The integrated charity tech stack: How Forces Employment Charity uses Xero, Employment Hero, ExpenseIn and Telleroo to power their finance function

Forces Employment Charity is a military charity dedicated to helping service leavers and veterans successfully transition back into civilian life and find meaningful employment. Founded in 1885, Forces Employment Charity has offices nationwide, supporting over 23,000 ex-forces personnel and their families in 2025 alone.

Daniel Brook, Head of Finance, is part of a lean team of four responsible for managing salary and expense payments for 190 staff, as well as managing the charity’s invoice payments. Here's how Forces Employment left behind clunky, error-prone processes and found a faster, smoother way to run payments with Telleroo.

Struggling with banking portals and manual payment errors

Before Telleroo, the team relied on their bank account to process payments. With over 500 payments a month being entered manually, the process was slow and repetitive. One staff salary run would take over an hour to create in the bank, Daniel says:

"When we were setting up payments in our bank, it would often time out halfway through, and you'd have to start all over again. There were even times you'd finish a payment list and the file would corrupt. You'd try to start over, but the bank would hold the payment list as ready to pay, even though it was corrupted. We'd contact the bank, but they'd only speak to a signatory on the account. This was our Chief Exec, who we'd have to interrupt and ask to phone the bank on our behalf."

Even after a payment run was created, the manual work wasn't over. The team would export a report from the bank and cross-check it against their logged amounts to verify everything was correct. But manually copying and pasting in net pay for 190 staff meant the process was always vulnerable to human error. Daniel explains:

"Of course, with so many payments, we'd never get all exactly correct, so it was just finding out what the variance was. There were occasional errors, including one time where two people's names were confused, so they almost got each other's salary."

Supplier pay runs were just as tedious. Their bank saved every past recipient in one giant, alphabetical list, forcing the team to click through endless screens to find the right supplier. Daniel asked for a payment file template, which the bank charged to the charity.

"The template worked for salaries and expenses, but not suppliers. It also retained the information from what you last paid the supplier. If you cast a distracted eye, you'd think it was populated and could miss something. You had to make sure to input the new invoice number and payable amount. It was still very slow."

Moving to integrated cloud-based accounting and payroll solutions

Back in 2016, Forces Employment Charity were still relying on stacks of paperwork and spreadsheets, leaving them little choice but to stick with their bank for payments. That all changed when Daniel and the team made the move to Xero for accounting, Employment Hero for payroll, and ExpenseIn for staff expenses, opening the door to exploring better ways to manage the charity's payments.

"We tried to look for software that would do it all, but there wasn't a one-size solution out there. Those kinds of systems were very good at their central function, but quite weak in all the other areas they promised. That led us to go for the very best of each software, keeping accounting, payroll and expenses separate, and it turned out to be the most cost effective route."

With their new tech stack in place, a new challenge quickly emerged around how to easily transfer pending payments from these separate systems directly to the bank ready to be paid.

Avoiding the headache of moving banks as a charity

Whilst Daniel and his team considered switching banks, they realised it would be a major headache for very little reward. Between consulting trustees, interviewing top banks, and getting board approval, the transition would have been a painfully slow and complex process, and the payoff wouldn’t have been worth it.

"When you look at what all the different banks have to offer, they all operate pretty much in the same clunky way. At best, we could have gotten rid of the timeout issues. But we'd have faced the same issue of getting payment information from the different systems to the bank. There is no traditional banking substitute that allows you to do this in a seamless way for large numbers of payments."

Searching for a better solution, Daniel explored dedicated payment software options and discovered Telleroo. Crucially, the platform integrated directly with their entire tech stack: Xero, Employment Hero, and ExpenseIn.

Signing up for Telleroo took just a few minutes, and the Telleroo team swiftly guided Forces Employment Charity through the onboarding process, a far faster alternative to switching banks. Daniel and the team were up and running on Telleroo in just 72 hours.

After years of wanting to switch banks, moving their payments process to Telleroo's e-money account has made that a much lower priority.

"Telleroo saved us from our bank account. Our funders pay their grants into our bank account, and we've just set up larger standing orders to go into Telleroo. So we're kind of bypassing the bank. Moving banks is now on the back burner, because we don't use the bank anymore to send payments."

Saving hours every month with a central hub for charity payments

Now, Daniel and his team can sync payment information from Xero, Employment Hero, and ExpenseIn to Telleroo in just a few clicks, saving them hours every month.

"Telleroo is a central plexus that links them all. The team feeds in what's due to send, and Telleroo handles everything on the payments side. It's really useful. Having them all connected makes it a very quick process; it’s just clicking a button and off it goes, ready to be approved in Telleroo. 190 salary payments now go through in the blink of an eye with Telleroo."

Supplier pay runs are created and organised for different Directors, as they are budget holders for divisions within the charity. In Telleroo, the team name supplier pay runs according to the Director's initials and sends for approval. An improvement to their banking portal:

"Our bank required two approvers if the payment was over £1000, whereas with Telleroo it can go to just the specific budget holder. They can see the entire run of payments, and the actual original bills that we're asking them to approve. Invoices are what the Directors want to see, and they can just click an icon to see the Xero invoice without leaving Telleroo. It took just two minutes to show them how to use Telleroo and they've never asked again, as it's very intuitive."

Robust security measures for funds protection

In both Employment Hero and ExpenseIn, Forces Employment Charity's staff have access to their own employee portals. This allows them to log in and update their bank account details independently, without needing to contact Daniel and his team. Staff bank account details are automatically synced directly into Telleroo when a pay run is created.

"It's great for accuracy. As staff account details go straight from the external system into Telleroo, we're not involved and details are only updated once. It's very useful as we don't need to duplicate that information and check we've entered it correctly, but Telleroo still shows us when account details have been updated."

Telleroo also automatically verifies bank details against the account name, flagging results as a Full Match, Partial Match, or No Match. It's a powerful security measure that helps protect charity funds from fraud and errors.

"Telleroo immediately flags any mismatches, which is what I always look for. It's really user-friendly, showing directly in the pay run. It really helps us with compliance and security, and gives us real reassurance, because there are times when a name doesn't quite match, so having that confirmation is great."

Making external charity audits easy

With Telleroo, Daniel can easily access and export a complete audit history, providing a clear record of who approved each payment, when it was sent, and to whom.

"Telleroo's audit trail is really important. As we're a charity, we're obligated to be externally audited, and that's something auditors look at: who has the authority to pay bills and are we following approval flows. The audit trail in Telleroo is shown in a much more accessible way than the bank has ever provided."

The team also saves time preparing for audits thanks to automatic bank reconciliation. By connecting their Xero account to Telleroo, Forces Employment Charity's books are always kept in sync. Paid invoices are automatically posted back to Xero, so they can match hundreds of invoices in just a single click.

"Before Telleroo, we'd have to manually import a long list of transactions from the bank into Xero and match them manually. The bank recs are now easier because everything that happens in Telleroo now automatically comes through into Xero. So it's just a case of confirming the matches Telleroo has already created."

A payments software recommended for charities

After nearly three years of using Telleroo, what kind of impact has it had on Forces Employment Charity?

"Increased assurance, transparency and efficiency. Telleroo has removed a lot of manual and repetitive tasks, with incredibly low risk of errors. I think the measure of a really good cloud-based system is one that you never really even need to think about. Telleroo just works, it does what it's supposed to do and without any trouble. We couldn't imagine the process without Telleroo. I highly recommend it."