What do you do when you’re starting a business and you need an affordable place to work? Find a shared working space of course! Spin Street House in Cape Town has got you covered on that front. It’s a coworking space situated right in the beating heart of the city. Spin Street House was founded by entrepreneurs Nathan Heller and Gareth Pearson 3 years ago. Since then it’s become a hub of activity within the entrepreneurship and startup community.
Nathan and Gareth’s experience of growing the business has presented many opportunities and like any entrepreneurship journey some challenges as well. One of these: a seamless, easy payment solution for their clients. Spin Street House offers coworking spaces for individuals and teams that do interesting, innovative and impactful work. With such incredible clients, Nathan and Gareth had to provide an incredible service. Luckily Xero and PayFast came to the rescue by offering seamless integration with automatic payment and settlement options.
We managed to steal some of Nathan and Gareth’s precious time to talk to us about their business and how they solved some of their challenges.
“Our clubhouse is home to members working in a diversity of disciplines.”
Spin Street House doesn’t discriminate. If you can imagine a job, there is probably a member doing it. Nathan and Gareth explain their members include tech startups, business development, IT, web development, architecture, design, photography, journalism, academia, and more.
“Our community is the positive, the stress is the negative.”
Starting a business has its ups and downs. But, it’s the people you meet on the journey that make it worth every cent. Nathan describes that it has been a difficult journey to get the business to a successful level. They fund the business themselves and have been growing on a shoestring budget. Slowly but surely (as entrepreneurship goes) they have been growing and getting traction for their business, which means more talented people have a place to work and create!
“Xero is by far the best accounting software out there.”
That’s what he said! Prior to using the PayFast and Xero integration Spin Street House were using a combination of different systems for payments. Nathan and Gareth realised they needed a single more seamless solution. Xero and PayFast were happy to step up to the plate. The pair researched a couple of other options but they were all lacking in terms of what they needed.
“PayFast is by far better than any other payment provider we have come across.”
Spin Street House was one of the first businesses to adopt the Xero and PayFast integration. PayFast provided the hands-on support Nathan and Gareth needed in order to make the integration possible. The rest, as they say, is history.
“The Integration helps a lot especially for travelling members who need to pay by card.”
Nathan and Gareth have used the integration since March 2016. According to them, it has streamlined their invoicing and payments system as well as their accounting procedures as they don’t have to manually check off payments via PayFast. Instead, they reconcile their payments on PayFast by transferring those transactions across both accounts directly from Xero. The process is simple for them to manage, all from one place. Their clients also enjoy a simple payment making process. Which for anyone, is always a win.
Xero and PayFast feel proud when their client’s businesses grow, and for their services to grow with them. Hence the ongoing teamwork.
“We’d like to achieve faster and effective growth.”
Like any business, Nathan and Gareth are looking forward and setting goals. They explain that in future they need to scale rapidly and further automate their payment procedures. To date, Spin Street House has expanded quite literally in all directions. They’ve gone up a floor in their building to add more member desk space. Going sideways they’ve created full kitchen facilities for their members, which also come in handy for various community leading and educational events convened with various industry players in the space.
With ambitious vision, they are about to add another 320sqm which will allow for another 50 members to use Spin Street House’s facilities. Never a dull moment in the life of entrepreneurs. All this expansion means more clients and more payments to be processed. With a fully automated payment system, Nathan and Gareth won’t lose any sleep worrying about payments coming through or keeping track of them.
And that is what happens when you combine beautiful accounting software with secure online payment processing. Dare we say a match made in heaven? Getting valuable feedback from clients is an essential part of the PayFast and Xero service. Spin Street House will continue to grow successfully and both Xero and PayFast are in for the ride to build this business and many others like it.
