How Catapult cut expense reconciliation from 3 minutes a transaction to 30 seconds

Background

Catapult is an international event management company with a busy finance team processing a high volume of employee expenses every month across multiple projects. With expenses spanning a wide range of categories, VAT treatments and project codes, reconciliation between Pleo and Xero had become a significant drain on finance resources.

The Problem

• Around 1,100 Pleo transactions a month, each requiring manual intervention before it could be reconciled in Xero.
• Every transaction went through the same multi-step "split and delete" process: rename the contact, create a new line with the correct item code, apply the correct VAT treatment, allocate to the correct project, delete the original line, reconcile.
• VAT treatment varied by category, supplier location and whether the spend was a good or a service, leaving room for error.
• The process consumed 50 hours a month of external bookkeeper time and 10 hours of the Head of Finance's time.
• Miscoded VAT, wrong project allocations and incorrect account codes were only caught on review.

The Solution

Numra built a Pleo-to-Xero reconciliation agent that runs in the background. Adrienne's process in Pleo is unchanged; Numra handles everything after export:

• Scheduled collection of exported Pleo expenses, every 10 minutes.
• Each expense transformed to Catapult's reporting requirements: correct supplier, project, VAT treatment, receipt attached, reference formatted consistently.
• Expenses delivered into Xero pre-filled and ready to reconcile. The split-and-delete process is gone.
• Export status visible in the Numra platform so the team can confirm every batch has processed.

The Results

• Each transaction is in Xero, coded and ready to reconcile within 30 seconds of export. Previously 2 to 3 minutes of manual rework each.
• 13,000 transactions a year handled with no manual transformation.
• 50 hours a month of external bookkeeper time removed. 10 hours a month of the Head of Finance's time returned.
• 90% reduction in reconciliation time.
• Payback in four months.