How Anytime Fitness Trailblazers rebuilt approvals across 43 entities

John, a former auditor who joined Anytime Fitness Trailblazers in 2019 and rose to regional finance manager as the group expanded into Malaysia, was tasked by the president with finding a digital alternative. He filtered Xero's app marketplace by review rating - discounting anything with three stars or fewer - and ApprovalMax stood out.

After a trial, extended beyond the standard period given the scale of the rollout, the decision was straightforward.

"This was the system we were really looking for - very transparent, very organised, very straightforward."

The shift was immediate. Approval turnaround dropped from three-to-four weeks to two or three days - and to a single day when something is genuinely urgent. The president no longer has to be in a chair on a Monday to keep the business moving; he approves from wherever he is. As John puts it, the only thing now standing between a request and approval is the time difference.

What started in finance spread outward. Today more than 135 people outside the finance team use ApprovalMax - club managers, fitness managers, administrative staff, area business managers and the procurement team - across bespoke standalone workflows that capture operational requests which used to live, and get lost, in email.

"When you have lots of emails, you overlook it," John says. Now an operations request flows through a defined workflow, and the requester can see its status at a glance. The result is fewer chasing calls into finance and a clear, monitored trail for every transaction. On the procurement side, purchase orders are raised and approved in ApprovalMax, then flow straight through to bills for payment.

What started in finance spread outward. Today more than 135 people outside the finance team use ApprovalMax - club managers, fitness managers, administrative staff, area business managers and the procurement team - across bespoke standalone workflows that capture operational requests which used to live, and get lost, in email.

"When you have lots of emails, you overlook it," John says. Now an operations request flows through a defined workflow, and the requester can see its status at a glance. The result is fewer chasing calls into finance and a clear, monitored trail for every transaction. On the procurement side, purchase orders are raised and approved in ApprovalMax, then flow straight through to bills for payment.

The transformation is sharper in context. The Philippines is not yet a fully digitised market - even the tax authority still requires manual processes - and Anytime Fitness Trailblazers' own revenue side remains paper-based, with membership invoices still handwritten in triplicate booklets and couriered to head office.

That makes the accounts payable turnaround all the more striking. On the spend side, where ApprovalMax operates, finance has no worries: John says close could run in 10 to 15 days were it not for the manual revenue side. The group has gone from printing five or six documents per transaction - vouchers, quotations, POs, invoices - to retaining a single supplier invoice, cutting print costs, ink, and the rented storage space that paper demanded.