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Case study

Xtreme Productivity

Learn how not-for-profit consultancy Xtreme Productivity streamlines financial processes internally and for clients.

Xtreme Productivity provides innovative digital and finance solutions for not-for-profit organisations. The team is passionate about using technology to help make the world a better place, while keeping it affordable. Xtreme Productivity's vision is to make technology an enabler for all organisations.

Employees

Xero

Accounting Platform

Retail

Industry

Melbourne, Australia

Location

The biggest joy for us is when the penny drops [for clients] that they can use their time for something other than running a piece of paper around to get signatures. It's very satisfying. That’s the biggest thing I love about ApprovalMax, is enabling our clients to move away from paper.

Sonja Binks

GM, Finance Operations at Xtreme Productivity

Founded in 2011, Xtreme Productivity was born after its founder, Christi Moller, saw far too many charities left behind by technology. Too many were spending time and money on systems that simply didn’t work for them, taking those resources away from their vision.

Since then the firm has expanded and now operates across Australia, Canada and New Zealand. Xtreme Productivity works with a broad range of not-for-profits, from sports organisations to charities and incorporated societies, offering bespoke solutions for finance and technology.

“We don’t rinse and repeat – we understand our client’s core business functionality and provide the best solution, for anything from CRM, marketing, sales, accounting software or approvals,” says Binks. “We want to be our clients’ trusted partners for the long term so they can focus on what matters most.”

A better tool for employee expenses

As a growing firm, Xtreme Productivity manages a team of more than 60 people across Australia, New Zealand, Canada and India. In 2016, the firm was looking for a better way to manage employee expenses; it tried Dext and Xero Expenses, but neither had an approval matrix. Then, at Xerocon, the team stumbled across ApprovalMax.

“We started with a trial and just went from there. We use it to submit and approve employee reimbursements,” says Binks. “The approval matrix is especially important since we have staff all over the world.”

After using it internally, the team realised ApprovalMax would have big benefits for its clients too. “Anything that we recommend to our clients we test and use ourselves,” says Binks.

In 2020, the business built out a separate finance division, in addition to its IT consultancy services. This unlocked new opportunities to support clients with their finance technology and processes, including through tools like ApprovalMax.

Bringing the benefits to clients

With ApprovalMax, Xtreme Productivity helps its not-for-profit clients better manage a range of financial processes, saving time and resources. One of the main uses is for bill approvals, which the firm uses for almost all clients with ApprovalMax.

“A lot of our clients have several credit cards. They manage these manually, which is a pain,” says Binks. “With ApprovalMax, a person can buy something on the credit card. They’re in the shop, take a picture and save it as a draft. Then, they submit all the credit card receipts once they’re home, we pick it up and reconcile it – there’s never drama as all the receipts are in there.”

With ApprovalMax, the team can easily keep track of each and every transaction for audit requirements. The built-in audit trail automatically captures all documents submitted for approval, even if they were rejected. “It gives that security for auditors that they can see every transaction coming through, whether it’s been approved or not,” says Binks.

“The auditors like that we just easily give them access to ApprovalMax and Xero to see everything.” Importantly, all of this happens without paper – a big challenge for not-for-profits.

Approvals from anywhere

The firm manages its own expenses and approvals from anywhere using the ApprovalMax mobile app, as well as helping clients tap into this functionality.

Time savings

The team saves hours for its clients, from speeding up processes and approvals; one client saves 2+ hours for each batch payment approval through ApprovalMax.

Visibility for those who need it

From the Watcher feature, which allows people to see documents without being an approver, to built-in audit trails, Xtreme Productivity gives its clients the visibility they need over financial processes.

Paper-free processes

With ApprovalMax, Xtreme Productivity moves its clients from manual, paper-based processes to fully digitised, automated workflows, without having to hit ‘print’.

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.

A better tool for employee expenses

Bringing the benefits to clients

Making it matter