A civil engineering contractor working across New Zealand and the Pacific replaces a shared Xero approval queue with custom line-level approvals, batched email sign-off, and mobile credit-card capture.
At a glance: 5–6 hrs estimated weekly time saved across the team · 675 invoices & receipts processed in a month · Line-by-line approvals custom-built for MAP Projects
- ~36 employees (fluctuates)
- Xero — multi-entity, multi-currency (accounting platform)
- Industry: Civil Engineering Contractor (est. 2006)
- Location: New Zealand & the Pacific
Founded in 2006, MAP Projects is a civil engineering contractor working across New Zealand and the Pacific — “if you can draw it, we can build it.” With an admin team spread across the North Island and project teams constantly moving between sites, cloud-based, efficient systems aren’t a nice-to-have; they’re essential to how the business operates. Theresa King, a Chartered Accountant, joined as Management Accountant just over two years ago and quickly identified accounts payable as the area most in need of improvement.
Watch Video Clips:
- EzzyBills – Overall Experience
- EzzyBills – Invoice Approvals
- EzzyBills – Spend Money Transactions
- EzzyBills Main Selling Factor
Q: What made EzzyBills the right fit?
“They designed and built line-level approvals specifically for us, which was fantastic — a great example of their willingness to support that customisation.”
– Theresa King, Management Accountant, MAP Projects
How did MAP Projects manage AP before using EzzyBills?
Everything was processed directly in Xero. Invoices were emailed from the accounts inbox to the Xero email address and landed as draft bills. With no line-item extraction, an invoice covering a single project was lump-sum coded as one line. Xero’s single approval queue meant the team improvised — the approver’s name was typed in front of the invoice number in the reference field, and each manager had to dig through the shared queue to find the invoices with their name on them. Credit card receipts were just as manual: cardholders photographed receipts, emailed the photos in, and someone attached each one by hand to the matching transaction. Beyond the wasted time, there was operational risk in the approval process, and reporting suffered — without line-by-line data, the team couldn’t report on quantities or break costs down properly across projects.
How did you hear about us? Why did you choose EzzyBills?
MAP Projects found EzzyBills through the Xero App Store. At the start of 2025, Theresa drew up a list of non-negotiables and went to market, reviewing five systems and sitting through demonstrations with all of them. EzzyBills won on line-by-line extraction combined with line-by-line approvals — MAP Projects regularly receives invoices where different lines belong to different projects and different project managers, and no system offered that out of the box. After discussing it with the team, the EzzyBills developers designed and built line-level approvals specifically for MAP Projects. Multi-entity and multi-currency support with a single group login sealed the decision.
What was the process from learning about EzzyBills through to implementation?
As with any new system, there was a learning and implementation period with real effort involved to get everything configured — but once the foundation was in place, the benefits became clear quickly. MAP Projects took their time: setting up workflows, completing testing within the team, then rolling it out to make sure the transition for the crews on the ground was as smooth as possible.
Were there any challenges, and how did the EzzyBills team handle them?
Any new system has its challenges, and MAP Projects hit a few around settings and EzzyBills not reading some invoices exactly as they wanted. Working through it took learning and support, and each time the team went back to the help desk, the fix meant the next batch of that supplier’s invoices read correctly.
How does it work today?
Invoices are forwarded to EzzyBills, where the finance admin reviews and codes them, and pre-built workflows take over. MAP Projects’ main entity runs a four-step approval workflow:
- Suppliers that always belong to one approver route straight to that person.
- Certain GL codes route to a designated approver.
- Specific tracking-category and GL-code combinations route to the right approver.
- Anything left routes to the person attached to that project’s tracking category — where line-by-line approval comes into play.
Other entities run simpler workflows, including a dual-approval setup where an invoice goes to two approvers and whoever approves first clears it — a feature implemented after MAP Projects joined. Approvers never log in to anything: they receive a batched email twice a week, click through, review each invoice and approve. MAP Projects deliberately turned off one-click approval from the email itself (“construction guys are quite trigger-happy”), so each invoice must be opened and physically reviewed before approval. Once approved, invoices flow straight into Xero with the approver’s name printed on the invoice and the full audit report attached.
Credit cards, transformed
Each cardholder now has a user ID in EzzyBills and the mobile app on their phone — a one-time setup with no login and no password to remember. Out on site they photograph a receipt, add a quick note, and send. The receipt is coded, routed to that card’s designated approver, and pushed into Xero as a spend-money transaction automatically matched to the correct card’s bank feed. No more emailing photos, no more manual attachment.
What benefits have you seen in the team?
EzzyBills has improved visibility, financial controls and efficiency across the board — for approvers, the finance team and project managers alike. Had MAP Projects continued entering invoices line by line in Xero, the estimated saving is roughly 3–4 hours per week across the finance team plus a further 2 hours per week for approvers. But Theresa is clear the value isn’t only cost: the time saved lets people focus on higher-value work, and the implementation has delivered better reporting, faster processing and approvals, greater visibility, and more accurate, up-to-date financial data. As a reference point, 675 invoices and receipts were processed across all entities in a single recent month.
What was the reaction from your most hands-on team members?
The crews on site love that the app needs no login or password. Since rollout there have been no complaints — in Theresa’s words, they’re all liking it so far.
How would you rate our team’s support and assistance?
Theresa described the help desk as really fantastic. MAP Projects has submitted many ideas and quite a few have been implemented, creating further efficiency. Support was strong through implementation — setting up workflows and tweaking as needed — and continues whenever the team hits an anomaly, with the support team explaining what went wrong so users can understand and potentially resolve similar issues themselves.
Q: What stands out about working with EzzyBills?
“It’s just great that you’ve got a receptive developer that’s willing to listen to your ideas and make little tweaks. Some of those little tweaks have created a lot more efficiency — we’ve gained a lot from them.”
– Theresa King, Management Accountant, MAP Projects
Key Features and Benefits
Custom line-by-line approvals with login-free email and mobile sign-off. EzzyBills combines line-by-line extraction with line-by-line approvals — custom-built for MAP Projects — so lines belonging to different projects route to the right project manager automatically. Approvers work entirely from batched twice-weekly emails with no logins, cardholders capture receipts through a no-password mobile app matched to the correct Xero bank feed, and every approved invoice lands in Xero with the approver’s name and full audit trail attached.
Results
- Time savings: an estimated 3–4 hours per week for finance plus 2 hours for approvers.
- Faster approvals: quicker processing and turnaround across every entity.
- Stronger controls: reviewed line-level approvals with approver names and audit reports on every invoice.
- Better reporting: line-by-line data enables proper cost and quantity reporting across projects.
- Effortless on site: no-login mobile receipt capture, auto-matched to the right bank feed in Xero.
Conclusion
EzzyBills gave MAP Projects an accounts payable process built for how a mobile civil engineering contractor actually works — custom line-by-line approvals, login-free email and mobile sign-off, and automated credit-card capture across multiple entities and currencies. The result is stronger controls, better reporting, faster approvals, and hours saved every week, backed by a development team that keeps turning MAP Projects’ ideas into real efficiency gains.
About EzzyBills
EzzyBills is a leading business and financial data automation platform that simplifies accounts payable and expense management. With seamless integrations and AI-driven data extraction, EzzyBills empowers businesses to save time, reduce errors, and strengthen their financial operations.
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