About Crosstown

Crosstown Doughnuts launched in 2014 as a market stall on Leather Lane, the historic London market founded in the 1600’s. A scratch bakery, rolling all their dough by hand, Crosstown makes all their own jams, compotes, fillings, glazes and toppings in-house, fresh every day, using the finest ingredients, delivering real, honest flavour. Whilst it’s a lot of extra work, Crosstown believes the results speak for themselves, as quality should never be compromised no matter the quantity, although both can exist at the same time.

Operating from ‘hubs’, not locations or shops, serving walk-through-the-door customers as well those that have ordered online for Pickup or On-Demand delivery, the business values serving its customers in multiple ways and aims to be accessible throughout London. Renowned for the signature hybrid sourdough – the world’s first yeast-raised sourdough base that Crosstown is now famous for, the business are innovators, creating a vegan hybrid sourdough in 2017, as well as bringing together interesting and complimentary ingredients from around the world, from season to season.

The Needs of the Business

Operating over 30 sites in London, with a central processing facility in Battersea, Crosstown Doughnuts has developed into a fast-moving business. In mid-2022 the Directors of the business hoped to gain more insightful data to power their management accounts and approached Paperchase, the leading accountancy for the hospitality sector, for support and assistance, in addition to its day-to-day financial services, which include Bookkeeping, Payroll, VAT as well as operating analytics.

What is Paperchase Delivering?

Before the Paperchase team could embark on providing the day-to-day financial processing, Paperchase identified that the existing accounting solution needed to be modernised. The decision was made to switch from Sage to Xero, which would entail migrating the entire accounts process, including a complicated recording and mapping of the data.

As part of the accounting overhaul , Maliha Ahmed, FD of Crosstown, wanted more in-depth reporting from the granularity that Paperchase could provide, converted into more meaningful reports and the Paperchase team set about ensuring she could be provided with the data and reporting she required.

Marc Bertorelli, the Business Develop Manager for Paperchase explains what the client wanted. “It’s hard to persuade a business to want to change its accounting software and in this instance, there were circumstances with the client wanting more reporting and for us to make the transition, we had to understand their requirements and offer a solution that can scale with their needs”

“We needed to quickly understand the Crosstown business model, the product, the production process, purchasing and logistics, as well as the flow of data and paperwork within the business. As a fast-growing QSR business we also needed to understand the business model, the retail and wholesale sides of their operation, their own retail hubs, as well as how the new platform would work for Crosstown. Understanding the processing required to make it work, in addition to gathering the data, which included remapping the EPOS, the whole project was not without its challenges.”

Heena Pithadia, the Paperchase Account Manager who managed the on-boarding and day to day running of the account comments: “This was a complicated matrix., The back office in India has diligently gone through the numerous line transactions with the foresight of the expected deliverables the client was looking for. The business model was complex, which we had to fully understand before the data came to us in October and by the end of November, we managed to complete the transition. In January 2023 we started to provide detailed weekly reporting that is specific to Crosstown Doughnuts and the nature of the business. The staff at Crosstown Doughnuts supported the changeover brilliantly and we could not have asked for a more supportive client or team, as their efforts certainly made this happen.”

Maliah Ahmed concludes: “The Paperchase team were exceptional and made this happen. From my position I wanted to take a step away from the day-to-day management of the accounting process but wanted the software to provide me with very detailed reports, which were slightly unconventional and this is what the Paperchase team were able to deliver.”

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