Hip Pop: Probiotics and purchase order
From manual entry to fizzing growth at full speed
Tripling your revenue in two years might sound like a dream, but for Hip Pop, the Kombucha brand that's landed shelf space in M&S, Sainsbury's and Boots while also pushing into new EU markets, it’s a reality.
Growth at that pace has a way of stress-testing everything. For Adam, who runs finance at Hip Pop, the past two years have been as much a lesson in procurement process as they have been a commercial triumph.
More shelf space, more moving parts
Hip Pop's wholesale expansion has powered its growth, but each new retail partner adds another layer of operational complexity. Adam is candid about what that looks like from a finance perspective.
“Every time we onboard a new customer, we have to do a full planning session. Think logistically how we're going to manage that, making sure we cross the T's, dot the I's.
“With every bigger customer we have it gets a bit more complex, and there's more things you need to think of.”
Across production, fulfillment, marketing and everything in between, Hip Pop runs a supplier base that reflects the full operational scale of a fast-growing FMCG brand. But that scale comes with a growing reliance on purchase orders (POs) and tighter controls on how spend is approved, tracked and reconciled.
Ensuring invoices match POs, and that they are correctly signed off and paid on time is a non-negotiable at this level of business.
Life before Apron
It wasn’t that Hip Pop’s old process was broken, it just didn’t scale. Up until now, they had been using Xero's own free tools to do invoice capture.
“It didn't always pick up the information correctly,” Adam explains. “It meant the team were having to manually type things out into our bank account to then manually pay.”
With 20–50 invoices moving through the business each week, the challenge wasn’t just volume, it was managing the link between purchase orders and payments, and making sure everything lined up neatly without slowing the team down.
At a stage where Hip Pop's finance function needs to be moving fast and thinking ahead, time lost to manual data entry is time not spent on the questions that actually matter.
A solution, not another complexity
Adam is clear that Apron isn't a procurement tool. What it does is absorb the operational friction around invoices and payments in a way that fits how Hip Pop already works.
“Apron does allow for fast and easy capturing of invoices and tagging of payments that can quickly be settled by the right people.”
Using Apron across the company means paying on time is no longer an issue. Now, the team has the visibility and control they need to effectively operate at a faster pace. And if you don’t know the answer or have an issue, Apron is always on hand.
Adam raves about the quality and speed of Apron’s customer support. “Literally yesterday I had an issue with an invoice and Apron resolved it in about five minutes. You guys are amazing at that.”
More time for what comes next
What automation has given Adam, above all, is headspace. “Having more automated processes just frees up time for more work. It allows me to dive into the figures more deeply — not just seeing profitability from a company-wide level, but diving deep into both profitability by customer or by product.”
For a brand with ten drink formulations currently on the market, and more on the way, that level of detail matters.
It's also changing how Hip Pop plans. “We are forecasting better because we have a faster turnaround on operational tasks, so we can spend time detailing what we expect to happen in the future. That’s the stuff that helps with overall strategy and where Hip Pop is moving towards.”
The day-to-day is still demanding. The growth is still relentless. But with Apron laying the operational groundwork, Adam and the team can finally spend less time catching up and more time looking ahead to what the next two years will bring and how they can continue building their business to meet ever-increasing growth demands.
Are you running a business and seeing operations for supplier payments, payroll and expenses getting out hand? Get started with Apron in minutes.
