All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
Your Firm's Not-So-Secret Weapon: Annual Planning
Take a deep breath. The new financial year has begun, and it's time to set your accounting practice up for success rather than stress. Whether you're celebrating a fresh start or still finalising last year's loose ends, this episode provides the roadmap you need.
Amy & Jack dive into the four pillars of effective practice planning that will transform your year ahead: annual engagement reviews, capacity planning, team management, and technology assessment. From ensuring client agreements are updated and transparent to mapping your workflow for the entire year, we offer practical strategies that create clarity and reduce chaos.
For firm owners & practice managers feeling overwhelmed by compliance demands, technology options, or staffing challenges, our actionable framework provides relief. By implementing these strategic planning elements now, you'll transform reactive firefighting into proactive management, creating space for growth and client value.
So strap yourself in for another accounting tech adventure and take control of your practice's future today. The financial year reset is your opportunity to build the accounting firm you've always wanted – organised, profitable, and purposeful.
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David Easton (@davidjeasty) | Insta...
Hey Amy.
Speaker 2:Hey Jack.
Speaker 1:How you doing.
Speaker 2:I'm pretty good actually. How are you doing, how are you feeling these days?
Speaker 1:These days. Yeah, I'm getting older, I'm sore, definitely, I'm sorer every time we have this episode. But no, I'm going okay, going okay, can't complain, can't complain. It's the new financial year, it is, which is exciting. But yeah, uh, yeah, how you feeling about the year ahead?
Speaker 2:look, I'm feeling organized, but I'm wondering how many accountants out there are actually sharing that sentiment or if they are feeling overwhelmed, because I think in the lead up to hung maybe hung over. Maybe hung over.
Speaker 2:Yes, there is that possibility as well, definitely um but I guess that's what we're talking about today's uh, setting the scene for the new financial year. So it's a good place to start, given that it is. We've just clocked over to the new financial year for uh, the australian accounting um industry. I appreciate that around the world for those listening in, there are different year ends and therefore different New Years, but Australia aligns with the 30th of June being the end of financial year. So happy New Year to all of our Aussie listeners and to everybody else. I think that this still applies. It just might be a little bit different in terms of timing. What we're talking about today.
Speaker 1:It might be a little late, or maybe a little early, which is good, yeah. So I mean either way. So I mean, when it comes to, you know, actually getting prepared for the upcoming year.
Speaker 1:Um, you know, if it's, if you're in july listening to this, or post july, then potentially it's too late. I don't know. I don't know how, how far ahead of time you want to be organized for this kind of stuff, but I mean, maybe, just as a bit of an overarching look at what we're going to talk about today, we've got the annual engagements review. So what works coming up? Are we adjusting anything, changing our prices? Have we sent everything out, got everything back, signed? Have we lost any clients? Have we won any new ones? Because that then flows into our capacity and workflow planning.
Speaker 1:So you know where's our, where's our time going to go? Do we have the resources that we need? Um, and then we can touch on a few other bits and pieces. So you know, once you've got those things in, in place, uh, it's probably a nice time of year. You know, I guess it doesn't have to be end of financial year, but it's a nice time of year to do your reviews with your team and have a bit of a celebration, uh, and then, from a tech perspective, we can talk about. You know, how do you, how do you go about? You know, if, if, end of financial year is also a bit of a trigger for doing a bit of a health check and and looking forward the next 12 months and saying, well, what, what's on our radar, what do we want to roll out?
Speaker 4:What new tech?
Speaker 2:So yeah, really setting the scene for having an effective new financial year and being organised is the point of our session today.
Speaker 4:Yes.
Speaker 1:So practical of us, very practical of us, yeah so where do we start?
Speaker 2:I think that we should start with annual engagements. So my hope is that for the majority of firms out there, you will have already done this, especially leading into the new financial year and especially for those clients that are on a true annual service agreement. I'm talking about the ones where you put them on a 12 monthly payment cycle, give or take, you package all the services up and then you know this is how and when we're doing the work. But basically this is all the work that we do for this year and we're going to put you onto a monthly payment plan. Those clients, in theory, should have received a proposal and it should have, in theory, already have been signed pre-1st of July or pre the start of the new financial year. That's in a perfect world scenario. So if you haven't already done those, I would be strongly encouraging you to get all of those proposals sent out to your clients just so that they are realigned with the new rules and regulations that have come about in Australia, especially annual engagements and or engagement agreements, just generally speaking, are really important moving forward and to ensure that your clients there's transparency around the service that you're providing. There's transparency around how much you're paying, you know how much the client's expected to pay what they're engaged for for and doing this on a more regular basis. So what my understanding is is that you need to do this annually now. So, for the likes of some of the engagement platforms out there, I'm sure that they're very happy that this is actually now something that is effectively law.
