All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
Managing Tech Spend and Price Hikes
Ready to conquer the wild world of tech budgets? Join Amy & AJack as they guide you through the tricky terrain of tech spend—figuring out when it's worth the investment and when it's just draining your bank account.
In this episode, they’ll tackle questions like:
- Is your tech budget a necessary evil or the key to success?
- How can you milk those free trials for all they’re worth?
- Should I bundle tech costs into annual engagements?
- How do I communicate tech price hikes to my clients?
- What’s the secret sauce to onboarding apps and actually making them work for you?
Amy and Jack break down real-world strategies for squeezing every cent of value from your tech stack—without going overboard and highlight the tech tools currently available to help keep your tech costs under control.
Tune in for a fun, info-packed chat where cost concerns meet strategic investments—and learn how to keep your business humming in the face of rising prices!
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Content Snare | Organised content and document collection without the back and forth. Stop getting lost in emails, messy hacked-together systems and confusing shared docs. Content Snare is like a checklist for your clients with automatic reminders
Ignition | Spending days engaging clients? Chasing late payments? Dealing with scope creep? We get it. Ignition helps accounting and professional services businesses reclaim time, profitability and cash flow. Automate proposals, billing, payments and workflows in a single platform
Planet Consulting | We work with firm owners and managers who want to run better businesses and achieve their version of success. We have the experience and knowledge to help you get clear on what that success looks like for you and support and guide you on the journey to achieve it.
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MUSIC
ENTENTE (@ententemusic) | Instagram
PRODUCTION
David Easton (@davidjeasty) | Insta...
Hey, jack hey.
Speaker 2:Amy.
Speaker 1:How you doing buddy.
Speaker 2:I'm doing good, I'm doing great, I'm feeling wealthy.
Speaker 1:Wealthy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Money, money money.
Speaker 1:Amazing Money, money, money. Can I feel wealthy with you?
Speaker 2:You can Money money, money. No, I'm not. I'm not at all, but it was a good way to start the conversation. I'm not at all, but it was a good way to start the conversation, because today we're talking about managing tech spend, which I think is a very hot topic, and the more tech we're all using, the more money we're spending on it, I guess.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So are you still feeling wealthy or are you feeling poor now? Depending on the outcome of that, then, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Let's not get into it, let's not go down there. I'm feeling, okay, I'm feeling content.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good.
Speaker 1:I get a lot of firms actually coming to me these days, and one of the reasons why they're coming to us is because they're wanting to do a bit of a deep dive and understand. They just feel like they're spending so much money on their tech and they're like we feel like we're spending so much money and, you know, are we getting the value out of it and all the rest of those things. And look, my standard answer to this is usually yes, because that's the way of the world these days.
Speaker 3:To be fair.
Speaker 1:What else are you spending your money on, apart from the human beings and the tech, and maybe the you know, apart from the human beings and the tech, and maybe the you know the four walls and a roof that your office resides in. It's the cost of doing business, I feel for most. You know for this industry more than anything, oh, absolutely.
Speaker 2:And I kind of like I imagine there's people who come to you with this question, at very different levels of the spectrum as well, where you might look at one and say you think that's a lot, you should see this, yeah, and you see, you get others who you who are like wow, that is a lot, maybe we need to look at this. You know that's a yeah, so like, yeah, I think everyone has a different perspective on this and, uh, some see it more as a cost, others see it more as an investment, some are like, oh, you know, it's basically an fte of mine. You know, I expect to be 70, 80 grand a year on tech for my firm, because I think it saves me a human If I got rid of all my tech. It's going to take at least one person in addition to everyone else to do all of this, probably a lot more than one, so yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean what do you do?
Speaker 1:I wholeheartedly agree with that. I personally see it as an investment into the business. I don't see it as a cost, apart from this one app that we pay for in our business, where every month I look at it and I go, oh, do we still need that? Yes is the answer to that. But apart from that, every other app and we have a lot of apps that we use in our business and no doubt you guys do internally for running your business. I think every business in this industry, I think every business these days, doesn't matter what industry you're in, I think we all use a lot of apps. It's just the way of the world. Like, when was the last time you counted the number of apps that you had on your phone? Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2:I mean, I just have to look at my bookmarks bar on my browser, because I've just got all of my core apps, and there's just like 15 logos there all lined up, because these are the ones that I use on a regular basis, you know.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not all subscriptions, some are free. Yeah agreed with that. On the topic of which, when it comes to apps, though, how are we signing up for new apps? Like, what's the process? When it comes to signing up for new apps, let's go right back to the beginning. We can talk about the cost of them, but let's go right back to the beginning and why you know what happens when we basically want to sign up for a new app.
