Discover how New West End Company cut admin time and streamlined expense management across London’s iconic shopping streets with our Expense Cards and Sage 200 integration.
New West End Company manages three of London’s most iconic shopping streets: Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street. From security and cleansing to marketing campaigns, business insights and the famous Christmas lights, the organisation coordinates everything that keeps these streets running smoothly.
With the team managing such a wide remit, efficiency is essential. Staff across departments regularly need to make purchases, from office supplies, business entertainments and stationery to international subscriptions for marketing tools.
The company uses corporate cards from a major bank, but these are restricted to senior leadership. This creates bottlenecks when other team members needed to make purchases, particularly when cardholders are on leave.
We had a policy that people shouldn't be using the cards when somebody's on holiday, which made it restrictive to use cards. Ultimately, it's their responsibility to make sure that everything is accounted for, receipts are there and all the costs have been approved.
The corporate cards also come with administrative headaches. Card management was cumbersome: increasing limits, cancelling cards, or reissuing lost cards all involved paperwork and delays. When the CEO’s replacement card went missing in the post, it took a month to resolve because the bank wouldn’t send it via signed delivery until it had been lost three times.
To solve the issue, New West End initially used a standalone prepaid card for more flexibility but hit a critical problem: there was no integration with their accounting software, Sage 200. The assistant financial accountant had to download transactions from the provider, prepare a CSV file, then manually import and tag everything in Sage.
“Our process was completely manual and was susceptible to human error,” says Deepti. The team needed a solution that would give staff the flexibility to make purchases whilst maintaining proper controls and integrating seamlessly with their existing systems.
New West End was already using Webexpenses for expense processing when they learned about Webexpenses Expense Cards. As one of the beta customers, they worked closely with the development team to test the product.
Our Expense Cards solved their immediate needs: easy to issue to multiple team members, simple to manage, and native to Webexpenses and fully integrated with Sage 200. Unlike their previous prepaid card provider, there was no manual export-and-import process.
They’ve issued a mix of physical and virtual cards across the team. Physical cards went to staff who regularly meet with members and need to pay for coffees or meals. A virtual card handles recurring international subscriptions for marketing tools.
Our Expense Cards have streamlined operations significantly. Staff can now see transactions in real time and attach receipts as they go, rather than waiting for month-end uploads. This immediacy has allowed New West End to tighten their submission deadlines from the fourth or fifth working day to the second working day of each month.
Because people can see their transactions live, they're putting the receipts in as soon as they see them. They have the whole month to keep adding their receipts and at the end of the month they just have to submit it and get it approved.
The team has been pleased with the support throughout the process. “The development team was really good,” Deepti notes. “When we were starting to use your Expense Cards, we had weekly meetings with them every Friday, to discuss the issues communicated by the wider team and they were very patient with us. They took all the feedback we’d been giving.”
“Definitely, 100%,” she says. “If you use Sage 200, it’s excellent for integration. Very streamlined, smooth process. People are happy with it. I’ve not received any complaints about the Expense Cards at all.”
Want to streamline expense management for your team? Get in touch to find out how our Expense Cards could work for you.
