The Consulting Stack That Finally “Just Works” - Why Touchstone Chose Avaza After Testing 20+ Tools

Story At-a-Glance

Touchstone spent nearly two years evaluating more than two dozen platforms to replace a fragmented toolset for projects, time, expenses and Xero billing.
Avaza was selected for its intuitive “just works” experience, robust Xero integration and ability to consolidate multiple tools without added complexity.
Today, Touchstone runs proposals, projects, time, expenses and invoicing in Avaza, with a Dext → Avaza → Xero workflow in advanced testing and ongoing collaboration on roadmap features like Gantt constraints and granular tracking.

About Touchstone

Touchstone is a consulting firm operating across New Zealand and Australia, improving organisations’ ways of working through optimised processes, management systems and operating models.

Working with organisations of all sizes across government, defence, data centres, engineering and construction sectors, Touchstone improves how work is governed, delivered and assured across project and programme delivery, information management and security, quality and risk.

Their approach combines ISO-aligned frameworks with automation and AI orchestration to streamline and simplify operations.

“In our previous tool we were not entirely sure how budget was calculated and tracked. Avaza’s simple and straightforward budgeting features allows us to not only see how the financials stack up within running projects, but also allows us to track daily progress on-the-go with widgets.”

What were the challenges?

Before Avaza, Touchstone were managing projects in another well-known platform and invoicing out of Xero. Over time, that setup created a few consistent problems:

Invoices synced to Xero without the correct tax settings, forcing manual edits line by line
Time entries sometimes defaulted to unbillable, making it easy to miss chargeable hours
Project budget reports developed errors with no obvious cause
Everyday navigation felt heavier than it needed to be for a small, busy team

Expenses were also split across tools:

Dext was used for non-project expenses because it integrates well with Xero and handles OCR
A separate tool was used for project-related receipts
Neither pushed cleanly into their project management system, so there was double-handling and room for errors

As their client work grew more complex, this fragmented toolset was becoming harder to trust and maintain.

“In Avaza, things are simple and they just work – much like an Apple or Tesla product – it has the functionality you need and it just ‘works’! It has made managing work a joy for Touchstone. It is intuitive and somehow succeeds where other platforms fail – delivering powerful features that are easy to use. That is rare. Thank you!!!”

Robert Maszkowski - Director

Touchstone spent nearly two years evaluating more than two dozen platforms in search of a solution that met their immediate needs and consolidated multiple existing tools.

Just as importantly, the platform needed to scale with the business over time, avoiding yet another system change in the future.

What mattered most was that the platform was logical and easy to use, delivered strong ROI, offered rich functionality without unnecessary complexity, and remained reliable, competitively priced and well supported.

Above all, it needed to just work.

Why they chose Avaza

Touchstone evaluated Avaza alongside their existing stack and made the switch after a trial and several working sessions with our Customer Success team.

Direct, seamless integration with Xero
They can now issue invoices straight from Avaza and push them into Xero, instead of building invoices in one system and “fixing” them in another.

A cleaner, more intuitive interface
The team described Avaza as feeling like an “Apple or Tesla” product – simple, effective and easy to pick up again after a break.

Consolidation of tools
Estimates, projects, time, expenses and invoicing now live in one place, reducing context-switching and manual reconciliation.

Why they chose Avaza

A single spine for expenses
Rather than abandoning Dext, the goal was to connect it properly: capture receipts in Dext (for OCR and coding), send them into Avaza as expenses, and then flow everything through to Xero.

Avaza’s Customer Success team sat with Touchstone to design and test a Zapier-based Dext → Avaza workflow that fits their real projects and chart of accounts.

Hands-on support in their time zone
Between the in-app AI assistant and ANZ-based human support, they get fast answers and a partner willing to jump into their workspace to test workflows and migrations.

Early impact

Even as a recent customer, Touchstone are already seeing meaningful improvements:

Less friction in billing
Invoicing from Avaza directly into Xero has removed a lot of manual adjustments and failure points from their billing process. This has given the team confidence that every invoice issued is accurate.

Simpler time management
Timesheets are easier for the team to use, and admin impersonation makes it straightforward to correct or backfill entries during migration.

A more coherent toolset
With project work, communication and billing closer together, they’re less reliant on a patchwork of separate apps and spreadsheets.

Dext automation in advanced testing
Together with their Avaza Account Manager, they’ve reconfigured their Dext account (via their bookkeeper), rebuilt the Zapier connection, and are now in the final stages of testing a Dext → Avaza expenses workflow.

Once fully rolled out, this will let them:

- capture receipts in Dext
- have expenses land automatically against the right projects in Avaza, and
- push everything through to Xero with far less manual entry

“We now use Avaza to manage client engagements, including proposals, time, expenses and invoicing… It allows us to track project progress and health. It has simplified our software stack and project management in general. We love Avaza's simplicity and intuitive user experience, which combines fantastic ease of use with powerful functionality.”

Robert Maszkowski

Director

Co-designing the next layer of value

Touchstone’s team has also been very open about where they want Avaza to go next. Together, we’re exploring stronger Gantt capabilities and more granular tracking.

These discussions feed directly into our product roadmap. For us, Touchstone isn’t just a customer story – they’re a design partner helping us make Avaza a better fit for consulting and programme-driven businesses.