Speaker 2:Well, I think I think you're right. Cause cause to break this problem down of you know. Hey, I'm spending too much on my tech stack. It's like, well, what do you? What do you? What? To sign up? What is your process to get the most out of it? What is your process to review? What is your process to, you know, remove an app down the line if you're not using it anymore? So I mean, from a signing up perspective, it's it's a hard one because I think there's absolutely people who are too focused on cost and it gets in their own way because they've got 16 because they won't spend the money approval to get a new piece of tech implemented, or like the cost of it approved.
Speaker 2:Um, you know, and they need to see. You know, I don't know just every single. It just needs to be the biggest home run in the whole world, and if it doesn't have one, feature then it just throws the whole. Thing out.
Speaker 1:That's it, yeah. And if it doesn't have one feature, then it just throws the whole thing out. It's like that's it, yeah, and they'd almost rather throw a human being at the problem to solve the problem, rather than take the app, which is going to be more cost-effective in the long run we're talking about those.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think there's still people out there who are seeing it, like, well, I've got someone doing this manually today. Yeah, your app sounds great. Or some app sounds great manually today. Uh, yeah, your app sounds great, or some app sounds great. Like literally, it sounds great, looks like it's going to do what that person's doing. But do I really? I don't have anything to repurpose them onto. I don't have other work for them. I don't think I'm going to win a new client to fill them up, so therefore I may as well just keep this person doing that job. It's like, well, I mean number one, which is absolutely.
Speaker 1:That is, in my opinion, the craziest thing in today's market, especially in this industry. Like every accounting practice that I speak to is screaming for decent, quality team, even team. Some of them are actually not even picky choosy about whether they're decent or quality Like, they just want some team.
Speaker 2:But that's the thing is like, even if it's not about efficiency. If that person's banging their head on the wall every day because they're like this sucks, doing this manually sucks, then they're gonna leave. So I mean as much of like I just I know I work in tech, so like I'm obviously biased because I think it's just, I think it's like a great outcome and I've been to business around tech so biased as well yeah, mean, this is the tech podcast. What do you expect?
Speaker 2:If you came here, ready for us to tell you not to spend money on tech? You're crazy.
Speaker 4:Yeah, pretty much.
Speaker 2:But yes, I still think so. There's people on the other side of the spectrum as well where they get a little bit too loose with it, where you know they just sign up to everything up to everything, but it's not like that's the problem.
Speaker 1:Bright, shiny object syndrome yeah, oh my god that looks so pretty. I want that.
Speaker 2:Oh my god, that tool's so cool I want that, and then they end up with you know way too much stuff and they're not using it, and I think that's the problem. I don't actually mind like, hey, let's commit to this, let's go, let's sign up, let's give it a crack, but then be quick to review it and be like, look, three months later we didn't actually use this as much as we thought we were going to, or shoot, we didn't find the time to actually train the team on this or commit the way that we wanted to. So you know, I think if you're implementing a new app every month, there's no way you can get everyone up to speed on it all. But I can appreciate that level of energy and effort to be like hey, I don't want to hold anyone back. If you need that tool, sign up tomorrow. Here's my card, chuck it in and let's go, but put in your calendar three months time from now to review that if you're not using it.
Speaker 1:I think the same analogy could be used with the hiring process of human beings when it comes to new apps. Hire slow, fire fast. Same concept Spend your time doing the research. Don't spend so much time that it's. You know that you get bogged down. But you know, do some research, make sure it's the right app, but if it's not, get rid of it yeah and I mean I think, on that.
Speaker 2:Like apps offer 30-day free trials, and I know this because I we have this. We have 30-day free trial and it's like it's there for you to use everything for the whole month, and what do you get? You get two logins a month, or something like that, and then people are trying to commit whether or not they want to pay for it. And then they do pay for it. So they're like, they want it, they just don't commit the time to it, they don't have the capacity, and then they sign up for it.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, you're right. So I appreciate people are busy, but it's, you know, I guess all of this it's priorities?