Speaker 2:I'm not so sure that most of the accountants out there feel the same way in terms of the additional admin. However, I will say, from a being as a client on the client end, I think it's. I think it's a good thing that my accountant is transparent with me. He always has been. As a side note, he's great. Um, shout out to longboards out there. Thanks, sean, uh, but otherwise, um, I think that all accountants out there, in my opinion, should be transparent because it just it removes the ambiguity around what service you're providing and that bill shock and things like that for your clients.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, oh, for so many reasons. And it makes it. It makes it easier, when you've got out of scope work to you know, charge for it, rather than getting caught in that kind of awkward gray area where you're like, oh well, you know, I can't do this once but not again. But yeah, absolutely, I think good for the business on the other side, Good for the team as well. To understand exactly what's included Like.
Speaker 2:so you know, it's all about setting expectations clear and concise. Another outcome of that, though, is also making sure that your jobs and things are deployed, which we'll talk a little bit more about when we come down to capacity planning, but some of the apps out there actually allow you to trigger workflows off the back of an accepted proposal, which is kind of cool. So making sure that those are set up is really helpful. And then also just looking at what your engagement cycle is like, have you actually engaged all of your clients at the start of the financial year, or are you just doing the engagements for the ones that are on the annual services agreements and then, as and when you're doing work for the other clients, you're doing a proposal? Call it at the beginning of the job rather than sending an invoice at the end. Do you know what I mean? So are we being like just working out what that whole engagement process actually is?
Speaker 1:you know, moving forward over the course of the next year is really helpful there yep, yep, and I mean hopefully, if you've been, you know, tuning into to this pod for a while, or or others that you know you've got a few tools in in place that they're going to help with this. You know some, some big names out there that are in this space, that have been in this space for a while now. So you know your ignitions of the world content snares. You know seamless on board me, um, and if you're doing, you know any other document signing, if you sign as well, a few other new players too.
Speaker 1:So, like it's there's plenty of options out there. I'd be surprised if anyone was listening and doesn't have some component of this process, you know, driven by tech, or I would think mostly it would be led by it.
Speaker 2:I would agree there are definitely ways and means of doing this, but I mean, onboard me is newer in the market, same as Socket. Socket's pretty new, originated from the UK trying to make a splash over this side of the pond and a new one in this space as well as sinkley, which is very, very new. Um, they're just, you know, new player in that market space as well. So I think that some of the really good apps that like, in my opinion, I think that it's a little archaic to do it the more manual create a word document, send it through, you know, send it through a signing solution. As much as I love fuse, fuse definitely has its place from a signing perspective, but I think it's a little archaic given the breadth of options around engagement software these days for the accounting market.
Speaker 2:Like, I think that you've got some really good options there with the tech that's available basically, and we're just scratching the surface on some of them. Like you know, there's a module through change gps, I'm pretty sure. Fee synergy set does some stuff as well around this. Like there's actually a heap of them out there. Um, there might be cloud connect as well. Might do something with engagements too. Do you know what I mean? Like there's, there's so many out there, basically, so, um, yeah, it's also a really good opportunity in terms of annual engagements to inform your clients on price increases, because I'm really hoping that you've all done one of those Doesn't have to be major.
Speaker 2:I mean, I think a traditional three to 5% increase is fairly standard these days, but feel free to bump that up to closer to the 10%, given the cost of everything else that's going on in the world. But up to you. You need to do what's right for your business and by your clients as well. But just remember, dear accountants, you're not a charity. That's my final word on this matter. You're not a charity.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's really important. I mean, we can both go on and on about this, so you know this is not what this episode's for.
Speaker 1:But yeah, 100% agree. You know it's a classic question. People feel very uncomfortable about it, but the reality is we all pay more for things every single year. Everywhere you go, people are raising their prices and you just kind of have to get on board with it. And you know, I don't think you never want to do it. If you don't feel like there's value there and I think that's probably where the challenge comes is people you know thinking they haven't increased the value of their offering from last year. So you know why should I charge my client, who's a friend? And I'm going on about it already.
