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You can find exquisite coffee from specialty roasters Perky Blenders across the UK. Whether it's subscriptions delivered to your doorstep, online retailers, or your favourite local coffee spots, hotels, and supermarkets - Perky Blenders has your brew sorted. You can also experience the Perky vibe at five locations in London!
Turning green beans into specialty brews, sending coffee through the post, and running physical shops involves a multitude of payments. So, how does the team skilfully handle payroll and supplier payments?
Since starting Perky Blenders at her kitchen table, Victoria Cozens has taken on many responsibilities as co-founder, which includes managing supplier and payroll payments.
“With a small business, you have to wear all the hats and learn to do everything. Part of that for me included payments. In the beginning, we had one or two suppliers and a couple of employees. We’ve always used Xero, and used to take what needed to be paid in Xero and make payments with the bank manually.”
However, this traditional way of making payments came with its challenges…
“Manual payments are time-consuming and fiddly. From day one it has been really important to get payroll correct, and it’s just the worst feeling if a mistake is made.”
“Plus sometimes suppliers don't realise that they haven’t put their bank details on an invoice. Even yesterday, I received an invoice from someone I know we’ve paid loads of times - but the invoice was missing his bank details. If I’m doing it through the bank, I have to go back to him, waste time and delay the payment to confirm. It seems like such an obvious thing, but people still don't do it because I know we've had this conversation with him before.”
When she became a client of Thrive Accountants, Victoria was introduced to Telleroo. With a tech background, Victoria explored the software, seeking a complementary solution that would evolve alongside them as they expand.
“So obviously starting with the main engine of Xero, we wanted to find applications that would work and integrate with our accounting software. Providers pretty much don't pass our test if they don't integrate with the main platform.”
“I also think the platform and the way it is laid out is just very simple to navigate. I get frustrated if I have some other platform that’s not simple because there's just very little time. You need it to be very self-explanatory and the Telleroo platform itself is just laid out really well.”
“When I find a product that just really works, it excites me because that solves a problem and makes a big difference. I like technology when it works. We've always looked at how to invest in the best software to aid our business in running efficiently and smoothly. Telleroo is part of that.”
“We’ve now grown to a team of fifty, and we have between 50 to 80 suppliers, which is a huge amount to manage. It means we’ve moved from manual payments to an automated payment process and Telleroo enables us to do that process which is fantastic. I was glad to be introduced to it.”
Using Telleroo, Perky Blenders now benefits from a dedicated payment hub and a collaborative approach with her accountants. With two limited businesses under a group business, this allows separate accounts and payments to be made for each entity.
“Incoming invoices will come into our mailbox, and our bookkeepers at Thrive will look at whether invoices are for Perky Blenders Coffee Roasters or Perky Blenders Coffee Bars, which are the shops, and upload them to Xero. Then they'll set the dates for when invoices are due.”
“Every Thursday, I check what needs to be paid. And once I've confirmed the dates of the next pay run, I’ll let Thrive know. I approve the pay run, I can just send the money, press go and it's done. We all go away and have a nice weekend!”
Unlike manual payments, using a bulk payment software provides a safety net that picks up payroll errors, mismatched bank details and more to prevent mistakes. In the case of Perky Blends, with multiple locations and a growing team, it's essential to have an efficient and reliable system in place to ensure payroll payments are timely and accurate.
“The impact of Telleroo on our business has been huge, it's cut down stress. When you're moving large amounts of money around you really don’t want to make mistakes. It’s changed everything. Payroll mistakes have been cut down to pretty much zero. Even if there is a mistake, there’s now a buffer when I look into Telleroo. It’s an additional check, and I can stop something very easily then and there if I need to.”
“Because let's face it, there's always a human element, and as humans, we're not perfect robots. So mistakes do happen. There was one incident on payroll where Telleroo flagged the payee didn’t match the account. It was actually the wrong bank details, some bank details of another member of staff had been duplicated. As it was highlighted, we were able to fix it really quickly. I think the level of security is amazing.”
Perky Blender’s shop staff are paid on an hourly basis. There is a cut-off date towards the end of the month, where payroll is then quickly calculated and processed. This process is made easy with Faster Payments in Telleroo.
“It's saving huge amounts of time. We work on a very tight schedule with payroll, right to the wire. Often we get the bank file at 8am on the day we need to pay, but Telleroo makes all that process really quick. Once we've got it, it's done in the click of a button.”
“I think the impact has not just been at our level, but also for the employees as payments are very fast. As an employee, you want to be able to feel that you're working for a company that is looking after you and cares and makes sure that you get paid on time every month."
“We have a responsibility to everybody working in the Perky family whether that's employees, customers, or suppliers. It's our responsibility to make sure the money is sent at the right time and everything is in order. We're proud to be doing what we do, we’re not only proud of how we deliver really excellent coffee, but also of the services we provide. And that includes getting people paid on time correctly and smoothly.”
To round things off, we asked Victoria what advice she would give to a business owner considering Telleroo?
“It's a no-brainer really. On the wholesale side, we're working with a lot of startups, that for example, might be people opening their new coffee shop. And we network with a lot of businesses of all sorts, even if they're not buying from us.”
“In those situations, we are always championing the fact that we've done the research. We’ve already come across the issues they’re facing and we've solved it with certain technologies and Telleroo most definitely is one of those.”
“People ask how we make sure that payments run well and efficiently. Well, I know the answer because I've been using Telleroo for five years. So that's how we talk to other people and recommend it because it's really working for us.”
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