Speaker 1:yeah, definitely, and that's also to be said in relation to uh. Free trial periods. Most apps will be if you have, if you've shown a genuine interest or you know you either haven't had time or you might have only logged in once or twice in your trial period but you're still really keen and interested.
Speaker 1:I mean, don't jerk the app around by stringing them along and just asking for extensions on your trial period, but most apps will actually be quite lenient and will provide them for you. Yeah, so you know it's fair use policy when it comes to getting your I guess your free trial period extended, but most of them will. So if you are concerned about oh, I've only got two weeks, this one's only given me seven days. Whatever it is, most apps are pretty lenient and they'll give you an extension.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, if it's getting to the end of a trial period with us, like, I always send an email out to say, hey, looks like you haven't fully got up and running yet. Do you want to book a time? Let's have a chat and when we do that I can give you a little bit more time on your trial. So, yeah, you're absolutely right. So that's signing up for apps. I think having a bit of a process around that research to kind of be like hey, let's assess some options, let's give them a try, let's understand what we're actually trying to achieve with this. What's the pain point? You know all this kind of stuff. And then let's make sure that we tech I think you do want to have a relatively good.
Speaker 2:It's kind of rare, I think, that an app's actually more expensive than its output. Usually speaking, it's hugely in your favour, so long as you spend a little bit of time to get 10%, 15% of its maximum value out of it, because apps are pretty cheap in comparison when we talk business expenses. So that's signing up. Yeah, we've started to get into that. Then maximizing value piece so once you've committed to an app and you're like, cool, signing up, paying for it, part of managing your tech spend is managing the roi that you're going to get from that spend so how do we make sure that we're maximizing the value of each app that we've got?
Speaker 1:Yeah, review them regularly. That would be my first thing. Review them from, not only from the perspective of the functionality. Is there crossover between one app and another app that you're using in the business? Or is there crossover between one app that you've got and one that you're considering because you think that this new one that you're considering would be better for you, for whatever reason, really actually like review them regularly in terms of you know the functionality and the features and spend some time actually learning about them.
Speaker 1:You know, where possible, I would definitely try and designate a you know an app guru, you know a champion within the office that might actually, you know, be really quite passionate about it, but also give them the opportunity to have a voice about new features that are coming out, so that they can share them with the team, so that the team can then start adopting those new features and the functionality as well. Right, so that's the first thing I think in relation to reviewing regularly. The other one that I see on a regular is are you paying for the right level of apps, like? Have you had team members leave? Have you had team members come on board? Can you reduce the number of seats, like are you paying for the correct amount of licenses? That's a big one. Like do you have a process in place to ensure that if a team member leaves, that you're actually off-boarding licenses and things like that? That's another way of reducing spend off-boarding, licenses and things like that.
Speaker 2:That's another way of reducing spend. Um, I I feel like. I think I feel like there's twofold as well in, in essence, around getting set up in the early stages. I think reviewing regularly is something that I don't think people do well enough, but I think there is a reality of however far you get with an app in the first three months. Is as far as you get with that app like basically, because people seem to care a lot about an app when they're first signing up to it. They play around with it, they watch the videos, they do the training sessions, they go on the demos, they watch the master classes and then whatever they've got to after three months becomes the workflow.
Speaker 2:That is how we use this tool. We've built some policies around it, we've got some procedures documented. So any changes to this you know it's a big project. So I'm like that first three months is key making sure you've got the right people in the right places, the right buy-in, the team invested and you get the most out of the app. You set it up as best you can in that first three months and I think then you'll you'll reap benefits of that for the next three, five years while you're using the tool. Yes, the tool will release new features. Yes, you won't be using all of it long-term, but that's on.
Speaker 2:I think that's also on the app.
Speaker 2:So I think, as a tech person, it's my job a little bit to be like I need to get in your face every maybe three months and be like hey look, here's what's changed, here's how we might be able to help or what the new features are that might be relevant, because you're busy.
Speaker 2:I get that, and it's in our best interest to make sure that you are getting even more value out of the product so that over the course of time, if things change, you still feel satisfied that you're getting monthly subscriptions. I got to win my customer every single month. We got to keep adding value. We got to keep making that tool better and that app better. So I think there's definitely the first three months a little bit on you to make sure you really invest and get the buy-in in the team. After that, the apps should be doing what they can to make sure that you stay in touch with what's going on. And then I think the really good firms are also go and have their own review process where they say are we really using this the way that we need to?