Speaker 2:The outcome of this is stop being so damn nice and be commercial.
Speaker 4:You're not a charity.
Speaker 1:That's my outcome on that one yes. And it's okay.
Speaker 2:Correct, because I feel like every single accountant out there right now is feeling the pain of the compliance season, so I don't feel like there's a shortage of work, all right. The next one that we mentioned is capacity planning, or capacity and workflow planning. So this is, I guess, guess, the first starting point in this one is I really hope that every single one of you have reduced your WIP to the point of zero and invoiced everything out before the end of the financial year, and for those of you that are just doing the finishing touches on that, still, please wrap that one up as soon as possible. I'd hate to think how many of you are carrying over whip into the new financial year. I'm sending you a virtual smack across the head. If you are, um, please try not to. You shouldn't be. Bill it out, just bill it all out. Start fresh for the new financial year.
Speaker 2:Um, when, when you were back in practice what did you guys use for capacity planning and workflow scheduling jack? Do you remember way back when?
Speaker 4:capacity planning and workflow scheduling.
Speaker 1:I don't I don't think we had a lot of uh nah, we, we were just driven out of jobs in xpm and I don't. I don't remember seeing a thing that told me how much how much my time was going to be gone. So, yeah, it was a bit of lick the finger up in the air. Hopefully we hit the mark. My team can feel free to email me now, if they're listening, and tell me I'm wrong and I just ignored something that we were doing, but I don't think we had anything major on that front.
Speaker 1:You know you're a client manager, you've got to book a client's look after.
Speaker 2:The expectation is the works, yeah, sure, but I guess there are ways and means of going about this which is you can either be reactive and just wait for the clients to contact you, or you can be proactive and actually manage the client workflow, and that's what I'm a very big advocate and fan of. Hence the capacity planning, workflow scheduling, those kinds of things. So there's a few components to it, I guess that come into it. There's, you know. Have you actually done a bit of a recce on what happened last year? Have you looked at where your write-ons and write-offs were? Basically, have you? I mean, I would say that at least 80% of your clients are relatively habitual when it comes to getting their work done. So for current clients, most of the time they're going to come in the same time as they have done for the last five to 10 years. Basically right, that's just standard. You've always got about a 20% buffer. That doesn't quite follow suit. And then you've got your new clients and things like that. But if you actually spend some time looking at this, you know good old fashioned Excel, that one works, it works works a treat. You can do excel all of your clients. This is what work we've got. This is the planned or proposed work. You know time of when we're doing it, the planned work month, that kind of thing. It's pretty easy to actually work this stuff out. If you want to take it to the next level, put budgets and put you know your team members who's working on them as well, that can can kind of, you know, guide you in terms of what work is actually being planned in for whichever months From a capacity perspective. I guess it just gives you some opportunity to see where there is gaps and or where you might need additional team members, where you might need additional work to be called in, where you might need additional team members, where you might need additional work to be called in.
Speaker 2:Traditionally in the Australian market, december, january, accountants kind of switch off at that time but funnily enough that's actually a really good time to get work done. That's, you know, just as a consideration there. We work on the theory here from a Clarity Street perspective. If you actually lodge 9% between 9 and 10% per month from July through to April, you should have all of your lodgements basically done by the start of April. You would hit that 85% minimum requirement mark. So if you planned it correctly and actually proactively contact those clients, that's what the whole point of this is capacity planning, in my opinion.
Speaker 2:I don't think that um, I'm yet to come across a beautiful and decent platform that does capacity planning the way that I want it to work now which is funny, because I am quite subjective around this and I appreciate that I have opinions on this one, but I would love it so that I could plan it. But it's not going to flood my current workflow platform and that's what probably the current platforms, in my opinion, don't necessarily do. But, yeah, I think, from you know, making sure that your clients and your jobs have got budgets, making sure that you know you've set your firm budgets, those kinds of things, that's what's going to set you up for success. And spending a bit of time now in those first couple of weeks of July, when it's probably not as busy typically, that should give you a bit of breathing space to actually plan it. The challenge, though, is when it does get busy, continuing to manage it and continuing to actually review it and look at it and keep it updated, and that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:So, um, a few of the apps that you can use, as I mentioned, excel. Excel it's not bad. It's probably about the only one that I recommend Excel, for it really serves a purpose. Jack, you obviously mentioned XPM and it can do it, although I say that with a caveat to it. I'd be more inclined to use some automations between XPM and FYI. You know custom fields in XPM and some automations out of FYI to kind of schedule and you know, run some reports.
