We first started working with the team at Royal Essence in January 2017 when they had recently started their online business selling ring candles.

For those that don’t know what ring candles are please check out their website: https://www.royalessence.com.au/

At that stage the team consisted of just three people, operating out of a relatively small warehouse in Port Adelaide. I remember the first or second meeting I had with them at Port Adelaide I walked into the warehouse and all I could see was about 20 candles in a warehouse of at least 100 square metres. I knew how much they were turning over at that stage and I could quickly tell that 20 candles in stock wasn’t going to last long.

“Where’s all the stock?” I asked. “We’ve sold out of everything. We’ll make more tonight, and tomorrow that will be sold out. We literally just can’t keep up with demand.”

It was about then I think I knew this was going to be an exciting business to be involved in and we quickly got to working together.

Since that time, we’ve helped manage the back end finances for Royal Essence throughout a number of key phases in their business, all whilst they’ve managed to quadruple their monthly revenue since those early days.

• We helped implement Deputy to assist them manage what was initially a predominantly casual workforce, to what is now a predominantly full-time team.
• We’ve assisted in the implementation and ongoing support of their inventory management system Dear Inventory and its integration with both Shopify and Xero.
• Provided business advice and financial reporting using Xero’s in-built reporting tools and Spotlight Reporting for EOM financial reports.
• Helped to establish financial and departmental budgets to help control operational expenditure and provide better certainty around cash flow.
• Assisted with their change in structure from sole trader to company from a systems & operational perspective.

This is a business with a lot of complexities when it comes to their finances including an extremely high transaction volume, both selling and purchasing in foreign currencies and operating from over 20 different bank accounts (traditional an online e.g. Paypal & Stripe), inventory control, cash flow management, etc.

This job hasn’t been without its challenges but by utilising our knowledge of Xero and smart Xero add-ons we’ve been able to overcome those challenges which has been extremely rewarding for everyone.