When Nelli and Juri Hegi moved into their coastal New South Wales home in Gerringong, they were excited to go furniture shopping — until they couldn’t find anything they liked.
So Nelli started sketching. That was the beginning of Hegi Design House, a contemporary design brand that specialises in sculpted, minimalist furniture and is well known for experimenting with unexpected and innovative materials.
In its second year of business, Hegi Design House has quickly amassed a devoted following all over the world. Founder and designer Nelli now runs the business using MYOB Business Lite. With ambitious goals to expand overseas and become Australia’s premier design studio, she’s confident its systems will be able to scale with it.
"MYOB Business Lite was the right choice for our growing business. It has allowed us to simplify and automate daily admin tasks, giving us the freedom and time to focus on our future."
- Nelli Hegi, Founder and designer, Hegi Design House
Too many manual processes
Spreadsheets not enough for fast-growing business
Like many start-ups, Nelli started tracking income and expenses using a spreadsheet. While it did the job, it was a manual process that became more and more time-consuming as the business grew. As a creative person, Nelli says “it was always the last thing I wanted to be doing”.
“The bigger we’ve grown, the less time I have. So, I knew we needed to find a more strategic, efficient way to run the business – and that’s where MYOB Business Lite comes in.”
Fit-for-purpose now – and in the future
MYOB highly recommended by accountant
Nelli says the decision to purchase MYOB was easy.
She’d researched a few products on her own, but her accountant suggested MYOB — and she noticed the improvements almost immediately.
“We trialled MYOB Business Lite, and it just worked perfectly,” she says.
“The set-up was smooth, and we haven’t had any glitches since. It’s crazy to think we ever ran the business without it.”
Scale with one connected platform
Easy expense management
One of Nelli’s first tasks was to link the business bank account to MYOB Business Lite. That significantly reduced her data entry workload and added automatic reconciliation functionality. She can now track all income and expenses using filters — without any manual calculations. She can also capture expenses on the go, allowing the MYOB software to reconcile them with its bank transactions.
“I’d go crazy if I had to enter all that manually now,” she says.
Aside from the satisfaction of putting away her spreadsheets, Nelli says having an all-in-one system has made her life easier — and keeps her accountant happy.
“This has been the biggest change since we started using MYOB Business Lite,” she says.
"It’s not only saved me a huge amount of time, but my accountant can also easily access our MYOB files, and I don’t have to worry about the process. It means I can focus more on sales and design."
Accurate, automated online payroll
Before MYOB, Nelli admits that payroll was a disaster. Everything was manual, from calculating tax and superannuation, to creating and sending payslips, and manually uploading ATO information.
“There are so many bits to payroll, and it was a huge part of my admin headache,” she says.
MYOB makes it easy to manage payroll from anywhere, on any device. She also loves that the software does all the heavy lifting and gives her peace of mind knowing that the company is meeting its STP and ATO obligations.
“Basically, I just type in the hours for each employee, and MYOB calculates the rest for me.”
Small business, big goals
With MYOB Business Lite, Nelli believes Hegi Design House has entered a new era. She’s able to fit business admin around her work and life commitments rather than the other way around. She only wishes she’d made the leap to MYOB sooner.
“My advice to any start-up is to invest wisely in things that will make your life easier long-term,” she says.
“If I’d known that a year ago, I would have purchased MYOB straight away.”
Nelli says this is only the beginning of the journey with MYOB. As Hegi Design House continues to grow, she’s looking forward to adding more functionality as it’s needed, like budgeting, forecasting and planning.
"The next step is using that data to see how we can grow the business, and MYOB will help us achieve that."
Hegi Design House: the queen of sculptural furniture design
Small, fast-growing brand in Gerringong.
Founded in 2020 by Nelli and Juri Hegi. The team has almost tripled in two years.
Local and international customer base across Australia, the US, Japan, and Dubai.
Improvements with MYOB Business Lite
Accurate, automated online payroll
Single, connected system designed to grow with your business
Better visibility of cashflow
Do business anywhere, on any device
Automated quote reminders support sales
Ready to scale: can add features and functionality when needed
