RSPCA Queensland cuts invoice keying with ProSpend

RSPCA Queensland has introduced ProSpend's expense management, accounts payable automation and Wise virtual cards across its finance operations. The system feeds approved spending data into Pronto Xi.

The change has removed three to four hours of manual invoice keying each day for the Brisbane-based finance team, which supports shelters, hospitals, op shops and retail sites across Queensland.

Before the switch, card reconciliation relied on spreadsheets and email, while invoices approved in a separate tool had to be entered manually into Pronto. Finance staff also spent days each month chasing receipts and checking coding from sites across the state.

RSPCA Queensland runs animal care centres, domestic animal and wildlife hospitals, a wildlife rehabilitation centre, rescue services and inspectorate operations, alongside retail and community services. A team of seven in Brisbane manages the finance function for that network.

Those manual processes had become difficult to sustain because of the charity's geography and transaction volume. Cardholders sent receipts by email, finance downloaded transaction data into spreadsheets, and staff then returned the files for coding, creating repeated follow-up work over missing paperwork.

For corporate cards alone, reconciliation took about four days each month, according to Marianne Grieve, finance systems and operations lead at RSPCA Queensland. Approved invoices also had to be re-keyed into Pronto because the previous approval tool did not connect to the finance system.

"The biggest pain points were time and the risk of error. When everything's manual, you're always introducing risk, and you can't get uniformity across the board," Grieve said.

The charity chose a single system for card spending, expenses and accounts payable, with approved and coded transactions exported into Pronto Xi. That was important because many users are not finance staff and work in shelters and shops across the state.

Under the new process, employees capture receipts in the ProSpend app when they spend, while reminders prompt submissions and coding defaults route costs to the correct accounts. Supplier invoices now arrive in one place, move through approval workflows and are exported to Pronto without re-entry.

Virtual cards were added a few months after the system went live. Finance can issue the cards, set start and end dates, assign daily limits and freeze them when required.

Grieve said adoption among non-finance employees had been quicker than expected.

"What surprised me most was how easily I can teach people to use it, and how quickly they picked it up, especially non-finance people," she said.

One example involved a shelter manager in Bundaberg who needed funds late on a Friday to buy animal feed after reaching the limit on a physical card. Grieve said a virtual card was issued that afternoon so the site could buy supplies before the weekend.

"In our industry, you never know what's going to happen, so getting funds to a regional shelter almost instantly, and being able to cut it off just as fast, is exactly what we need. We're now using them for staff travel too," she said.

RSPCA Queensland said the main gains have come in time and accuracy rather than direct cost savings. Month-end reporting has also improved because more spending is recorded in the correct period, reducing accruals and journal corrections.

Month-end changes

Consolidating cards, expenses and accounts payable on one platform has replaced a mix of spreadsheets, emailed approvals and a disconnected accounts payable tool. The standardised process now works the same way from Brisbane to regional locations.

"Our month-end became far more correct and accurate. More expenses land in the right month, so our accruals are a lot less. It just flows," Grieve said.

RSPCA Queensland also pointed to support work on invoice-reading accuracy, saying it was involved in testing changes designed to improve how the software handles documents.

"They listen to what the customer wants. When we needed the invoice reading to be more precise, they didn't just fix the one thing, they went after the root of the problem and brought us into testing to help teach the system to read for itself," Grieve said.

"Definitely take on ProSpend and work smarter, not harder. Especially if you've got people all over the place, it's the same system whether you're in Brisbane or Townsville," she said.