficiency and team productivity
- Enforced financial controls and proper authorisations
- Robust spend control and full accountability
- Comprehensive and timely performance reports
Finance and accounting outsourcing service providers such as Portt & Co benefit greatly by implementing ApprovalMax because it empowers them to deliver their services at the highest level of quality while retaining maximum profitability. What’s more, as Portt & Co now share the financial accountability with their clients’ budget holders, they can execute payments on behalf of clients without any liability risks.