How Bowker brought three legal entities, multiple dealerships and a growing number of cardholders into one controlled expense environment.
“I don’t think I could imagine a month-end without it now.”
Carl Trinder, Financial Controller, Bowker Preston
Bowker Motor Group is a family-owned automotive group with dealerships across Preston, Blackburn and Bolton.
Its expanding portfolio includes BMW, MINI, Porsche, Changan, Chery and LEPAS. Behind those brands sits a multi-entity structure encompassing Bowker Preston, Bowker Blackburn and its Porsche operations, with employees and managers sometimes working across several sites.
As the group added new dealerships, managers and corporate cards, Finance needed an expense process capable of growing with it.
Bowker initially introduced ExpenseOnDemand at its Preston operation to replace its entirely manual expense process, before expanding the platform across Blackburn and Porsche.
The group has since opened additional sites and welcomed new franchises, significantly increasing the number of users, cards and transactions passing through its expense process.
Managing that growth brought additional complexity.
Each transaction needed to be assigned to the correct legal entity and cost centre, while some group-level employees held separate cards for different sites, and this is where ExpenseOnDemand came in.
ExpenseOnDemand gives Bowker one platform for managing expenses across its different entities while retaining the necessary separation between sites.
Employees assigned to specific cost centres see only the information relevant to them, while authorised Finance users can oversee activity across the group. This provides central visibility without removing entity-level accountability.
Bowker’s customised controls ensure that an expense cannot be submitted without being assigned correctly. Custom forms also collect the information required for different spending categories:
Corporate card statements can be uploaded into ExpenseOnDemand and matched against employee submissions. Managers capture receipts through the mobile app, while Finance reviews, approves and reconciles the completed transactions.
ExpenseOnDemand has made Bowker’s day-to-day card processing quicker. Finance can upload statements using the drag-and-drop import rather than entering transactions individually.
The improved responsiveness of the app and web portal also helps Finance work through larger approval batches without being held up by system lag.
Bowker’s configured controls have improved the quality of the information reaching Finance.
Required fields prevent incomplete expenses from progressing, while Finance can reject and return submissions that do not meet Bowker’s policies. This creates a consistent standard across the group’s different entities and means Finance receives the information it needs before approval, rather than having to correct submissions retrospectively.
“The fact that it won’t let you submit unless you’ve put the required information in means that, 99% of the time, when it comes to me for approval, I know I’m going to have everything I need.”
Despite the growing volume of cards and transactions, Bowker continues to reconcile its expense records successfully against its monthly card statements.
The multi-entity setup also supports Bowker’s wider Finance and payroll responsibilities.
ExpenseOnDemand allows the finance team to access records across the group through one login. Entertaining attendees, staff welfare costs, receipts and supporting details are available digitally rather than being spread across multiple archive boxes.
The audit trail has also made historical receipt retrieval considerably faster. When an employee needed a receipt for a jet wash purchased nearly two years earlier, Carl located and printed it within five minutes.
Previously, retrieving the relevant archive box alone could have taken a week.
“Within five minutes, I managed to find a receipt from nearly two years ago. If it had gone into archive storage, it would have been a week before I even had the box back.”
As Bowker has opened new sites and appointed additional managers, new users have been able to adopt ExpenseOnDemand without extensive support.
The group now has approximately 40 people using the platform, and ExpenseOnDemand has developed from a Preston expense tool into an established part of the group’s accounting operation, supporting more entities, locations, cards and transactions as the business continues to grow.
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