About Iron Lake Balls
Founded in 2022, Iron Lake Balls LTD is a sports eCommerce business that visits golf courses to recover balls for recycling. On top of tracking down rogue golf balls, the business also has a washing facility where the team refurbishes them so they’re like new. After restoring the balls, they’re sorted, graded and shipped to end users via multiple eCommerce platforms.
Jake Souch, the founder of Iron Lake Balls, is in the driver’s seat, making sure the organisation runs like a well-oiled machine. His responsibilities revolve around ensuring that each area of business works together, including financial and accounting operations. We sat down with the pro entrepreneur himself to discover more about his company and the ways Dext Prepare has transformed how his team works.
The Opportunity
Organised and automated accounting is difficult without the proper tools available, and Jake knew traditional, paper-based bookkeeping wasn’t the best approach for his small business. When he thought through the strategy and operations behind the company, there was one thing he knew would be necessary: a tech-driven accounting platform.
Being an eCommerce business, the team gets weekly invoices through mail, Facebook Marketing ads and more. Keeping track of hundreds — even thousands — of orders is time-consuming, especially for a team of its size.
“It’s an awful lot of work for us being a small, new company, and we wanted to make it easier for our accountant to manage receipts and invoicing”, says Souch.
The opportunity to leverage a digital accounting platform was a no-brainer for Jake and his team. Not only was Dext Prepare the best option financially, but the tool also boosted compliance and efficiency like never before.
The Solution
Jake chose to partner with Dext Prepare for Iron Lake Balls’ accounting needs from the get-go, starting with the platform right as the company was incorporated.
“It was very easy to get an account set up with Dext Prepare, quite straightforward.”
As he is new to running a company, Dext Prepare gives Jake’s team the tools necessary to automate workflows and cut time-consuming processes that would otherwise take hours away from other important matters of business.
The platform captures the thousands of invoices the organisation receives and automatically processes them to its accountancy software. It also assists Jake with tracking business-specific spending, making it a breeze to forward any expenses into his Dext Prepare account.
“At Iron Lake Balls, Dext Prepare means we don’t have to think about paperwork or worry about having all of our receipts together in a safe place”, says Souch. “It means we’re able to focus on work each and every day, spending only a few minutes a week collecting receipts so everything is ready to go when we need it.”
The Impact
Starting a business as a first-time entrepreneur requires many leaps of faith, but having a trusted accounting partner on Jake’s side made this process a lot less nerve-wracking. The organisation’s accounting setup has a profound effect on not just the team’s financial operations, but also the work-life balance that this type of accounting automation provides. With less time spent worrying about the economic portion of the business, the workers at Iron Lake Balls can buckle down and enjoy uninterrupted work time on a regular basis.
Another huge impact that Iron Lake Balls experienced was the peace of mind that invoices aren’t going to get lost or forgotten about. Instead of reconciling items and managing invoicing manually, spending lots of time going through each and every detail, Jake uses Dext Prepare to automate this process.
He only spends 10 minutes a week on Dext Prepare, forwarding and updating things as necessary. This saves him countless hours on daily invoicing and end-of-the-year account planning.
Having Dext Prepare integrated with an accounting software that’s a powerhouse in the industry such as Xero allows the Iron Lake Balls’ team to get more time back in their day to do what they love: sell refurbished, hand-sorted golf balls to passionate sports enthusiasts.
“We utilise Xero as our accounting software, which is easy to navigate, especially because it deals with processes that can be really daunting being a new business owner. Using Xero integrated with Dext Prepare has allowed us to streamline our accounting processes and made it really simple, easy and transparent for both our team and accounts.”
Gone are the days of physical paperwork and misplaced invoices. With Dext Prepare by its side, Iron Lake Balls better serves its customers with fast, timely invoicing, providing a great experience on and off the course.
Moving Forward
In just one year, Iron Lake Balls sold a quarter of a million golf balls, and the company isn’t slowing down anytime soon. Next year, the team expects to sell around half a million refurbished goods, so having Xero and Dext Prepare in their toolkit enables them to take more and more orders with a platform that’s designed to scale as they grow.
This partnership goes beyond accounting. It positively improves every interaction Iron Lake Balls has with its customers, making people excited to hit the fairway with a reconditioned golf ball as soon as possible — maybe even resulting in a hole in one.
Check out Dext Prepare and see why this is a must-have for any business.
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