Beef Australia – How a Lean Team Gained Control, Clarity and Speed with ProSpend

Beef Australia manages more than 180 supplier invoices a month during peak event years. With approvers spread across the country and documents stored in physical files, approvals were slow, audits were painful and overspend risks were high. By using ProSpend for budgeting, purchase orders and approvals, the organisation created a predictable, transparent and scalable finance workflow — without adding headcount.

About Beef Australia

Beef Australia hosts one of the largest beef industry expos in the Southern Hemisphere. In non-event years the organisation operates with a small core team; in event years activity spikes rapidly, and spend increases with it.

The Challenge

When their Finance Manager joined in 2022, they found a system that relied heavily on email trails, manual checks and physical document storage.

Budgets were difficult to monitor, approvals stalled when approvers weren’t online, and finance often had to intervene to prevent overspending.

They described the environment clearly:
 “ProSpend was the only software we found that integrated both receipt management and approval workflows seamlessly.”

Approvals were particularly challenging:
 “Our workflow is the manager, CEO and treasurer. For two of the three years of the Beef cycle, none of the approvers are in the same location. That could lead to delays, overlooked invoices, missing data, and approvals happening out of sequence.”

Audit preparation took hours — sometimes days — because supporting documents lived in boxes and folders instead of one system.

The Solution

Beef Australia implemented ProSpend’s AP Automation, Budget Manager and Expense Manager to address the entire workflow from pre-approval to audit.

With ProSpend:

• Every purchase request and invoice is checked against the budget before approval.
• POs become the trigger for control — no significant spend happens without one.
• Approvals move electronically, eliminating long email chains.
• Approvers can approve from any location, on any device.
• All documents are stored digitally and searchable in seconds.

Beef Australia saw the difference immediately:
 “One of the main features in ProSpend that enhances the workflow for us is the budget function. The potential to overspend is identified at the purchase order and not at the actual payment end, which is important to us.”

The Impact

The improvements were fast and measurable:

• Approvals dropped from days to hours.
• Audit prep time reduced by roughly 80%.
• Finance avoided adding extra staff despite higher volume.
• Managers gained budget ownership and autonomy.
• Finance shifted from “micromanaging” to enabling better decisions.

Beef Australia sums up the cultural shift:
“The managers were really on board with ProSpend. They were given their own bucket of money — no micromanaging.”
“From a finance point of view… the budget being in ProSpend gets finance off the hook a lot because the budget’s approved by the Board.”

And on implementation:
“The automation process was very seamless and productive. I think it only took weeks to make the change.”

Conclusion

With ProSpend, Beef Australia moved from reactive, paper-heavy controls to a proactive, reliable framework that gives the finance team and managers complete visibility. Pre-approval is now standard, documentation is centralised, and the organisation can scale activity without scaling complexity.

Want to simplify approvals before the invoice hits your inbox? Speak to a ProSpend expert today.