Murphy & Landrigan moves 95% clients onto direct debit in 60 days with Rechargly

Before Rechargly, Murphy & Landrigan were spending serious time untangling subscription payments.

With 400–500 clients, roughly 1,000 Xero files and subscriptions, the firm had built scale, but the billing system hadn’t kept up. Two thirds of subscription payments were wrong in some way.

Now, over 95% of clients are on direct debit, subscription revenue lands upfront each month, and the firm avoided hiring a full-time accounts person just to manage software subscriptions.

At-a-glance stats

• Team size: ~17
• Clients impacted: 400–500
• Xero subscriptions: ~1,000
• Adoption: 95%+ of clients in direct debit within 2 months

Before: What life looked like pre-change

Context

Murphy & Landrigan is a New Plymouth-based chartered accounting firm serving businesses and individuals across New Zealand. As a Xero Platinum Partner, they manage a large volume of client software subscriptions.

The firm was oncharging Xero for hundreds of clients. Payments came in via automatic bank transfers set up by clients themselves.

Old workflow

Each month:

• Around 1,000 subscription-related bank lines hit the feed
• Two-thirds were incorrect
• Staff reconciled discrepancies manually
• Underpayments had to be chased
• Overpayments had to be refunded
• Some subscriptions were paid for but not properly oncharged
  
  

Price increases made it worse. Xero would increase fees. Clients would forget to update their automatic transfers. The mismatch would show up weeks later in the bank feed.

“We were getting like a thousand bank transaction lines a month, and two thirds of them were for the wrong amount, either too much or not enough.” — Patrick Landrigan, Director, Murphy & Landrigan

The trigger

The issue wasn’t effort. The team was working hard. The issue was structure.

Manual payments don’t scale when you manage 1,000+ subscriptions. Reconciliation time ballooned. Cash flow timing was inconsistent and subscription leakage crept in.

“We were just about going to have to hire a full-time accounts person to actually deal with all of this stuff.”” — Patrick Landrigan, Director, Murphy & Landrigan

Instead of adding headcount to patch the problem, they decided to fix the system.

During: How the firm made the change

What they looked for

Murphy & Landrigan evaluated a range of subscription management platforms. The objective was not simply to automate payments, but to find a solution that aligned with their client base and billing model.

The system needed to:

• Support subscription oncharging at scale
• Enable direct debit
• Preserve Xero partner discounts
• Be straightforward for clients to understand
• Make financial sense for clients to adopt

Choosing the right platform for their practice was critical.

Implementation

Rather than introducing the change abruptly, the firm approached the rollout as a structured client transition. Murphy & Landrigan passed on the full 30% Xero discount to clients who moved onto the new system. Clients who chose not to transition could continue with the previous approach but would forgo the discount.

“It automatically became cheaper for them to do this than not to do this.” — Patrick Landrigan, Director, Murphy & Landrigan

This framing positioned the change as a client benefit rather than an admin adjustment.

The rollout included:

• A one-page cover letter
  
• A detailed Q&A document anticipating client concerns
  
• One month’s notice prior to change
  
• Reminder emails one week and a few days before agreements were issued
  
• Step-by-step screenshots showing exactly what the direct debit setup would look like
  
  

The firm also used a monthly team meeting to ensure all staff understood the process and could confidently address client questions. Team feedback helped refine the client-facing Q&A before distribution.

All documentation was centrally stored so responses remained consistent across the firm.

Risk reduction

To reduce complexity, the firm separated billing changes from payment changes. The billing system was adjusted first, and direct debit was introduced in the following month. This staggered approach allowed the team to resolve billing issues before introducing payment automation.

Importantly, the firm limited the rollout to subscription billing only. Accounting fees were deliberately excluded to reduce resistance and maintain clarity.

The new playbook

The updated workflow now operates as follows:

• Subscription billing runs through Rechargly
  
• Clients pay via direct debit
  
• Revenue is collected upfront at month end
  
• Subscription pricing updates no longer rely on clients adjusting their own transfers
  
• Reconciliation of mismatched subscription payments is largely eliminated
  
  

The admin burden associated with subscription billing has been significantly reduced.

After: Results + Proof

What Changed (Before → After)

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“It’s been brilliant. It’s given us efficiency. We’re spending way less time reconciling payments or chasing payments. It’s given us cash flow.” — Patrick Landrigan, Director, Murphy & Landrigan

Day-to-day impact

The team now spends substantially less time reconciling subscription discrepancies and chasing incorrect payments. Month-end processes are cleaner, and subscription revenue is more predictable.

Business impact

The firm avoided hiring a full-time accounts person to manage subscription reconciliation. Cash flow improved because subscription revenue is collected upfront at month end. Profitability increased through better control of subscription on-billing and reduced leakage.

Within two months, over 95% of clients had transitioned to the new system.

Bottom line

Murphy & Landrigan did not simply streamline subscription reconciliation. They redesigned the underlying billing structure so that errors, mismatches and manual corrections were no longer embedded in the process.

By aligning the change with client incentives, investing in structured communication, and phasing implementation carefully, the firm transformed subscription billing from a recurring admin burden into a scalable, predictable system.