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Case study

Neighbourgood controls spend across multi-market, multi-entity operations

Learn how Neighbourgood helps grow its communities with simpler, automated approvals across accounts payable.

Neighbourgood is a next-generation property development and management company that exists to create connected spaces where good people

190

Employees

Xero

Accounting Platform

Hospitality & real estate

Industry

Cape Town, South Africa

Location

By using ApprovalMax, we can keep our finger on the pulse and be more proactive instead of reactive. It's intuitive, easy to understand, and not overly complicated. When our administrators or controller look at a supplier invoice, they can simply go back and check if it’s been signed off before pushing it to the bank.

Keldohn Swanepoel

Head of Finance at Neighbourgood

In 2020, Cape Town was filled with empty, under-priced buildings. The global pandemic forced everyone to rethink what home and work really meant – and that was the spark that brought Neighbourgood to light. It started with buying and converting these unused office buildings, hotels and guesthouses into residential buildings with flexible leases for residents.

Two years later, however, the city was busy again, and Neighbourgood shifted direction to a hospitality offering with both short stays and long-term leases that put community at its core. Now, the business offers connected living, co-working spaces, and community events and experiences. Operating with a density model, Neighbourgood has grown to have over 420 keys in the city and expanded to San Francisco in the USA, recently raising capital to grow the business there.

“Instead of staying with a traditional hotel, where you get a functional room for a night, the differentiator when you stay with us is you've got access to our workspaces and community events,” says Keldohn Swanepoel, Head of Finance at Neighbourgood.

“If you want to do free yoga on a rooftop or go to a networking event on a Wednesday, then we have all of that. We’ve got a strong focus on community.”

An evolving business

Neighbourgood needed to upgrade its systems and processes to support this new business model. “It's a lot more intense running hotels than it is running long-term leases. You're constantly turning around rooms and there are a ton of consumables that go with that,” says Swanepoel.

The business had to suddenly order items like coffee, tea, sugar, soap and other small products on the regular that quickly add up. “We were spending so much money across all the buildings in the city,” adds Swanepoel. “In the beginning, there would be cost creep and overspend, things that happen when you're being very reactive.”

To address this, the business recognised its processes and software needed to be changed to manage costs without placing any extra burden on an already stretched finance team. It turned to the team at Iridium to find a new tech stack, including accounting software and a tool to manage approvals with the right level of authority for sign-off, that spoke to each other.

A real good tech stack

In late 2023, Neighbourgood went live with ApprovalMax with the help of Iridium. By connecting it into a tech stack along with Xero and Dext, the team is able to manage complex approvals across 20 entities in both South Africa and the USA.

The ease of use made it quick to get ApprovalMax up and running and see the impact. “It’s quite simple to understand, not overly complicated, and solves a massive problem – cost management,” says Swanepoel.

“We've got 20 companies under our management and I can't be in the detail everywhere. So it’s important to make sure we've got good processes throughout.”

This is especially true as the business focuses on growing its presence in the United States. “Systems and processes are super important when working across multiple timezones. If the US team needs to order a bunch of goods, they can process it in their day, then when we wake up in the morning everything has gone through the right approvals,” says Swanepoel.

With ApprovalMax, Neighbourgood has sophisticated approval workflows set out for all of its entities, that manage everything from OPEX budgets and POs to invoices based on certain criteria. All of this has saved a huge amount of time and increased visibility across spend, leading to fewer unexpected surprises.

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Better spend control

With so many consumables needed for the hotels, it was easy in the past for spending to get out of hand. Now, Neighbourgood has the right framework to stay within budget.

Time savings

With streamlined, automated processes, there’s no longer the back-and-forth to double check approvals or get more information on an expense.

Complex, customisable workflows

The team has the configured approval workflows exactly as it needs, mapping to the business’ delegation of authority to manage responsibility and reduce the risk of unauthorised payments.

Processes that scale with the business

Neighbourgood’s processes can easily scale as it adds new entities across different locations; Iridium’s team simply handles the tech setup and Neighbourgood does the rest.

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.

An evolving business

A real good tech stack

Proactive processes