From Sage 50 to Xero – and PaperLess Throughout: How Manor of Groves Transformed Invoice Management Over Five Years

A UK hospitality group that started using PaperLess in 2021, outgrew its accounting platform in 2026 — and valued the software enough to bring it across to Xero rather than leave it behind.

At a Glance

Introduction

Manor of Groves is a UK hospitality business with a growing group portfolio. You can find out more about them at www.manorofgroves.co.uk. Like most businesses in the sector, the finance team carries significant responsibility: supplier invoices across multiple properties, year-end audits, and the ongoing need to keep records clean enough that questions can be answered quickly when they arrive.

For Phong Nguyen, Accounts Supervisor at Manor of Groves, the decision to modernise started with a familiar frustration. Years of historical invoices stored across folders and files. Month-end and year-end becoming a trawl rather than a process. And a growing sense that if the portfolio kept expanding, the existing setup would not keep up.

What makes this case study a little different from most is the timeline. Manor of Groves first implemented PaperLess in October 2021 — initially integrated with Sage 50. Nearly five years later, in May 2026, the business moved from Sage 50 to Xero as its primary accounting platform. Rather than replacing PaperLess as part of that move, they migrated to PaperLess for Xero and kept going. That decision says something worth paying attention to.

The Challenge: Historical Data with No Efficient Way to Navigate It

The word Phong used to describe the situation before PaperLess was ‘trawling’. Trawling through files at month-end. Trawling through records to answer an audit question. Trawling through years of historical data to find a document whose original description was too vague to locate quickly.

It is a problem that compounds over time. What feels manageable in year one becomes genuinely cumbersome by year three or four, especially when a business is adding properties and suppliers along the way. The filing structure that made sense when it was set up becomes harder to navigate as the volume grows, and the people expected to use it spend more and more time on retrieval rather than actual accounts work.

A few specific pressure points made the case for change:

• Audit queries that should have been straightforward were taking far longer than they needed to
• Invoice descriptions from months earlier were often too vague to be reliable search terms
• The team could see that expansion of the group portfolio would eventually require either a better system or an additional hire in accounts payable — and a better system was the more sustainable answer

Why PaperLess? A Sage Recommendation in 2021 That Still Holds in 2026

Manor of Groves did not arrive at PaperLess through an extended procurement process. The recommendation came from Sage — and since the team was already operating within the Sage ecosystem, that carried enough weight to act on it.

What the recommendation could not have anticipated, of course, was that five years later the business would move away from Sage 50 entirely and onto Xero. Accounting platform migrations of that kind are not uncommon for growing businesses, but they do tend to prompt a review of every tool in the stack. PaperLess survived that review not because it was the path of least resistance, but because the team had no reason to replace it.

The migration itself, handled in May 2026, was where PaperLess’s support became the deciding factor in the overall experience. Switching accounting platforms mid-operation with live invoice data and years of archived records to carry across is not a simple task. For Phong, the process went without the disruption that often accompanies this kind of change. The support team was singled out specifically as a reason the migration felt manageable rather than stressful.

5-star Trustpilot review  |  Phong Nguyen, Accounts Supervisor, Manor of Groves

“Brilliant! The days of trawling through file after file looking for invoices at month-end and year-end are over. The fast and efficient support team has been excellent throughout. A particular highlight was the support I received when migrating from Sage 50 to Xero Accounting, which made the whole process smooth and stress-free.”

How Manor of Groves Uses PaperLess

The team’s use of PaperLess is focused on two core features, with plans to explore the wider platform as familiarity grows. Both have been in active use since the original Sage 50 implementation and carried over to the Xero integration without a break in workflow.

Invoice Approval

Incoming invoices are processed and routed for approval within PaperLess, giving the team a structured sign-off workflow rather than a sequence of emails or physical paperwork. For a hospitality group managing invoices across multiple properties and suppliers, having everything in one centralised location with a clear invoice approval process and a full audit trail, changes the daily rhythm of the accounts function considerably.

Document Archiving

Archiving is the feature Phong identifies as the most valuable, and given where the friction was before, that makes sense. Every processed invoice is stored within PaperLess and accessible via search filters that can work around the limitations of original descriptions. The ability to filter by date, supplier, amount, or other parameters rather than depending on what someone wrote in an invoice description months earlier, is what turned document archiving from a passive storage function into an active time-saver.

The audit trail that sits behind every document is equally important. When an audit question comes in, the answer is not buried somewhere in a folder hierarchy: it is retrievable, traceable, and accompanied by a record of who approved it and when.

The Results: Faster Audits, a Leaner Team, and a Platform Migration That Worked

Phong was candid about the absence of precise metrics. Manor of Groves have not tracked formal time savings, and he was not going to invent numbers that were not there. What he described instead was a consistent, across-the-board positive effect on the team’s time, their processes, and their capacity to absorb growth without adding headcount.

Audit Queries Resolved in a Fraction of the Previous Time

The most direct measure of impact is the one Phong came back to more than once. Audit questions that previously meant working through layers of folders, particularly when the original invoice description was unclear now get resolved quickly. The filters do the searching, and the audit trail means nothing is missing when it is needed.

For a finance team that carries audit responsibility across a growing group of properties, that is not a marginal improvement. It is a material reduction in one of the most time-consuming recurring obligations in the accounts function.

Headcount Kept Stable Through Portfolio Expansion

The most telling indicator of impact came in Phong’s own words: without PaperLess, he believes the team would have needed to bring in an additional accounts payable or purchase ledger resource to manage the growing portfolio.

They did not. The efficiency created by having invoices centralised, searchable, and moving through a defined approval workflow meant the existing team could handle more work without the process becoming unmanageable. That is a meaningful outcome, not just for the finance function, but for the business making hiring decisions against a growth backdrop.

A Platform Migration That Did Not Disrupt Operations

Moving from PaperLess for Sage 50 to PaperLess for Xero in May 2026 is arguably the most instructive part of the Manor of Groves story. The team did not take the opportunity of a platform change to evaluate alternatives. They moved PaperLess across because it was working, and because the migration support they received made the transition smooth rather than disruptive. That kind of continuity — five years across two different accounting platforms — is not something that happens by accident.

“It makes their job so much more simpler.”

Manor of Groves team

Would Manor of Groves Recommend PaperLess?

Yes and the reasoning is worth reading carefully. Phong acknowledged that there are other invoice recognition tools available. The differentiator, in his view, is the support. That is what carries the package.

It is a straightforward observation, but it is not a small one. In a category where core functionality is increasingly similar across products, support is what determines whether a tool gets used properly, survives a platform migration, and earns the kind of loyalty that keeps it in the stack for five years and counting.

For any hospitality business still managing invoices across disparate folders and files, or facing a similar accounting platform transition and wondering whether to rethink the whole stack, Manor of Groves offers a clear reference point. The tools that make it easier to do the job are worth keeping hold of, even when everything else changes around them.

See What PaperLess Could Do for Your Team

PaperLess integrates with Xero, Sage 50, Sage 200, Sage Intacct, SAP Business One, and Orderwise. Book a demo or get in touch via paperlesseurope.com/contact-us.