Client: Silver Fox Café
Industry: hospitality (café), around 10 part-time staff
Work provided: bookkeeping, alongside the VAT, payroll, tax and year-end accounts MBS already handled
The Problem: Bookkeeping Was Eating Up Time
Running a busy café means juggling staff, customers, suppliers and service. Silver Fox Café already used MBS for VAT, tax, payroll and annual accounts, but the bookkeeping was still being done manually in-house — and it had become a major time drain.
“We were spending 7 to 8 hours a week on it. It just took forever. And it wasn’t even being done properly.”
With no in-house bookkeeper and no appetite to hire one, the owners had been passing the task between themselves and their team. Mistakes were common and staff weren't trained for it.
“My wife would sometimes step in, but it was a sore point. It’s not either of our strong suits, and it was taking time away from what we’re actually good at — running the café.”
What MBS Did
We took the bookkeeping on as part of the café's finance function with MBS, and designed a process around automation and review:
- Automation rules set up for the café's VAT complexity, such as different VAT rates within a single purchase or sales invoice
- A bookkeeping flow that runs daily, rather than weekly or monthly
- Integration with the café's existing set-up, so the whole finance function sat with MBS
Over a few weeks our team, including Jason and Alysa, configured how the café's transactions should be treated and set out when items needed to be referred to a person for review.
The technology does the repetitive processing. Our team remains responsible for reviewing the results and getting the accounting right — the approach we describe in AI bookkeeping: what it can do — and what it can’t.
What Changed
- The owners' bookkeeping time fell from around 8 hours a week to about 30 minutes
- Far fewer errors and queries from the accounting team
- The books are updated daily rather than once a month
“It’s just great not having the headache anymore. We’re not wasting staff time, it’s not costing loads, and we can focus on actually running the café.”
“We had a chaotic ‘have-a-go’ system before. Now it’s organised, accurate and always up to date.”
Find out more about our bookkeeping and finance service.