The problem

Rural Homes Group Limited, a subsidiary of Royal Homes Limited, manages multiple construction projects at the same time, building houses and markets across Nigeria with a team of roughly 55 core staff and up to 100, including contract workers.

Every project generates the same weekly cycle for money movement: labour has to be paid daily, contractors need settlement, and site work can't pause for finance to get organised.

Before Bujeti, most of those payments were handled manually and almost entirely on cash.

Every week, project teams prepared payment memos for labour, contractors and site expenses, printed them, and moved them between departments for sign-off. Once approved, someone travelled to the bank to withdraw cash for disbursement — every week, across every active project. 

“We literally had to go to the bank all the time to make withdrawals. It was time-consuming, record-keeping became an issue,  reconciliation was difficult, and there were safety concerns with carrying cash."

— Lidadi Bassey, Head of Admin & HR.

When funds were needed urgently, the team sometimes routed money through a staff member's personal account, then requested bank statements afterwards to reconcile payments. It worked, but it left finance with no real-time visibility and was even harder to audit.

As Rural Homes took on more projects, the manual process didn't scale with it. Finance was spending more time processing payments than actually managing them.

The solution

Rural Homes adopted Bujeti to bring structure to how project funds move through the business. Today, every active project has a budget set up in Bujeti from the start. When a team needs funds — for daily labour, site materials, or contractor payments — they request against that budget directly on the platform, managers approve digitally, and payments are made.

Bujeti provided one system that could bring together budgets, approvals, payments and reporting, and real-time visibility into project spending—allowing finance to maintain control while keeping construction work moving.

“Every disbursement that requires approval is done within minutes; managers can see and review transactions, and there are records for every payment.”

— Lidadi Bassey, Head of Admin & HR

The difference was immediate. Instead of preparing a memo, printing it, sending it for approval, waiting for feedback, and then going to the bank, the team now works through a single digital workflow.

Each request follows a structured approval chain. Managers get notified instantly, review the request, and approve digitally. Once approved, the payment is disbursed directly from the platform — no printed memo, no bank queue, no chasing anyone for a statement afterwards

The impact

From a 3-hour bank run to a 15-minute approval

3–4 hours saved every day. The biggest operational win was eliminating the daily bank trip entirely. "Going to the bank, joining the queue, coming back, making manual payments, and reconciling everything could easily take three to four hours," Lidadi says. With budgets already set up in Bujeti, that entire cycle disappears.

Around ₦200,000 saved monthly

With daily bank runs gone, transportation and related operational costs dropped by roughly ₦10,000 per trip, and about ₦50,000 a week.

Approvals now take 15–30 minutes

Previously, a payment request moved from a handwritten memo, to print, to physical sign-off, to the bank — often taking most of a working day. With budgets already set up in Bujeti, the team simply raises a request and gets notified as soon as it is approved.

“Now it’s pretty seamless; you can do what you need to do in about 15 to 30 minutes.”

— Lidadi Bassey, Head of Admin & HR

Zero suspected fraud incidents since adoption. With every disbursement recorded and every manager able to review transactions directly, Rural Homes has had no incidents of suspected fraud since moving off cash. "The line manager has direct oversight over everything; you're very sure the transactions are accurate." Lidadi Bassey

Complete visibility across project spending

For Rural Homes, visibility became the biggest long-term benefit. “It has really helped with visibility; you can clearly see what you need to spend, what you’re spending it on, and exactly where it’s coming from.” Lidadi Bassey, Head of Admin & HR

Even small daily payments that used to be difficult to track are now visible to managers in real time.

Reporting that used to take days now takes minutes.
Lidadi says the biggest personal win has been reporting and reconciliation. "If I want to know expenses from last month, how many people were paid, or how many times a particular person was paid, it's easy — because everything is in one place," Lidadi says. The finance team no longer spends hours collecting paper records or requesting account statements from staff before compiling a report.

Better coordination between finance and operations

The new workflow also changed how teams work together. “Everybody knows what role they are playing now, the process is easier, approvals are faster, and we all want to finish on time and leave the office.”

Because the workflow is visible to everyone involved, finance, operations, and project managers spend less time following up and more time executing work.

Looking ahead

Rural Homes continues to expand its construction portfolio, and transaction volumes are expected to grow with it. Lidadi sees the platform holding up well as the business scales, and the company is exploring a deeper partnership with Bujeti around access to business credit as more projects come online.

Asked how she'd describe Bujeti to another real estate operator, her answer is direct:

"It helps you streamline your processes, move from manual to digital, and improve your oversight. It really makes the work easier."

— Lidadi Bassey, Head of Admin & HR, Rural Homes Group Limited