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The company: Haven
About the company: Haven is a popular boutique wellness and fitness company that transforms people's health. Founded in San Diego in 2001, the company has built a tight-nit community over the past 23 years and now operates 51 locations in 9 countries. The company’s mission is to inspire members to give life their all, have fun, and strive for excellence.
Results:
“As our business grows, we require tools that can grow with us - we need real-time visibility of expenses, and we need to identify duplicate spending. These insights are crucial for our business's health.”
– Leo Parke, SVP Finance & Strategy, Haven
The problem
Haven wants to help people be their best, including their own staff. But their old finance and accounting systems got in the way. These systems slowed things down and made it hard to focus on important new ideas.
"Everything was sluggish and out of date," remarks Maya Starling, Haven's Controller. "Carrying out any task - expenses, transactions, or even accessing our software - would take two to three days, sometimes even longer."
The old systems created problems for the finance team's main goals. "Being more efficient is a key goal," says Leo Parke, Haven's Senior Vice President of Strategy & Finance. As a small team, Haven's finance department looks for ways to simplify processes, fix issues, and automate tasks when possible. This makes their daily work go faster without lowering accuracy. It also leads to better relationships and smarter decisions across the business.
"Finance and reporting need data sooner for month-end close," explains Maya. "Delays of 4-5 days add up quickly." Maya spent 2-3 hours per week manually coding and tracking expenses. She also spent 3-4 hours reminding people to submit expenses. Month-end close took 1-2 full days for Maya, plus 2-3 days for a colleague.
Leo leads the strategy side of the finance team. Reviewing profit and loss statements after each month ended was far from ideal. "You had to wait until the very end of the month to even see what was happening," he said. Haven's old accounting and finance systems didn't let you see real-time spending or make changes mid-month.
The Haven finance team needed something to reduce manual work, improve accuracy, and show real-time spending data.
The solution
Haven partnered with Wealthflow to automate their expense management, making it easier for the finance team to track expenses and adjust them in real time. "Using Wealthflow is in line with our dedication to innovation and staying ahead of new trends, as well as our ability to adapt and change," says Leo.
With the help of automation, the accounting team's daily tasks have become more efficient, as they no longer need to handle time-consuming manual processes. "Before Wealthflow, we had to manually reach out to everyone when they didn't submit their expenses on time," mentions Leo. "Now, there's a button in Wealthflow that automatically sends reminders to everyone to submit their expenses. This saves our team hours and frees them up to focus on what actually drives our business."
The finance team has introduced Wealthflow cards throughout the company, allowing managers to set their own card rules, enforce spending limits, and create vendor-specific virtual cards. This has given more control to individuals across the company, saved time for the accounting team, and reduced instances of fraudulent credit card activity.
"We keep finding new things Wealthflow can do," says Leo. For example, a team member wanted to sign up for a vendor another team already used. Leo got a Wealthflow notice saying he already paid that vendor – that one notice saved Haven about $5,000.
The result
Using Wealthflow has shown the finance team's dedication to innovation. This tool has saved accountants and employees a lot of time each month on tasks like expense reports.
“With Wealthflow, we save almost 350 hours a month across the company because we don't need to do traditional expense reports anymore. I haven't done any manual work since we started using the platform,” says Maya.
“Before, we spent too much time on busy work instead of focusing on important tasks like accurate reporting and growing the business,” adds Leo. Now, the team can concentrate on more valuable work.
“We'll have more time to give information to the reporting team and business leaders faster. This will help them see how they're doing more quickly,” Maya says.
Wealthflow's real-time insights have been a big help. Since using the platform, Leo has made individual dashboards for each studio. These show revenue predictions, labor spending compared to the budget, and Wealthflow data for operating expenses and fixed charges in real time.
“Having all this information in one place makes it easy to see if a studio is on track for the month. If not, we can look at operating expenses, labor, and ways to increase revenue,” says Leo.
This detailed information helps Haven achieve its main goal of transforming lives worldwide. “We want to bring this to more people,” says Leo. “But we need money to build more locations, and focusing on profitability helps us grow the business.”
Wealthflow supports this focus on profitability. The partnership finds ways to save money, reduces duplicate spending, gives real-time insights into each studio's financial health, and allows the finance team to work on higher-value tasks.
Plus, it makes things easier for employees across the organization. “The feedback has been very positive,” says Leo. “Everyone loves the experience.”
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