Overview
Dolfam Holdings Limited is a property management and investment company focused on acquiring residential fixer uppers, refurbishing them, and placing them into long term rental. At the time of engagement, Dolfam was running three concurrent projects, each with distinct cost profiles, suppliers, and cash flow characteristics.
Their core requirement was not generic expense tracking. They needed Accounts Payable to reflect how property businesses actually think about performance. Cost per house, not cost per supplier or invoice line.
Accounting Links was implemented to bring project level visibility, tighter payment controls, and direct alignment with their accounting structure in Xero.
The challenge
Dolfam’s operational reality created a specific AP problem set.
Multiple properties were being renovated in parallel.
The same suppliers worked across different houses.
Invoices often covered mixed work spanning projects.
Standard AP tooling assumes that costs are categorised by service or product. For property development, this breaks down quickly. What mattered to Dolfam was understanding total invested cost per property so they could assess refurbishment efficiency, rental yield, and capital allocation decisions.
Manually splitting invoices inside the accounting system was time consuming and error prone. More critically, payment controls were thin, creating exposure to supplier level risk.
Why Accounting Links
Dolfam selected Accounting Links because it could sit cleanly between operations and accounting rather than forcing compromise on either side.
Invoice approval and payment lived in one system.
Cost allocation could be handled before data hit the ledger.
Controls were explicit rather than assumed.
The decisive factor was the ability to integrate directly with Xero’s tracking categories and apply them at the point of invoice processing, not retrospectively.
The solution
Accounting Links was configured to mirror Dolfam’s project structure.
Each property was mapped to a Xero tracking category.
Invoices could be split and allocated across properties before approval.
Payments were executed only after correct project attribution.
This meant reporting naturally emerged on a per house basis without additional reconciliation work. Finance data reflected how the business actually operated, not how generic accounting software prefers to structure costs.
The integration ensured that once invoices were approved and paid, tracking data flowed straight into Xero, maintaining a single source of truth without duplication.
A critical control failure avoided
One supplier involved in a Dolfam project declined to use the Accounting Links workflow and insisted on operating outside the system.
This decision led to a serious incident.
A large payment was sent to an incorrect bank account.
Significant management time was spent tracing and recovering the funds.
Multiple people were pulled into a problem that should not have existed.
In contrast, suppliers processed through Accounting Links benefited from verified payment details, approval visibility, and reduced scope for human error. The incident made the value of structured AP controls tangible rather than theoretical.
The takeaway was clear. Flexibility without guardrails is not efficiency. It is latent risk.
Outcomes
With Accounting Links in place, Dolfam achieved:
Clear cost reporting on a per property basis.
Reduced manual reconciliation inside Xero.
Improved payment accuracy and accountability.
Stronger controls over supplier bank details.
Most importantly, the finance view of the business aligned with how investment decisions were actually made. Each house could be evaluated as its own unit, with confidence in the underlying data.
Strategic insight
Property businesses sit awkwardly between project accounting and operational finance. Dolfam’s case highlights a broader point.
AP systems optimised for general businesses obscure project economics.
Controls that rely on informal process eventually fail.
Cost allocation must happen upstream, not as a clean up exercise.
Accounting Links proved its value by enforcing structure early, integrating natively with Xero, and preventing avoidable risk rather than merely reporting on it after the fact.
Conclusion
For Dolfam Holdings Limited, Accounting Links delivered more than operational efficiency. It provided financial clarity at the level that actually matters in property investment.
Per house. Per decision. With fewer errors and less wasted effort.
If useful, I can also produce a shortened marketing version, a risk focused version highlighting the payment failure incident, or a property specific template you can reuse across similar clients.