Beaufort Corporate Services levels up with e-invoicing

By Sheryl Lee

“We don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our systems”, so writes James Clear, author of the popular self-help book Atomic Habits, which provides strategies to build good habits and break bad ones. Similar to individuals, companies too have habits—the established systems and processes employees engage in daily. Though often overlooked, changes to these systems can lead to big productivity gains, as local firm Beaufort Corporate Services discovered.

With professional expertise in specialised domains ranging from incorporation, accounting, tax compliance and cross-border tax mangement to company-wide digital transformation and cost reduction, corporate consultancies like Beaufort rank among the savviest companies. The nature of their business demands it - by keeping on top of trends, they help their clients stay ahead of the curve. To stay ahead of the pack, Beaufort recently adopted InvoiceNow, a nationwide e-invoicing initiative developed by the Infocomm Media Development Authority in collaboration with local banks.

Not only is e-invoicing the greener alternative to manual invoicing, InvoiceNow allows companies to cut down the time taken to manually issue quotations and invoices, while reducing human errors and opportunities for tampering, as Beaufort has found. Having reaped the benefits of a smoother invoicing and faster payments process, Beaufort is encouraging its clients to join the InvoiceNow network and level up together.

All-in-one corporate consultancy

Founded by its CEO Ms Mirah Agus in 2004, Beaufort Corporate Services is a Singapore-based business consultancy. “We specialise in serving the business needs of local entrepreneurs as well as foreign investors who would like to set up their presence in Singapore in the most cost-effective way,” Ms Agus, who has been in the audit, accounting, tax and corporate secretarial industry since 1997, explained in their website.

Drawing on their specialised knowledge and experience, Ms Agus and her team have since expanded their range of services from incorporation to accounting, tax compliance, advisory and more.

In recent years, Beaufort has also embarked on its own digitalisation journey, with the company’s head of digital transformation Mr David Lim Tien spearheading implementation of digital solutions including new accounting software. Now that it has experienced the benefits of e-invoicing, the company is also supporting its clients in their own InvoiceNow journeys.

Effortless, effective and error-free

Before InvoiceNow, Beaufort relied on MailMerge in Word and Excel to manually issue their quotations and invoices, according to Mr Lim. “It took at least 15 minutes of non-productive time to issue a quotation manually, and an additional 15 minutes to issue the invoice,” he said. Given that the company issues an average of 54 outbound invoices a month, manual invoicing often took up much time and effort. “Human errors were rampant, especially in the totalling of service fees,” he added.

By syncing InvoiceNow with its accounting software Xero, the company reduced the time taken to issue each invoice by more than 10 minutes. Quotations are converted to invoices seamlessly and can be easily referenced in the system. Accounting records are also automatically updated with each new invoice issued, removing the need for staff to personally key in the numbers. In doing so, the amount of mundane, repetitive and manual work is reduced and the margin for errors eliminated.

Mr Lim also notes an additional perk of adopting InvoiceNow. 

Not only has Beaufort itself transitioned from manual paperwork to e-invoicing, the company has helped many of its customers and suppliers connect to InvoiceNow too.