How Vine Recruitment Solutions reclaimed their Thursday evenings by simplifying healthcare contractor and staff payments

Vine Recruitment Solutions specialises in recruiting nurses, healthcare professionals, and support workers, as well as providing support for private clients. Their high-quality service strives to help clients live as fully, and independently, as possible.

Terence Kavuru, Director at Vine, shares the challenges he faced with manual payments and explains how Telleroo has been 'a godsend' for managing payroll, contractor, and supplier payments.

Staying up until midnight to process manual payments

Vine Recruitment Solutions operates in a fast-moving industry where cash flow is critical. Terence manages a wide team, including both staff and contractors. Some work onsite in residential homes, others are part of the agency serving care homes and supported living facilities, plus a few office-based employees. All need to be paid accurately and on time.

Depending on their role, staff and contractors are paid on different schedules, ranging from weekly to every four weeks. This created a battle against the clock, especially for weekly payroll.

Terence would send out payslips for weekly payroll on Tuesday afternoons, in case team members queried or wanted to amend hours they'd worked the week before.

Always wanting to get these amends 'done and dusted' before payments are sent out, it would mean Terence waited to create payments until Thursday night, he explains:

"It was hard work, because I was also capturing data. I was manually checking the payroll schedule and typing payments into the bank. It was a lot, making sure I had everything set up properly, I needed to make sure it was correct. Even if I scheduled payments via the bank, I'd stay up to midnight just to make sure all the payments were sent."

For the first five years of his business, Terence would do this every week. Something which he says doesn't always seem like a problem when you first start out.

"When you start a business, and have 1, 2, 3 or even 7 employees, you think this is just how I do it. But the biggest issue comes when you take a holiday, you still need to do payroll."

Terence had booked a holiday to the Maldives, taking two weeks away from the business. Being on an island, Terence anticipated there was 'a good chance' that he 'wouldn't have access to anything' and began to look at how he could cover his absence.

Looking for an easier way to pay healthcare workers

At the time, Terence had a team member helping to process payroll, after which they would pass it on to him to create the payments in Barclays Bank. They contacted Barclays to give the team member access to Vine's account to send payments whilst Terence was away. An option that quickly became complicated, Terence explains:

"Our local branch had closed, and we would have both had to travel to Oxford together to give her access. I thought there had to be a better way, and we looked for an alternative solution to the bank together."

The search led to discovering Telleroo, and after booking a quick demo with the team, Terence was most impressed by its 'user-friendly' setup. It was both easy for his colleague to create payments and for him to top up the account.

Reclaiming Thursday evenings and having peace of mind

You can connect your Telleroo account to accounting, payroll, and expense apps, or connect directly to the Telleroo API. Vine Recruitment Solutions connected their Xero account.

As a result, Terence no longer needs to manually enter payments. "I don't have to think twice about it," he says. With Xero Payroll syncing to Telleroo at the click of a button, it has completely transformed the way he manages payroll payments:

"I can run payroll, send out the payslips, and set up the payments straight away, ready for Friday. I then add the funds, so it's good to go. It's a good system which has brought in a lot of payroll efficiency."

Telleroo sends payments 24/7, even on bank holidays. Faster payments mean recipients typically receive funds in just a couple of minutes. This process has stopped Terence from having to stay up until midnight. Instead, he’s using the mobile app 'all the time' to check payroll:

"Every Friday morning, that's the first thing I check, that payroll is green and paid. And for the approvals, the app is so easy, it's faster than the desktop."

And now, when he's taking annual leave, Terence just needs 'one hour' to process payroll and set up the payments ahead of time. After funding the account, he can 'sit back' and 'doesn't have to worry'.

Overall, the peace of mind, time saving and simplicity are why Terence doesn't think he could 'ever go back' to using the bank:

"I've done it the difficult way, which means I can appreciate Telleroo. It was 5 years of hard Thursday nights, and now I can sleep better."

A complete solution to manage and audit all outbound payments

After finding success using Telleroo for payroll and contractor payments, Terence now uses Telleroo for supplier bills too. Happy that it can all be managed 'in one place', Telleroo provides a way to manage every aspect of payroll and accounts payable. A benefit that has also improved the accounting for Vine Recruitment Solutions:

"Paying 36 employees used to mean 36 separate transactions for my accountant to reconcile. With Telleroo, it’s just one clean transaction. If my accountant needs to audit or check anything, I can simply share a Telleroo account statement, which also covers our quarterly cost of sale reports. As every payment is handled in one place with Telleroo. It's a much smarter way of doing it."

And what would Terence say to companies considering using Telleroo?

"I've never even looked at how much I pay Telleroo, because it's value for money in my business. A paid service that's made my life easier. There's nothing more I'd ask of Telleroo, I definitely recommend it."

‍🚀 Sign up to Telleroo today and send healthcare payments easily 🚀