Speaker 1:I think, Jack, you need to come and speak to some of my clients about that. That was really good. I might direct them to get them to listen to this little episode.
Speaker 2:Yeah, just get them to listen to this, that's it.
Speaker 1:Reviewing regularly, though, yes, and I really do agree with that first three-month thing. And or, like my other analogies, you only ever use about 10 of the full functionality of an app and there's so much capability of apps, which I appreciate does mean that you sometimes need to change your processes and your procedures, and sometimes that's a really big thing and it can be really frustrating, but it's yeah, in order to maximize the value. Just, we all talk about it, but maybe find some time, dedicate some time dedicate. If you don't personally have the time, dedicate a champion in your office to spend a little bit of time and give them the freedom to actually go and, you know, report back. But put some parameters around that as well. That would be my takeaway.
Speaker 2:I've got a few other things I want to mention, but I reckon let's break now. Have a listen to our sponsors and we'll be right back.
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Speaker 2:So we've discussed signing up for new outs, we've discussed maximizing the value from the outs we sign up to. I then also think you know, as is managing tech spend. I think it includes managing price changes, and this goes hand in hand with how you as a business are, I suppose, opting to whether deciding around absorbing tech costs or on charging tech costs. So there's obviously practice costs, which I think should obviously be worn by the practice. So if you're using Content Snare to send out forms to your clients to request documents, that's for you. You're not charging a client. You're not going to on-charge the cost of a software like that to your client.
Speaker 2:But if you're using something like Xero, which they might be logging into each and every day, then there's probably a good argument to be on-charging that to your client. But this is different. Different firms have different perspectives on this stuff. Some are like look, you pay me my fee that includes these apps. Others say, look, you pay me my fee and I will send you an invoice separately for the cost of the tools that we're using to complete that work and that you'll have access to yourself. And I think this is like the two kinds of accountants. There's like different mindsets here, and so what I see this is like the two kinds of accountants. There's like different mindsets here, and so what I see this is where things get really polarizing is when an app changes their prices. So zero's gone through this recently. Dexter's been through it before, I'm sure you know. Tons of other apps have changed their prices too, and you end up with the whole kids going through it.
Speaker 1:At the moment they're going through it as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, a whole bunch of people end up really annoyed and a whole bunch of people are like eh, you know, didn't really notice, eh whatever, or yeah, that's great, that makes complete sense.
Speaker 1:Exactly, you know. I think that you know where this is. The most polarizing, in my personal opinion, for this industry, for the accounting industry, is merchant fees. Do you on-charge them? Yeah, merchant fees. Do you absorb them, the merchant fees, or do you make the clients pay for the merchant fees? That seems to be quite a polarizing one as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where I'm thinking as a buyer, as a customer. I'm like I just don't want to pay another fee, but I'll pay the same amount, like just include it in the price so that I don't feel like I'm getting another fee.
Speaker 1:you know Exactly.
Speaker 2:We're talking about probably thousands of dollars of accounting fees here. Like, do you really need to add on another tiny? You know?
Speaker 1:Do you really need a couple of bucks?
Speaker 1:Seriously, yeah, no, I'm with you on that one, but you know there are a lot of firms out there that are very disgruntled by the fact that they might have to absorb the merchant fee. So that's why I'm saying that is one of the that that, in my opinion, is probably the most polarizing. But you might like, in relation to the, do you on charge or do you absorb the two? The two better examples being like, for example, you know your zero subscriptions. For example, do you on charge at all? The likes of like the Dext, like that's something, a tool that is for the client but also for you. So do you make the client pay for that? Do you pay for that? They're some really good examples, but you know, I think there are yeah, there's different opinions on this. There's just different opinions, and you as a business. My only advice on this is, whichever path that you select and you might have a different opinion, jack, and different things to say but just be consistent either on charge for all or don't. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 2:Like just be consistent. I think people, as is quite common in our profession, you know, we want to give the client everything. We want to be, you know, overly nice and helpful.
Speaker 1:Yes, we would like to be a charity.
