10 Fitness Streamlines Accounts Payable Across Multiple Entities and Reduces Invoice Volume by 600+ Per Month
How 10 Fitness automated cost allocation and GL coding across 14 separate entities and reduced monthly invoice processing by 97%.
At a Glance
monthly invoices automated
products managed in 1 place
of spend managed with approvals
The challenge
Hundreds of invoices monthly drove AP overload
Shared expenses across gyms required time-consuming, manual allocation
Tracking vendor logins in spreadsheets led to bottlenecks when placing orders
With one corporate office and 13 gyms, each operating as its own entity, managing invoices at 10 Fitness was complex. Each vendor had different invoicing processes and schedules, making it difficult to standardize accounts payable workflows. “Some [vendors] send us invoices as orders come in, then you have thirteen locations with six or seven invoices per vendor,” Kerra Murphy, CFO, shared.
Kerra and her team consistently faced the same choice: pay vendors thirteen separate times, or pay once from corporate and manage cost allocation later. Although the latter may have been faster to remit payment, it still led to manual complexity. “On the backend, the journal entries allocate where [purchases were made], and then those locations reimburse corporate,” Kerra explained. Without a system in place to automate expense categorization, Kerra and her team spent hours manually assigning hundreds of monthly transactions to their designated entity in their accounting platform, QuickBooks Desktop.
On the purchasing side, dozens of vendor logins were managed in thirteen separate spreadsheets — one for each gym. This system made it difficult to ensure everyone had the correct login information at the right time. “If someone changed a password and forgot to change it on the spreadsheet, then the spreadsheet's not accurate anymore,” Kerra described.
Although Kerra regularly researched options, she wasn’t finding a solution that could resolve 10 Fitness’s challenges around simplifying purchasing, allocating costs, and paying invoices across separate legal entities.
How Automation Can Solve Finance Teams’ Biggest Challenges
The solution
In February 2023, while researching software to simplify AP processes, Kerra discovered that Order.co offered functionalities catered to multi-entity organizations that traditional platforms couldn’t match. Unlike other systems, where cost allocation happens only after an invoice is received, Order.co automatically assigns every purchase to the correct entity with proper GL codes at the point of purchase — all pre-configured during setup.
“The fact that we can hard code the products — that’s a huge time saver,” Kerra said. Rather than just digitizing the backend AP process, Order.co solves the problem at its source: purchasing itself.
The outcome
Automated cost allocation across entities
With allocation automated, Kerra has eliminated the need for manual journal entries, saving time and ensuring accurate data from the start. “We don't have to do everything thirteen times,” Kerra highlighted. “We don't have to manually keep track of who owes who what.”
Whether a shared expense needs to be divided evenly across gyms by percentage or allocated in specific dollar amounts to certain entities, Kerra can configure this split in seconds. Transactions now flow into QuickBooks Desktop already categorized, enabling accurate financial reporting without the manual work.
Accelerated invoice reconciliation
Order.co pays for all purchases on the 10 Fitness’s behalf and delivers monthly consolidated invoices, which include all transactions made on the platform by employees across entities. Now, rather than reconciling hundreds of invoices each month, the AP team only needs to handle one per location — and the impact is substantial: “It's saved us at least six hundred invoices a month,” Kerra shared.
10 Fitness also takes advantage of Order.co’s virtual cards for service supplier payments. These transactions are also included on the monthly consolidated invoice for each location, giving Kerra centralized visibility over all products and services purchased across entities and categories in one place. "Any vendor that will take a card, we add it," Kerra explained.
Simplified vendor management
10 Fitness added all 200+ of their vendors onto Order.co, populating the platform with their preferred, pre-approved products. As a result, employees no longer need to remember which vendor they order specific products from, spend time updating login spreadsheets, or troubleshoot if a password is outdated. “[Staff] has enjoyed not having ten different usernames and passwords to remember,” Kerra remarked. “All they have to do is log in and order from one place.”
With a centralized purchasing experience in place, onboarding new employees happens much faster. New employees can start placing orders from day one. “Time saving has been the biggest benefit all around,” Kerra noted. “It’s much faster training, and a better learning experience for them.”
Improved efficiency and scalability
With AP processes running smoothly, Kerra plans to tap into additional platform features to drive even greater efficiency. She’s particularly excited to implement real-time budget tracking, which would enable managers to see their available budgets at a glance and make autonomous purchasing decisions. “That will help save time for myself and the managers,” Kerra explained.
As 10 Fitness continues to open new gyms, Kerra appreciates how receptive the Order.co team is to her ideas. “When I ask for something and [the Order.co team] says it's coming, it actually comes,” Kerra expressed. “I can't say that about a lot of platforms. It's been a great experience.”
For CFOs and finance leaders at multi-entity organizations facing similar challenges, Kerra’s position is clear: “I would recommend [Order.co], especially to anyone that has our structure.”