Integrating Deputy with Xero has saved Volcano Coffee so much time

Volcano Coffee Works started in 2010 when New Zealand chef Kurt Stewart opened a small coffee stall at a market in south London. He wanted to offer something different to his customers, and so Kurt started roasting his own beans.

Since those early days at the market stall, Volcano Coffee Works has gone from strength to strength. Alongside two of their own cafes, Volcano Coffee Works provides coffee to cafés and offices, including WeWork, across London and Manchester.

This rapid expansion led to an increase in staff numbers, with 30 full-time staff, ranging from finance and marketing specialists to roasters and packers, and an additional 40 baristas working at WeWork sites. Challenges have come with these opportunities, including the question of how to organise staff scheduling and payroll – which is where Deputy comes in.

When Volcano Coffee Works was operating across 3 sites with 5 baristas, it was easy to keep track of everyone’s schedules and invoices, but as the company expanded it became a huge challenge.

Under the old system, baristas were responsible for creating and sending their own invoices, which meant that Hunter Prescott, Volcano Coffee Works’ Finance Manager, would spend upwards of 3 hours every fortnight combing through invoices to make sure that everything was in order. “It was a niggly job for the baristas too”, he points out, “they don’t want to have to waste time doing invoices”.

Hunter says that he first heard about Deputy from an Australian colleague: “he’d been using it in Sydney, and put us onto it”, and since Volcano Coffee Works started using Deputy, “it’s just made such a difference for us”.

Now Volcano Coffee Works baristas do all their scheduling and invoicing through Deputy, and the change within the company has been amazing.

“It saves everybody so much time” explains Hunter, “Now we’ve moved to Deputy I review the invoices monthly, and can upload 40 invoices in 20 seconds”.

The baristas love it too, because it makes entering their timesheets so much simpler. “It’s so easy, it’s all in the app. Our baristas can see where they’re working, and they can fill in their hours on the spot without having to contact anyone.”

Hunter also appreciates how easy it is to integrate Deputy with Xero: “it’s amazing”. With seamless automatic syncing between the two apps, Hunter doesn’t have to waste time manually uploading invoices. This was the feature that really led him to Deputy, “we looked at other software, but it didn’t offer integration with payroll, which put Deputy ahead for us. And it’s competitively priced”.

As Volcano Coffee Works seeks to expand throughout the UK and Europe, Hunter is confident that Deputy will keep pace with the needs of their growing business.