Chilham Castle
Chilham Castle Accounts — From Fragmentation to Financial Flow
80%
Reduction in uncoded transactions
60%
Reduction in Reconciliation Time
80%
Increase in use of Hubdoc
Sector
Heritage Hospitality & Events
Role
Systems Consultant | Accounts Structure, Optimisation & Automation
Tools
Xero, Hubdoc, Expense Submitters, Excel, Custom Bank Rules
Challenge
Chilham Castle, a 16th-century estate operating as a luxury hospitality and events venue, had inherited a fragmented accounting structure. Over time, multiple collaborators, departments, and financial flows resulted in duplicated contacts, poorly mapped general ledgers, an overly complicated chart of accounts, and inconsistent bank reconciliation practices. Routine bookkeeping had become manual, time-consuming, and disconnected from the business's strategic planning. Despite using Xero, many of the platform’s automation capabilities were either unused or misconfigured.
Critical pain points included:
No clear audit of the contacts, bank feeds, or GL structure
Lack of bank rules or recurring transaction logic
Manual entry for bills, expenses, and sales invoices
No consistent use of Hubdoc or receipt tracking workflows
Budgeting, inventory, and fixed asset reporting features were dormant
The business needed a deep system survey, followed by a strategic redesign — not just of workflows, but of the very structure behind their numbers.
Results
The outcomes of this engagement were significant, both in terms of labour efficiency and system clarity. Monthly reconciliation time was reduced by over 60%, dropping from an average of 12–15 hours to just 5–6 hours. This time savings was achieved through the consolidation of contacts, automation of bank rules, and elimination of unnecessary manual data entry. The number of uncoded transactions fell sharply — from over 40 entries per month to fewer than 8 — which significantly streamlined the bookkeeper's workload and improved overall ledger reliability.
Our overhaul of the contact list led to a 68% reduction in active records, removing duplicates and inactive accounts, which made financial reporting and invoicing more consistent. Manual invoice creation was reduced by 65%, thanks to the implementation of contact-based auto-invoicing templates and workflow triggers.
Perhaps most notably, Hubdoc usage went from 0% to 80% compliance within the team, enabling seamless bill and receipt capture, with submissions routed directly into Xero for categorisation and review.
These results laid the groundwork for more strategic financial oversight. With accurate ledgers and cleaner coding logic, the business is now well-positioned to expand into budgeting, event-level profitability tracking, and fixed asset registry management. The local bookkeeper, now equipped with clear weekly SOPs and an optimised Xero environment, has shifted from reactive bookkeeping to proactive financial stewardship.
Process
Research & System Survey
We began with a detailed audit of the existing Xero account — reviewing:
Chart of Accounts (CoA)
Bank and credit card feeds
Contacts list (vendors, customers)
General Ledger setup
Tracking categories, projects, and current reporting methods
Information Architecture Overhaul
We proposed and restructured:
A simplified, standardized Chart of Accounts aligned with hospitality, estate management, and event operations
Consolidation of duplicate or outdated contacts
Cleanup of historical tracking categories, and defined new ones (e.g., Events, Housekeeping, F&B, Grounds & Estate, Office )
Prototyping & Configuration in Xero
Instead of visual prototyping, this stage involved testing configuration changes in a sandbox copy:
Custom bank rules were mapped for recurring utilities, wages, insurance, and subscriptions
Designed logic for auto-invoicing based on contacts (e.g. venue hire, suppliers)
Proposed Hubdoc workflow for UK-based staff to upload receipts, which sync directly into Xero as drafts
Defined roles for a local bookkeeper to finalise reconciliations and chase any exceptions
Automation & Review Loops
We implemented:
Email-based bill submission (via Hubdoc or designated expense submitters)
Xero’s Find & Recode feature to fix past categorisation inconsistencies
Setup of recurring journals (e.g. depreciation, internal cost splits)
Prepared the ground for fixed asset register integration and inventory setup in phase 2
Conclusion
This project demonstrates the transformative power of systems thinking — even in something as seemingly routine as bookkeeping. By surveying Chilham Castle’s financial architecture in detail, we were able to reduce labour, eliminate duplication, and pave the way for data-driven planning.
More than reconciliation, this was about building a financial nervous system that speaks to the business — not just to the accountant. For TheContinuum, it proves our ethos: when structure is thoughtful, even the most traditional business models can become lean, intelligent, and scalable.
