"Since we started using Arthur Online in 2015 we have achieved a 46% increase in clients"

Tell us about your business

Apax was established in June 2010. We are a non-profit social housing enterprise, providing supported living and housing services for vulnerable individuals who suffer from mental health, have experienced social exclusion or homelessness.

What are your biggest operational challenges?

Accounting

We were originally using Xero to manage and organise our income streams. This posed a challenge; instead of having a centralised system for all income streams on one client account, we had multiple different accounts per income stream. For example, there was one account for service charges, another for housing benefits, etc.

Document management

Managing many printed documents was becoming increasingly challenging as our business grew. Paper information is harder to retrieve, share, and is generally less secure. The lack of a centralied system for our documents storage and management meant our team wasted time searching for them.

Maintenance procedures

We used to receive many phone calls from our tenants who were reporting multiple issues at a time. Our maintenance reporting system consisted of time-consuming manual processes such as spreadsheets and a constant exchange if emails between tenants, contractors and members of our management team. These emails were often lost or simply missed. This caused delays and miscommunication, which wasted time and caused hassle for both the tenants and the contractors.

How has Arthur Online helped you overcome these challenges?

Accounting

The integration between Arthur Online and Xero means that we are now able to map all our client accounts to Xero, all our revenue is now organised per client. We now have access to centralised tenant accounts on Xero where all income streams are clearly organised, making it easier to keep track of arrears and any outstanding invoices.

Document management

Arthur Online allows for documents to be stored on the cloud. Files can be easily stored against a specific record, which saves time looking for the right documents. Having a centralised system for all documents greatly improved the quality and accessibility of data available to managers.

Maintenance management

Arthur Online enabled us to organise our workorders with tags and due dates. As soon as an issue is raised, we can monitor progress and automatically keep the relevant people up to date. Contractors can be invited to the workorder, with easy access to all the information they need to get the job done swiftly and efficiently.

How did you find the on-boarding process?

We found Arthur Online very intuitive and it only took us one week to familiarise ourselves with the functionality of the system. The dashboard is laid out in a user-friendly way, so we didn’t feel the need to seek any initial support with the basic set-up steps.

Arthur Online collaborated with our accountants, Carpenter Box, to help us set-up the integration between Arthur Online and Xero.

What do you think of our ongoing customer support?

We are very pleased with the ongoing customer support we have been receiving since we came on-board in 2015. The Arthur Online team are always ready to go the extra mile to support our management team and accountants.

Almost all issues can be easily dealt with using the Arthur Online live chat service, and we even have a few members of the Arthur Online team on our private Asana board to help us address our issues in a more systematic way.

How much has your business grown since you started using Arthur Online?

We have achieved a 46% increase in clients since we started using Arthur Online.

How much time has Arthur Online saved you?

Daily, at least 1 to 2 hours. With its powerful automation, Arthur Online has helped us formalise and speed up processes and communications at all stages of the tenancy journey. The ongoing support we are constantly receiving enables our team to clear off any blockers fast and efficiently, whether at a technical or an operational level.