How L'affare took the grind out of invoices and card expenses

Summary

L'affare is a New Zealand coffee business with a busy café, a head office and a small Auckland office supported by a finance team of three. Before ProSpend, every supplier invoice and every Visa expense was entered line by line across spreadsheets and paper, with the café's daily milk and fruit deliveries generating a constant stream of paperwork and physical approvals. With ProSpend accounts payable and expense management feeding MYOB EXO, invoices and Visa transactions are now captured, coded and approved in one place. Paper storage has dropped from two boxes a month to one box every two months, approvals no longer wait on a signature chase, and L'affare has become an internal advocate for rolling ProSpend out across the wider group.

About L'affare

L'affare has been roasting coffee in Wellington since 1990, and helped pioneer the café culture New Zealand is now known for. More than thirty years on, it reaches well beyond the roastery: L'affare supplies beans to cafés and offices around the country, sells and services espresso machines and grinders, trains baristas, runs an online store and pours its own coffee at Caffe L'affare. Its finance team of three manages supplier invoices and corporate Visa card expenses for staff across the business, and it is the first entity in its wider group to adopt ProSpend.

The challenge

L'affare's finance team faced a constant stream of invoices and before ProSpend, every one was handled by hand.

Supplier invoices were entered line by line, and Visa card expenses were tracked the same way on spreadsheets, then keyed straight into MYOB EXO from paper. The café was the worst of it: daily milk and fruit deliveries meant a steady flow of small, repetitive invoices, each adding to the pile.

Approvals also ran on paper. Each invoice needed to be physically signed by the relevant department manager, so when a manager was away or it was the weekend, everything was delayed. A previous manager had spent about six months looking for an easier way before the team landed on ProSpend.

“We were entering every invoice and every Visa expense line by line, the sheer volume was the biggest pain. Then every invoice was a physical copy that had to be signed by the manager, so if they were away or it was the weekend, it held everything up.” - Becky Clift, Admin Team Lead

The solution

L'affare chose ProSpend because it did both jobs in one place. Many of the tools they looked at handled either accounts payable or card expenses, not both and a single system covering invoices and Visa expenses was the deciding factor.

“A lot of the options we looked at only did one thing: accounts payable or credit-card expenses, not both. Finding one system that did both was the big draw card.” - Becky Clift, L'affare

• AP automation: invoices are captured and coded in ProSpend, routed through digital approvals, then exported to MYOB Exo, no more keying from paper.
• Visa card expenses: a Visa bank feed picks up card transactions automatically, with SmartMatch prompting the right coding.
  • “I was amazed by its connection with the Visa bank feeds, it literally picks everything up. Smartmatch and the AI reading everything is really good.” - Becky Clift, L'affare
• Everything in one place: invoices, receipts and approvals live in ProSpend, cutting the paper that used to fill filing boxes.
• MYOB Exo integration: approved data flows through to EXO, as early adopters of EXO with ProSpend, Kilimanjaro Consulting helped complete the setup work to connect the systems, with no major issues.

Rolling out ProSpend went smoothly once the integration was in place. Multiple training sessions from ProSpend helped the wider team pick it up, and support has stood out since.

“Once we got the ball rolling it was seamless, and the ProSpend support has always been awesome, fast and informative. You can ask a question and get an answer within minutes.” - Becky Clift, Admin Team Lead

The impact

The biggest wins are in time, paper and accuracy day to day with the daily grind of manual entry and paper chasing is gone.

✓ Paper storage down from two filing boxes a month to one box every two months.

“We went from two big boxes of invoices a month down to one box every two months. That alone is massive, having everything in one place. I literally can't think of what it would be like to go back.” - Becky Clift, Admin Team Lead

✓ Line-by-line entry of invoices and Visa expenses eliminated, now transactions captured by bank feed and matched with SmartMatch.

✓ Faster approvals, with no chasing managers for physical signatures; acting approvers keep spend moving during absences.

✓ More accurate coding and accountability, with staff coding their own spend.

✓ Everything (invoices, receipts and approvals) in one place.

“People have to code it themselves now, so it makes them think about what it should be, theres a bit more accountability on their end. And someone was acting approver for three weeks and could still see everything. It's a lot easier than following someone around the building with a physical invoice to sign.” - Becky Clift, Admin Team Lead

Conclusion

L'affare set out to replace manual, paper-heavy finance work with one system covering both invoices and card expenses. With ProSpend accounts payable and expense management feeding MYOB Exo, the team cut its paperwork, sped up approvals and brought everything into one place and is now the advocate pulling the rest of the group along.

“It's a good, solid system with really great support, and really good value for money.” - Becky Clift, Admin Team Lead