Open Banking vs Wallet: How Coach Services Decided on the Best Software for Bulk Payments

Coach Services is an independently run public transport operator serving the Norfolk area. With around 70 staff and a fleet of buses and coaches, they provide essential travel for local authorities and the general public.

Rob Crawford stepped into the finance role ten years ago, taking charge of bookkeeping, payroll, and compliance.

Rob quickly identified legacy processes that were holding the business back. The team's hours used to be worked out on spreadsheets and entered into desktop payroll software. He moved the company to online timesheets, Xero for accounting and payroll, and the final step was to automate their payouts.

Wasting time on spreadsheets and manual BACS payments

Coach Services' biggest challenge was managing payroll deadlines, made worse by the cumbersome process of making manual BACS payments:

"Every month, I'd manually type BACS payments in the bank, one line at a time. Then in 2020, we started processing both a weekly and four-weekly payroll, so I had to push these payments out every 7 days. It made the process even more time-consuming."

Paying a team of 70 was no easy feat, especially when Rob needed to manually verify that each team member was being paid the correct amount.

"I would add 70 lines of BACS payments into a spreadsheet, and if it was out by 1p, I had to go back and find the error. That's where I'd spend the time. I'd find where it was out, fix the 1p, and there was always the chance it would put the total out again."

Putting multiple bulk payment solutions to the test

When Coach Services moved to Xero, Rob would often search the Xero app store for solutions to various processes. Reckoning he's tried about 80% of the apps at some point, Rob was always curious about how they could help his business.

Now, Coach Services has three key Xero apps in its tech stack, including Telleroo. Though Telleroo wasn't the only payment provider put to the test.

"A lot of payment apps use open banking, so they link to your bank account, which takes the money out line by line. If I do that, then I have to pay the bank to take payments out as well. Whereas with Telleroo, I fund my account with one lump sum, and that top-up counts as just one transaction in my bank. Recently, I tested Xero's own pay feature, as they give you some payments for free each month. But again, it does it line by line, meaning I then pay 30p per transaction with my bank."

With Telleroo, you get an FCA-protected e-money account that you top up with funds. When you connect Telleroo to Xero, we sync transactions back for easy reconciliation. You can send multiple payments in a batch back to Xero as a single transaction, so you can reconcile hundreds of payments in one click. This was one of the benefits that prompted Rob to also start sending supplier payments through Telleroo:

"It's cost-effective for us. Telleroo is just a monthly fee, whereas everybody else seems to have a pricing structure that is either a percentage or a fee per transaction. I don't have to worry about how much I'm spending, and how many transactions I'm putting through each month."

An easy way to pay 70 bus and coach team members

Coach Services uses Xero Payroll and can sync payroll payments to Telleroo with a click of a button. A process that Rob says has cut down time massively:

"God knows how much time it's saved for us. Telleroo has completely removed any manual processes and data entry. Plus, with most banks you have to wait a day or two to see payments on your reconciliation list, but with Telleroo that's really quick."

Telleroo has also enabled Rob to let other people in the team help with payroll, without giving them access to the business bank account through a lengthy mandate process. Instead, Rob can top up the Telleroo account, and his team can set up payments from within the platform:

"Bank mandates can take weeks or even months. Now, no one gets access to our main bank account. I drop money into Telleroo instead. So for security, especially with Telleroo's approval process, it makes payroll a lot easier."

Telleroo also has a mobile app, so you can view, approve and fund pay runs from your phone. With other team members creating payroll payments, Rob says this has helped him to keep track of payments:

"I use the app as an overview, to see what's going on and keep an eye on payments. It's helpful to know if the account needs more money, and I can then top up. If you use Xero, or any other payroll software that integrates, it would be foolish not to consider using Telleroo."

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