Case study: The Unit Group cut bookkeeping from full time to one day a week

The Unit Group, a London events and venue business, had no shared calendar, no work-in-progress view and no safe way for staff to get answers from the accounts. We connected their systems and put Claude, linked to Xero, inside Slack.

What was the problem?

The business runs events across several venues, but had no internal calendar showing what was booked where, and no work-in-progress view of events in the pipeline.

Staff couldn't be given access to Xero because it holds sensitive payroll information, so every question about whether something had been paid came to the finance team. Management lacked a regular, reliable view of cash, and chasing debtors took constant manual follow-up.

What did we build?

• A live venue calendar: built through an API from confirmed bookings in Salesforce, showing each venue's year at a glance, utilisation to date and days still available, plus the open bookings pipeline.
• Claude connected to Xero, inside Slack: so staff can ask finance questions in everyday language and get answers from Xero without ever seeing the ledger or payroll.
• Payment notifications: posted to the team in Slack when things are paid, so nobody needs to chase the finance team for updates.
• Weekly management updates: on money in the bank and cash flow, delivered automatically every week.
• Automated debtor chasing: weekly emails to debtors. When they reply, AI reads the response and updates the debtor notes, with the finance team reviewing any adjustments.
• Automated bookkeeping from the accounts inbox: bills and receipts sent to the company's accounts inbox in Gmail are forwarded automatically into Xero, where they are processed, coded to the correct account, attached and posted. The bookkeeper checks the postings instead of keying them in.

What changed?

Everyone can see what is booked at each venue and what is coming through the pipeline, without spreadsheets.

Staff get instant answers to finance questions in Slack, while payroll and the full ledger stay private.

Management gets a clear weekly view of cash and cash flow, and debtors are chased every week with notes kept up to date automatically.

Bookkeeping went from a full-time job to one day a week, split over two half days of remote checking. Documents arrive in Xero already coded and attached, the bookkeeper reviews them, and the books are more detailed with fewer mistakes.

“When we came to Oswald Murdock we were running four separate pieces of software, including Salesforce and Xero, and none of them added up. They built the connections between them, with APIs and automations, and brought everything together in one place. We're no longer fighting the basics. We're now working on the advanced, critical parts of the business.” (Joe Kennedy, Director and Co-owner, The Unit Group)

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