Speaker 2:Exactly. And so part of that I think is fearing, like no, I don't want to add a cost for the software, I'll wear it, you know, kind of. But I think the most efficient firms that I've seen are very clear up front to say these are my fees, these are the tools we're going to use and it's going to be on charge to you the cost, and I think people are fine with it.
Speaker 2:They're like you know, as long as it's a piece of tech that they can use and they're benefiting from as well, and to them they're wrapping it up in the cost of doing their accounting.
Speaker 2:They're like, cool makes sense, but it's such a big issue when you've worn all of these costs and there's a price increase, well, now you're going to wear the entirety of that price increase, whereas when it's being on charge to a client, you know to them it's a minor price increase because it's just one app that's gone up and not you know, 3,000 licenses that have all gone up on the same day. So I think there's some risk management there. I think, if you're just better at not suggesting people aren't, but if you are having trouble with this, to try and improve your communication up front and try and package these things up so that it's it's in your favor. Um, you know you're doing so much for these people, so you know the minimum the standard here is. I think just they're going to be fine with it. Just don't package up an app and on charge an app they're not going to see or use. Um, because it makes your life easier.
Speaker 2:I think that's kind of where I draw the line and say if you're using a tool behind the scenes that makes your practice more efficient but doesn't really not client facing, they're not going to see it, they're not going to use it. I don't think you want to charge those ones because the client might be like but unless if you want me to pay for that, then am I expecting my fee to come down because it's now more efficient for you? And if you're not planning to do that, then I kind of think it's. You know, keep your fee the same, use the tech to make yourself more efficient, and then you, you keep the difference.
Speaker 1:I agree, 100% agreed with that. If it's client facing, you have the conversation, be transparent and get the client to you know pay for it. That would be my thought process, so you don't end up absorbing the price hikes, for example.
Speaker 2:I'm glad we sort of that. So many people here listening just like oh, that sounds easy guys. All right, I'll go change all of that. I'm going to change all my clients tomorrow and my life's going to be better. Thanks, amy and jack. Um, yeah, so, yeah, easy, cool well obviously not that easy.
Speaker 2:um, I mean, we'll talk about tools and stuff from a tech perspective that you can use for, you know, making sure that your bundles are set up correctly. But I mean, how do you communicate this stuff with clients? I mean, let's say, price changes, let's say there's a big price hike with one of the apps, you're on charging it and how do you deal with that? How would you communicate that?
Speaker 1:A good old fashioned email, a phone call, a you know what. Send a carrier pigeon if you really felt the need to Send a written letter I mean, you know we're talking about tech here so possibly an email or a newsletter of sorts like an EDM, if nothing, have a phone call with them, it depends. It depends on what the price hike actually is but a blanketed communication. Regardless of how you do this, you must communicate the changes. That's going to be my one-on-one point around this is communicate it in some way, shape or fashion, do it consistently, do it in the most efficient way possible and then be ready to deal with probably about 5% of your client base having a bit of backlash, give or take.
Speaker 1:Yep Makes sense Give or take right, but there's nothing you can really do about that. Most clients will you know, as we said before probably won't even bat an eyelid and just go yeah, yeah, it's just like yep, we live in Australia, another price hike, sorry.
Speaker 2:And I mean I think as well, usually you'll be told ahead of time usually that there's going to be a price increase, so you can get ahead on it as well. So I think that's a smart move is to be like hey guys, we can see that this price is going to change, just letting you know, just keeping you in the loop, so that when tell them it's going to happen and then when it does happen, they've already kind of mentally prepared for it, so it's not like a surprise. So I think that's good.
Speaker 1:When the app actually does the, because the app will let you know that there's going to be a price hike, right, and then it's up to you to obviously pass on that price hike to your clients effectively. Let's pretend I'm just using Xero as an example here. They will let you know. First, use their words, use their content, reshape it so it makes like, so it makes it sound like, it's coming from you. But you know they've already kind of done a legwork, because they've usually said, hey, this is what's happening, this is why it's happening. What does this mean for you? How does this impact you? Like they've already done all that for you. So use their words, just reframe them.
