Home Customer stories KeepCup saves a FTE 3 months/year by automating approvals

Case study

KeepCup saves a FTE 3 months per year by automating approvals

Learn how KeepCup streamlined financial processes to see clearly across complex global operations.

KeepCup started as a solution to a problem. Despite millions of disposable cups being sent to landfill every minute, there was no practical alternative. With no options available to resell, the business saw the opportunity to design and make its own. KeepCup designed and manufactured the world’s first barista standard reusable cup. Almost ten years and more than eight million KeepCup converts later, billions of disposable cups have been diverted from landfill. KeepCups are now sold in 65 countries around the world.

Employees

Xero

Accounting Platform

Retail

Industry

Melbourne, Australia

Location

KeepCup was developed as the solution to a big problem – a waste one. It’s estimated that Australians use one billion disposable coffee cups each year, with almost all (90%) ending up in landfill.

Inspired to address this environmental problem, which causes 60,000kg of plastic waste every year, Abigail Forsyth founded KeepCup in 2009. The business designed and manufactured the world’s first reusable coffee cup. Since then, the brand has become so synonymous with this style of cup that ‘keepcup’ is used as the generic term by many Australians and others across the globe.

KeepCup now operates across Australia, the UK and USA, and has sold more than 8 million cups to customers from more than 65 countries, diverting billions of disposable coffee cups from landfill.

When evolution means complexity

COVID-19 changed a lot for KeepCup. Initially a ‘very offline’ business, the pandemic impacted not just the business’ operations but consumer behaviours. “A lot of our business was through cafes and that all dried up in the pandemic,” says Abigail Forsyth, CEO and co-founder of KeepCup. “Not only did we lose that whole channel of selling the product, but the promotion of reuse and what it meant changed. That's when we flipped to becoming more of a lifestyle brand.”

Since then, KeepCup has grown its product range, offering reusable mugs, travel bowls and even the option to design your own cup. While this has brought new revenue, opportunities and happy customers, it also added extra complexity to the business’ operations, especially since pivoting to sell more online.
Without the right systems and processes in place, this led to errors and issues slipping through the cracks. Incoming bills were meant to go through an email-based approval process, but sometimes this would get skipped and operations wouldn’t have visibility over what was quoted vs what was paid.

“We'd overpay for certain things or were misinvoiced and there was no cross-checking happening,” says Alex Andreou, Finance and Operations Manager at KeepCup. “Our team is very busy and the last thing they think about is paying bills. We might get an email at 11.30pm saying ‘this needs to be paid by tomorrow’.”

This lack of consistent approval has huge flow-on effects. “There'd be duplicate payments, or sometimes no payment and all of a sudden we’d get an email warning our account was going to be suspended,” says Andreou.

A new finance tech stack

In November 2024, the team began building a new tech stack to streamline financial operations. This started with ApprovalMax sitting separate from the team’s existing financial system, NAV, but has since switched over to Xero.

Now, incoming invoices are automatically pulled into the approval workflow through ApprovalMax Capture, go through the correct sign off then flow straight into Xero once approved.

This automation has made a big difference for finance and the broader business. “Our operations are very complex. ApprovalMax and these new tech systems are helping streamline and make this much easier for us,” says Andreou.

The business has a lot of moving pieces; 1,000 pieces of a SKU might get ordered first, then later revised to only 700. Sometimes, a PO or bill won’t reflect this change – but now the team no longer has to dig through countless emails if there’s an issue with an invoice. They simply check ApprovalMax. Given the team processes around 300 invoices a month, the benefits add up fast.

Visibility, business-wide

With ApprovalMax, the team has greater visibility over upcoming bills that need to be paid. This allows them to better plan for and manage cash flow, without the surprises, along with having better data in Xero for forecasting.

Time savings

The finance team saves over a week every month that was previously spent manually entering data and chasing up approvals, freeing up time to focus on higher level tasks.

Greater accuracy

Each and every incoming invoice now goes through the right steps before it goes into the system. Not only does this mean all amounts are correct, it gives the team a more accurate view of spend and cash flow to make better business decisions.

Shared responsibility among the broader team

With a concrete approval process, the team – beyond finance – now holds more responsibility for checking invoices and ensuring accuracy of payments.

Approval Automation

Streamline your approval processes with automated workflows.

Budget checking

Get a real-time overview of budgets during approvals.

Bill-to-PO matching

Easily match bills to purchase orders for accurate record-keeping.

Audit trails

Track all approval activity at any time for greater transparency and compliance.

Integration with any OCR

Pair ApprovalMax with any OCR tool to save time and reduce errors.

When evolution means complexity

A new finance tech stack

Processes that keep the business running