How Strive Community Care Saved up to 40 Hours a Month With Budgetly

Overview

Strive Community Care actively supports vulnerable communities and families across Queensland. The organisation runs its day-to-day services with the support of community services professionals caring for children, managers, and office staff. 

To manage expenses, employees and finance teams previously used preloaded business visa cards from two other expense management providers. However, these cards were complicated for a few reasons: 

• Unable to identify cards.  Strive Community Care allocated a weekly house budget for their homes and had multiple cards to support staff expenses in each house. However, staff and house managers were unable to identify these cards from one another, which led to confusion and time wasted in trying to match the right cards to the right houses.  
• Difficult to track transactions. Staff were assigned a budget beforehand, but finance teams could not track spending across budgets. Additionally, the card’s software didn’t allow them to view spending in real-time, which led to;
• High amounts of overspending. Because staff and finance teams couldn’t track expenditures, the company suffered from a large amount of overspending. This impacted the organisation’s strategic planning and how the company would allocate funds. 
• Lack of functionality. The card providers didn’t have a mobile app, making it difficult for staff to upload receipts and for finance teams to reconcile expenses. The provider’s limited functions also didn’t allow flexible budgeting across each housing accommodation. 
• No support from card providers. There was no telephone support from the card providers, and emails had long response wait times. This was especially difficult when the organisation experienced card issues. Additionally, there was no video training for staff on how to use the card. 
  
  

Using Budgetly, Strive Community Care has managed to save 40 hours a month on administration; they can now track transactions and limit overspending, and set flexible budgets within their teams. 

Our Solution 

With Budgetly’s preloaded cards and expense management software, staff and social workers now have a more efficient expense management process. Budgetly provided staff with prepaid corporate visa cards which are easily identifiable with individual cardholder names.

Staff can use Budgetly cards to transact, capture their receipts using their smartphones, and upload them to the Budgetly app. In addition, transaction details such as vendor names and transaction amounts are automatically filled in the app, eliminating their need to do it manually. 

Using a laptop or desktop computer, finance teams can view all transactions in real-time - giving them better visibility. They also have the following control measures on company expenses:

• View how much budget was spent 
• View each employee's transactions 
• Flag any unnecessary transactions
• Automatic reconciliation of each transaction
• Easily create and edit budgets by adding or reducing funds
• Setting budgets to rollover or reset in the next budget cycle 
• Cancel or freeze cards with a click of a button
• Instantly issue an unlimited number of visa debit cards 
• Set spending limits on staff cards 
• Sync all transactions with Xero
• Generate easy and quick transaction reports for audits 

Example of the Budgetly app

Example of Budgetly’s transaction view

Example of Budgetly’s budgeting functionalities 

Results 

Strive Community Care has saved up to 40 hours a month on manual expense management. This extra time gives staff and social workers more time to focus on helping their communities. 

For Ryan Dempsey, the Co-Founder and Director of Strive Community Care, using Budgetly has given him a much better understanding of his organisation. 

“The biggest risk for us was being unable to track spending across budgets. But with Budgetly, we saved 5 to10 hours per week across the organisation. It’s really allowed us to track our finances from top to bottom, which then flows into how we run our operations.”

Ryan Dempsey, the Co-Founder and Director

With better tracking of staff transactions, Strive Community Care can now control overspending and save company costs in the process. 

“We have definitely been able to save cash with Budgetly by tracking expenses better. For example, when working with the kids under our care, my team can tell if we’re spending too much money on takeaway - we can then direct the funds to be better used for those kids. This allows us to manage our staff more effectively and see how they are working with the kids.”

Ryan Dempsey, the Co-Founder and Director

Ryan was introduced to Budgetly through word-of-mouth from a colleague which proved to be a critical reference that solved all his expense management problems. 

“After we had the demonstration with the Budgetly team, I was sold straight away. It solved all the gaps we were experiencing with the other providers, like being able to tell one card from the other. Plus, being able to see and track how much we’ve spent and how much is left in our weekly house budget sealed the deal.”

Ryan Dempsey, the Co-Founder and Director

Would Ryan recommend Budgetly to other social organisations like Strive Community Care?

“Definitely! Budgetly is perfect for community services organisations like us. All my operational spending with managers and floor staff is exclusively done with Budgetly now because it’s just so easy with the Xero integration. Besides that, the team at Budgetly are always available to assist us whenever we need help.” 

Ryan Dempsey, the Co-Founder and Director

For more information on Budgetly and how we work for businesses, schedule a demo with us today, or watch a 10-minute recorded demo.