Speaker 2:And I think it's very fair to also, you know, add from your own perspective to say, look, you know, the price has increased and we've considered whether or not it's still the best app in the market for its price. We've decided it is because if it isn't, then you might change apps. You know, and I think that's good. It shows that like, hey, you know, we're aware that the price has increased, we're always considering options here. We're always looking at what whether it's accounting softwares or receipt capture software or whatever software we're talking about, it's like we're looking into it. We're always looking into it. This is still the best app, it's still the best value for money. So we say we suggest it's not a problem and we suggest just continuing on with it. So, yeah, cool, I think problem, and we suggest just continuing on with it.
Speaker 1:So, um, yeah, cool. Um, I think there's a bit of a process so in terms of how to manage it. So obviously you need to communicate. You know the the um, the price hike to your clients. That's step one, but then there's the actual, like logistical. How do you actually do that price hike, depending on what you're doing?
Speaker 1:And I think this all comes down to how you're currently billing, what your billing methodology is for those clients. So, if you are on charging and charging your clients for the apps basically if you're using something like Ignition or if you're using, you know, recurring invoices in Xero, ultimately you have to make those changes and you need to go through those processes. I know, for example, if it's Ignition, the team there will support you through that. They have full processes documented on how to do price hikes for different apps and things like that, so they're awesome at helping you out with that. If you're using Xero, if you're using one of the other accounting apps, in relation to recurring invoices and things like that, it's as simple as going through and methodically changing each one.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Pretty simple stuff, basically. And then, yeah, just communicate it. Transparency is key here with your clients. Nothing pisses off a client more than not being transparent. If they don't know, then you know that's when they get gnarky with you. But if you've informed them, had conversations, we all accept it and we all move on. Basically, I guess had conversations we all accept it.
Speaker 1:We all move on, basically. I guess a bigger question, though, is do you think that there's ever a time when the price hike is so high that you're just like nah, I'm done, I don't want to pay for this anymore. I don't even want to get my client to pay for it anymore. Like it's so the price hike is so ridiculous that it's just not worth it I mean, I'm sure there is a point.
Speaker 2:Um you know, if an app that cost me $5 a month suddenly wants to charge me $10,000 a month, that's too far.
Speaker 3:Fair, so that means there's somewhere in between where that becomes a problem.
Speaker 2:I imagine it would be like, over the course of time, right, you'd get a few price increases and say, great, that's fine, I still think it's good value. At some point, you're going to start to question that, and so I'm not sure it's worth it now. But the cost of changing I have to consider as well, because I think that happens. I think you get to a point where you're like look, I'm not sure I fully see the value at this new price point, but changing is going to cost me as well time, effort, mental energy, maybe it doesn't work out. So I have to consider that on top and say you know what? That's the value of that app for them being sticky and being, you know, in my tech stack and, having got there first, the next price increase or one after that.
Speaker 2:At some point, though, it's going to tip in the other favor and say you know what? It's now so far overpriced that it's not worth it and it's worth me taking the time to invest in another tool. So I think yes is the answer that there is a point, but if it's something as core as your accounting software like Xero, as much as a price increase doesn't sound good. The idea of changing from Xero to something else, especially when I don't think there's really a better option out there for the vast majority of small businesses. I mean it sucks, but it's. You know, that's where we're at. You know, some people I speak to as well around zero, like it's been so cheap for so long.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, you know it's all relative but it's still not that expensive if we think about you know costs of doing business more broadly, but for some people for some people it will be small businesses that don't have a lot of cash to spend are starting to probably say, hey, is this? Should I go down the $5 ledger approach with?
Speaker 2:another app and then you know you get enough clients who are saying, look guys, I can't do zero anymore. Approach with another app. And then you know you get enough clients who are saying, look guys, I I can't do zero anymore. As a firm, you have to start to be like okay, cool, we're getting too many clients we're losing because we're zero only, or whatever that's.
Speaker 1:I guess that's how things shift and I guess that's also when new apps come into the market, and you know, there's enough grumbling around price hikes and differentiators and things like that, and that's when other players come into the market. And yeah, that's what I guess. That's what I love about this industry so much especially the accounting industry and all the tech that's associated with it is there is so much choice out there. Whether it's the right fit for you or not is another matter, but at least you've got choice.
Speaker 2:At least you're not stuck with. You know you have three apps and that is it. Bad luck. You know you're stuck. Yeah, that's right, that's good, that's right, that's right, uh. So I mean, last thing on this topic, uh, is the tech tools that you can use. Tech tools that you can use to kind of help manage this. So you mentioned ignition, so obviously you can use ignition to update your prices.
