Client Corner: Green Warehouse | using Xero to automate the key processes

Green Warehouse FilwoodGreen Warehouse was founded by Will Hayes over a decade ago, with a focus on producing eco-friendly and recyclable products. But the turning point for their success came with the creation of their ‘uBin’ product, a recycling bin that is itself made from recycled plastic – a design that won them a Best Recycled Product award in 2013.

We’ve been working with Green Warehouse since 2006, helping them to move over to Xero and to start feeling the real benefits of the cloud way of managing their finances.

 

Efficiency through automation in Xero

One of our key mottos here at Kinder Pocock is ‘If you can automate it, automate it’. And it was this desire to look for efficiencies, streamlining and potential for automation that led to our most recent project with Will and the team at Green Warehouse.

With a busy workload and a small team, Will was keen for us to audit their existing business processes and to look for ways to improve these systems. They already had Xero in place doing the accounting basics, and that allowed us to start suggesting some meaningful changes, but Will was also keen for this to be a face-to-face business relationship, as he explains:

“We wanted Sharon to physically see our office and how things are done, to give us peace of mind that we are doing all our accounting practices correctly. You see the accounts in Xero but it’s the first time since we are founded that an accountant would come in and check things over. That was my primary goal – a boots-on-the-ground ‘genchi genbutsu’ assessment.”

For those of you without the Japanese skills, ‘genchi genbutsu’ means ‘go and see’ and is a key principle of the Toyota Production System – a term we’ll be using more when visiting clients!

As part of the review and update process, we’ve helped Green Warehouse by: 
  • Auditing their processes and highlighting the opportunities for improvements
  • Automating areas like recurring invoices and basic bookkeeping etc. to save time
  • Integrating GoCardless and Chaser to automate payment collection and credit control
  • Encouraged them to look deeper into the recent functionality of Xero
  • Helped them use Xero quotes with customers, rather than relying on draft invoices
  • Suggesting the use of Google Forms for doing credit references
  • Expanded the depth and detail of their Xero numbers and reporting
  • Had regular meetings with the team to suggest positive actions they can take.
If you’d like a Systems Audit please get in touch to discuss and lock in!

Thank you for reading!

Sharon