Still wrestling with invoices, reconciling spreadsheets, and late-night number crunching to pay bills or close the month? It doesn’t have to be that way.
Focus on two things: harnessing powerful Fintech tools like Xero to manage your money, check balances, and approve payments instantly, and adopting the mindset that drives their success.
Because the Fintech mindset is not just for big corporations. It’s an obsession with efficiency built on trust, a powerful approach every small or medium-sized business can adopt.
Speed and simplicity beat tradition.
Where do you feel friction when managing money in your business? Holdups, complexities and limitations can look like:
- Copying data from invoices into spreadsheets.
- Waiting for approvals before payments can be made.
- Manually reconciling transactions in Xero at month-end.
Whilst these issues might seem small on their own, they add up. When repeated for every client, supplier, and employee, they waste your time and significantly slow your business down.
Remove friction
You might catch yourself saying, “We’ve always done it this way”. Whilst relying on the tried-and-true might seem like the safest option, this kind of thinking holds your business back.
Fintechs prioritise speed and simplicity over tradition. They remove friction wherever they spot it. Finding the fastest, easiest and most effective way to get the job done.
They’re built on the idea that speed creates confidence and that you can’t make good decisions on yesterday’s data.
Act faster and stay in control.
Finding new and better ways of working can feel daunting. But you don’t have to invent new processes or build systems from scratch. Many businesses openly share their setup, and countless tools are specifically designed to solve the very problems you’re facing.
You can connect your Xero account with other software to:
- Scan invoices directly
- Set up approval workflows
- Automate payments and reconciliation
Instead of copying and pasting into cumbersome spreadsheets, you can see an accurate, real-time picture of your company’s finances.
You move from “we’ll know by next week” to “we know right now.”
And that speed doesn’t just save you time. It builds momentum across the business. It empowers you to act faster, make clearer decisions, and stay in control of your money.
User experience isn’t just for your customers.
How do you and your team feel about your business’s financial processes, like paying staff and collecting supplier bills?
If they feel clunky, confusing, or are full of manual steps, that’s where mistakes (and burnout) creep in. This can look like:
- Someone waiting on a receipt.
- Someone else doesn’t know if an invoice has been approved.
- Payroll day means stress, not confidence.
The finance process is then something people endure, not enjoy.
Treat your team like customers.
Fintech companies don’t just build products for their customers; they design for every single person who interacts with their business. This means obsessing over the flow, clarity, and simplicity of every click, both for internal teams and for the customer.
A clunky financial process is not a people problem, it’s a user experience problem.
Frictionless processes your team will want to use
Efficiency and speed are crucial when changing processes, but your team’s experience is just as important. Make your finance function easy for them.
Quick wins include: Fewer logins, clearer workflows, with simple, intuitive approval steps.
Because when people actually enjoy using the system, adoption goes up and errors go down.
Security should empower, not restrict
Fraudsters are getting smarter, faking supplier invoices and impersonating employees to change bank details. This means security must be built into all your financial processes.
However, too many security restrictions can lead to significant frustrations and delays. Teams often lose visibility, unable to track invoices or identify what’s blocking payments that suppliers are chasing. While you might think you’re protecting your business, you could actually be creating problems and bottlenecks.
Give your team visibility.
Instead of locking everything down and keeping teams in the dark, Fintechs build trust through transparency. Instead, they ensure security by focusing on clear permissions and robust processes.
Gain both visibility and security with methods like:
- Clear approval paths
- Real-time notifications
- Full audit trails (so everyone can see what’s happening, when, and by whom)
Create trust, insight and security
For many software systems, visibility and security go hand-in-hand. Xero features like dual approvals, alerts for changed bank details, and layered permissions protect your funds and increase visibility. This approach actually creates more security than simply restricting access to one person.
The key is to make security a seamless part of your process, not something that slows it down.
You shouldn’t have to just hope everyone is doing their part with your finance system. You should know they are.
Data is the engine of your growth.
Your business likely has valuable data, but it’s often stuck, scattered across different tools, updated too slowly, maintained manually, or hard for people to access.
Finding answers to simple questions, such as how often you’re late paying suppliers or what’s due next week, can be slow and difficult. Often, by the time you get the information, it’s too late to use it to create a positive impact.
Find and collate your data.
Fintechs live and breathe real-time data. It’s how they make decisions, spot risks, and drive innovation quickly.
When your finance stack (Xero, payments, expenses, reporting) is connected, your numbers tell a live, real-time story:
- What’s being spent and where
- What’s owed and by whom
- How much cash will you have in the bank next week
Make strategic decisions with confidence
This kind of visibility changes everything. It gives you the clarity to hire with confidence, invest strategically, and avoid unexpected issues.
Connecting your systems makes your data more powerful. This allows your finance team to act fast: driving the business forward with insights, rather than just reporting on past performance.
Build a culture of continuous improvement.
With fast and efficient processes that your team enjoys, that safeguard your money and provide real-time insights for better decision-making, you’re set up for success.
However, don’t consider this a one-time task. The most successful Fintechs are never ‘finished’. They continuously release, test, learn, and refine their processes. This is a mindset that small businesses can adopt.
Every quarter, ask your team these three questions:
- What processes are slowing us down?
- What is causing frustration or errors?
- Which tasks could we automate or simplify?
You don’t need to overhaul everything overnight (in fact, that would be a very bad idea!), but even small tweaks can create a big impact over time:
- Maybe it’s removing an approval step that no longer adds value.
- Maybe it’s connecting Xero with a payment tool such as Telleroo to reduce manual work.
- Maybe it’s finally ditching that shared spreadsheet that everyone secretly (or not so secretly) hates.
Continuous improvement helps your finance function adapt as your business grows.
Adopting a Fintech mindset isn’t just about using more technology; it’s about thinking differently. You don’t need a massive budget to think like a Fintech company. It means valuing speed, clarity, trust, and user experience just as much as accuracy. It’s about using tools like Xero and the app ecosystem to give your business the same agility, control, and visibility that Fintechs have.
If your finance function operated like a Fintech, what’s the first thing you would change?
This blog post was kindly written by Kayleigh Graham, Head of Partnerships & Growth at Telleroo.
You can find more information about Hyphen Digital’s Advisory, Implementation, and Support by clicking the relevant link.
