User story - Secure IT Consult

Challenge

As an IT consulting firm with clients and suppliers in the US, UK, Europe, and the Middle East, Secure IT Consult relies heavily on international transactions, which exacerbates issues with high fees and inefficient banking processes. 

Between high fees, slow settlements, clunky interface, and lack of transparency regarding hidden conversion fees, they began their search for a better alternative. 

”Being heavily reliant on international transactions, we were not satisfied with Lloyds Bank. Because of high fees, slow service and antiquated systems, we paid approximately £5,000 in banking fees last year.” 

Not only is their platform expensive and slow, it’s also prone to manual errors and inertia. Ayaz, the founder of Secure IT Consult had to manually enter payment details for each invoice and supplier, making it a time-consuming and error-prone process which had the potential to lead to costly mistakes. 

“With manual data entry, we also always had the fear of making costly mistakes when making transactions.” 

In light of these challenges, Ayaz began searching for a better solution which would address all his concerns and found that even if some solutions were helping with the processes, the fees remained similar to his bank. 

“We explored other solutions but we found fees similar to high-street banks”. 

Until he found Crezco...

Solution

To find the perfect solution, Ayaz turned to the best source of advice he knew: his accountant. 

Accountants work with a lot of businesses daily, so they often know how to tackle problems like this.  Understanding Ayaz's specific needs, his accountant suggested Crezco, which perfectly met all his criteria. 

“I asked our accountant about a potential solution for our international payments, and they recommended Crezco.” 

Crezco allows payments to be set up quickly and easily, saving time when making ad-hoc payments. Secure IT Consult also finds it very easy to bulk pay their providers and suppliers from Crezco’s dashboard. A pay run can be processed with one click, even with multiple currencies involved (depending on the currencies). This saves them precious time that they can now spend on what matters most; their clients and their business. 

“Crezco's system is easy-to-use and straightforward, although we are not fully utilising the integration with accounting software like Xero. The conversion screen with the breakdown of the fees makes the amount we will pay and the amount our supplier will receive clear and transparent.” 

They were happy to see that they can efficiently track their payments with Crezco and share it with their accountants. Crezco also automatically sends remittance advice to the payee. 

“Receiving email notifications and having a dedicated page to track the payment is very helpful; we are not stuck in the dark, and we can easily share it with our accountant.” 

Results

Secure IT Consult can now securely pay all their international suppliers, providers and contractors from one single platform, Crezco. This results in an easy-to-use, transparent and cost-effective payment solution that saves Secure IT Software time and money along the way. 

“We did a live comparison between Crezco and Lloyds and saved £14.50 per transaction on the transaction fee and £200 (~2%) on the currency conversion fee. 

Secure IT Consult conducted a live comparison between Crezco and their bank. They not only saved £14.50 on the transaction fee but also £200 on the currency conversion fee. This is 85% less money spent on international payment fees compared to their bank! 

“We estimate £400 savings in the final two quarters of the previous year in bank fees alone (not including the exchange rate!)

We saved approximately £4,000 over a 12-month period on international transactions by using Crezco! Not only that, but we also saved time making payments and finally got clarity on what we are really paying for!” 

With this partnership, Secure IT Consult joins thousands of companies using Crezco today to simplify, accelerate and save money on their international payments. 

Next steps

Now that Secure IT Consult is happy with Crezco paying their suppliers and contractors abroad, they will investigate the potential for receiving international payments through Crezco, too.   

Since they are not using the integration with Xero, they will also set this up so they can automatically import their bills and contacts from Xero, making things even easier and faster than before. 

All this will help Secure IT Consult take control of the payment process to save time and money so they can focus on providing the best services and experience possible to all their clients.