Barwon Coast

Robbie Cullen, Corporate Services Manager, at Barwon Coast shares how ProSpend has allowed him and his team to save time, and gain better visibility and control. 

The Barwon Coast Committee of Management Inc, known as Barwon Coast, holds the responsibility for overseeing a 19 km stretch of coastline along Victoria's Bellarine Peninsula. This encompassing area includes the beaches and foreshores of Ocean Grove, Barwon Heads, 13th Beach, and Breamlea. 

Collaborating closely with Indigenous Traditional Owners, Barwon Coast's primary mandate revolves around safeguarding and enriching the natural environment, while also providing locals and visitors with opportunities to relish these coastal regions. All generated revenue is systematically reinvested to uphold the integrity of the natural surroundings and establish facilities and infrastructure along the coastline.

With a mission to ‘Care for the Coast’, the finance leaders at Barwon Coast needed an effective solution to remove inefficiencies with their invoice entry and approval processes.

We asked Robbie:

What challenges forced you to look for a solution like ProSpend?

"As finance leaders we drive our organisations to work more efficiently, however we need to also look inwards. Our invoice entry and approval processes were inefficient – simply dividing the cost of the Accounts Payable hours by the number of invoices processed showed the direct cost of paying our suppliers (not to mention the manager time wasted with inefficient approval workflow)."

How did ProSpend help solve these problems for you?

“We have better visibility and control along all the steps of the invoice entry, approval and payment process. Additionally, managers have better visibility of their year to date spend against budget, with no need to wait for end of month reports.”

“It has roughly halved the time spent by the finance team on accounts payable.”

Continuing, Robbie also shared:

The benefits for the employees and business, since using ProSpend:

“The benefit can be seen across the finance processes plus for all those involved – the Accounts Payable person to approvers have saved time and gained better visibility. Our Accounts Payable person now has time to take responsibility for payroll also, allowing the other members of the finance team to spend more time partnering with the business.”

Thank you Robbie, and Barwon Coast!

For Robbie and the team at Barwon Coast, ProSpend has delivered - less manual work and more efficiency. With Accounts Payable automation the finance team has more time now to work towards their goals, without having to worry about every step of tracking, managing and organising invoices. This makes the whole AP process easier, faster and more accurate. 

At ProSpend we believe in championing the voice of our customers and help solve real business problems. Many of our customers spoke to us about the need for Virtual Cards as a faster, easier and more secure way to manage business expenses. Our Virtual Cards, powered by Wise, were built out of this need and commitment to help our customers get the most out of their expense management platform. Barwon Coast too has adopted Virtual Cards to bring in even more efficiency.

Robbie says, “We are looking at rolling out the Virtual Card module next – once again to save time and increase management control.”

We pride in being able to work and partner with customers like Barwon Coast that are committed to bringing a positive change for the community. We also deeply appreciate decision makers like Robbie who understand the need to adopt digital transformation to bring in efficiency for both organisations and businesses.