Speaker 2:You can use it to you know, bundle things so that your price includes the apps, or split it out so it's clear what each app is going to cost. On you know, on a proposal, um. There's some other tools out there, so one called huddled uh is australian based tool, um, and that, basically, is an app that helps you manage your software subscription costs.
Speaker 2:So go in there, sign up, connect all of your subscriptions and then it just gives you a central place to kind of be like how many subscriptions do we have right now? And I think it goes further than that, suggesting potentially like hey, maybe you don't need this app if you've got this one, or there's new pricing here or there or whatever. So it helps you to kind of track and manage and optimize your software spend. And I think connected to Huddled is in the same team, same people is an app called Rechargely, which is focused on accounting firms, which is specifically for recharging app costs to clients. So I haven't used it myself, but if you're doing a lot of on charging of costs, if you're not doing it via Ignition, then it could potentially be something to look at doing.
Speaker 1:The other one is AppVentory, which is a new player in the market, by the same guys that have done Coach Bar. Appventory is you connect it up to your accounting platform and you connect it up to either your Google Drive or your Microsoft license and it basically tracks all of the expenditure on the apps from your Xero file. That's the first thing, but then it also tracks what you're logging into as well, so it does a marry-up and it's pretty cool actually. So the way that they're developing that platform, watch this Space I got pretty excited about it when I saw it when I was over in the UK at the I can't remember what conference was I at, anyway when I was in the UK recently and, yeah, adventry was pretty damn exciting.
Speaker 1:From what that's going to be doing, it will allow you to for your clients actually not just you to see your app spend and how you're using it. It will also then possibly allow you to see some gaps and basically come up with ideas on another service item of other clients and where they could be potentially adding apps to their tech stack.
Speaker 1:So it kind of does both basically Cool, all right, interesting.
Speaker 2:And then, lastly, were like the bank cards kind of I mean banks, overseas cards kind of apps. So we're talking about your Airwallexes, wises, ofxs, even Wheel. So if you've got one of those, or using one of those, something to think about there is if you're signing up for an app that's, you know, based overseas UK, us, somewhere else, and they're charging you in a foreign currency US dollars, pounds, whatever it is if you spin up a card that actually has some of that currency on it and you pay in that currency, you might be able to save a little bit on fees. And the other thing there is being able to kind of spin up a card purely for a certain subscription. So that way, you know, I've got this wheel card that's just for my, you know, zero subscriptions, and then anytime I want, I can cancel that card and it doesn't impact my day-to-day, it doesn't impact my day-to-day.
Speaker 1:It doesn't impact my business. It just cancels that subscription. Really, airwallex does the international currency ones quite well. Similar concept, but they do the international currencies, which is quite good from that perspective.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I think that's a good place to wrap it.
Speaker 1:Amy, definitely We've covered a lot today. In today's, I mean, nobody likes price hikes. Nobody does. No one wants to pay more money, but equally we all want apps developed and we all want them to evolve and we all want great new features and things like that. So at some point there has to be a trade-off between developing the app so it's better for the industry and obviously increasing prices to accommodate those. It's just you know the way of the world. But I hope that that's given our listeners today a bit of insight.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think something else, like we mentioned it earlier, but not only is it. Tech is not just purely about efficiency. I think there's 100% a human component here of it's a hard game to find people to work in your practice, and if you've got a lot of manual processes, you're going to find it even harder to find good people because they don't want to do them. So that's another cost that might not show up so quickly on a ROI spreadsheet. But yes, lovely chatting and thank you all for listening. See you next time.
Speaker 1:Great chat Bye, bye, bye.
Speaker 3:Hey team. It's Ellie and Andrew from All Aussie Accounting Adventures here. I hope you really enjoyed this episode with Amy and Jack. What did you think, andrew?
Speaker 4:Oh, stunning. As always, the two of them are brilliant minds and are brilliant communicators. So we hope that you have got some incredible learnings out of this episode and if you'd like to continue to follow us, make sure you check out our website. Find us on the socials. You'll see Accounting Adventures or look for All Aussie Accounting Adventures wherever good stuff can be found, whether that's conferences, whether that's websites, whether that's podcasts or social media.
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