The Challenge

The finance team was caught in a loop of manual processes that wasted hours every week. Invoices landed in inboxes and were saved wherever was convenient — sometimes in shared drives, sometimes on desktops. When approval time came, no one was ever sure which was the “right” version. Managers were asked to approve by email, but approvals sat unread or got buried under other priorities.

At month-end, things became worse. Each entity kept its own spreadsheet for accruals and journals, and someone had to manually merge them into one report. Errors crept in, deadlines slipped, and leaders were left waiting until the very end of the month for a picture of expenses and cash flow. One senior manager admitted: “By the time I see the numbers, it’s too late to act on them.”

It wasn’t just inefficient — it was demoralising. The finance staff felt like administrators instead of analysts, and managers didn’t trust the timeliness of the information they received.

Our Approach

We knew the team didn’t need a “big-bang ERP project” — they needed a practical, step-by-step fix that made life easier straight away. We started by shadowing how invoices and journals moved through the business and quickly spotted where automation could help without disrupting the team.

1. Centralising documents in SharePoint gave everyone one place to find invoices and journals. We added metadata (entity, GL code, cost centre) so files were searchable and secure.
2. Power Automate workflows took over the grunt work: invoices arriving by email were saved automatically, approvals were routed to the right manager, and reminders kept things moving.
3. A simple Power Apps tool replaced the messy Excel templates for journals and accruals. Dropdowns standardised GL codes, and managers could approve on their phone. No more guessing or recoding at month-end.
4. Power BI dashboards pulled everything together. Instead of waiting until close, leadership could see live dashboards of expenses, outstanding approvals, and cash flow.

We rolled this out in small phases — first SharePoint, then workflows, then apps, then dashboards — so the team could build confidence with each step.

Technology Used

• SharePoint Online for secure, centralised storage with metadata tagging.
• Power Automate to integrate Outlook with SharePoint and manage approvals with escalation rules.
• Power Apps for mobile-friendly journal and accrual submissions with built-in validations.
• Power BI for real-time expense and cash flow dashboards with drill-downs by entity and cost centre.

The Outcome

• Approval time dropped from 7 days to 2 days.
• Month-end close became faster because data was already structured.
• Staff reported fewer errors thanks to dropdown validations and automated reminders.
• Leadership gained daily visibility of expenses and cash flow instead of waiting weeks.

The CFO put it simply: “For the first time, I feel like I’m seeing the business in real time, not a month later.”