Speaker 2:Fyi Elite apparently does have a capacity planning tool. I don't know if that module has been released yet, but I did hear on the grapevine that it is there and and all being worked on. Um link, as in link reporting, apparently have released a capacity component recently, which is pretty cool. I haven't I personally haven't checked it out, but again I've heard this on the grapevine that they have done that. And then there's PlanRight as well, which also integrates with the Xero ecosystem from a capacity perspective. I guess PlanRight and I look I don't know about Link, but I'm making an assumption PlanRight, I know, requires the jobs to have already been deployed into XPM, so they already have to be there. But it does allow you to move things around, put budgets and bits and pieces. It's actually kind of a pretty cool little tool once the jobs are in there.
Speaker 1:So yeah, very good, very good. Uh, I feel like you might need a break carrying this, uh, carrying this conversation so far, so let's go take a minute and hear from our sponsors.
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Speaker 2:Thanks, jack, I needed that break. God, I love our sponsors, they're so good. Thanks guys.
Speaker 1:Thanks guys. And and I mean on that note, you know, talking about such a high performance first half to this episode, it flows nicely into the third topic of today's conversation, kind of planning for the year ahead and getting on top of things. Is, you know, your hr management, your team management? You know? I think it's absolutely. You know, I don't know, do you feel like for an accounting firm, this is the time to do that, or is it just like, look, we're just talking about it because, at the end of the day, whether you do your performance reviews at the end of the financial year or at the end of the calendar year or the end of someone's 12 months with the company, it doesn't matter. But we just talking about it because, or do you, do you actually think this is the time to do those reviews, given we've just seen 12 months of um, you know, performance against numbers?
Speaker 2:so traditional firms. So I have mixed opinions on this. If, on one hand, it makes sense to do it at the end of the financial year because if your wages, and therefore increasing wages and potential bonuses, are driven by the financial outcomes of the business, then it makes sense to wait until the end of the financial year to see what position you've fallen in, to see how your team have performed have they met budget, have they exceeded budget, have they met their productivity targets, those kinds of things, to therefore run some reports, and that gives you some good bargaining power, I guess, around when they sit there and go well, I would like a pay rise and you go well, why should you get one based on these figures? And or, yes, billy, you do deserve one because you have done amazing and this is what you have achieved, et cetera. So it does align, but then that's, I guess, from a financial perspective. Equally saying that it depends on what sort of performance reviews you're looking at. Are you looking at their performance purely from a financial perspective, or are you looking at you know actually the quality and how well of a team player they are? So if you're looking at the latter, it doesn't sort of matter, in a way, and even if you wanted to do them at the end of the year versus the end of the financial year, you could still work out how they've gone based on two halves of a financial year, if you wanted.
Speaker 2:I don't know. It does make sense, logically, to do it at the end of the financial year. The only caveat to that, though, is that I'd be more inclined to do them in sort of July slash August, again based on when the end of the financial year lands, and also the last month in the lead-up, especially in Australia, for compliance is an absolute dog's breakfast. You've got you know tax planning. You've got trust resolutions, you've got new engagements for clients that you're meant to have done like, and that's you've got.
Speaker 2:You're wrapping clients that you're meant to have done Like, and that's you've got. You're wrapping up all of the compliance, all the tax work. You've got FBT lodgements, you've got final tax lodgements, extensions. There's so much going on, so I don't know that the June is the right time to do them. I think that July August is, but also I can kind of see why it's nice to align them as well with the end of you know in June too. It's just a hard one, basically about when you should do it. I don't know when did you used to have yours?
Speaker 1:I don't. I don't even remember now if it was end of financial year related. I always thought it was just like my annual review was based on when. I started the company and then it was 12 months on from there and they probably just you know kind of drip fed them throughout the year that way, um makes it easier doing it that way a big deal yeah, I feel like that's what it was.
Speaker 3:I can't don't hold me to that.
Speaker 1:I can't remember off the top of my head but yeah, and I mean the other thing, uh, from a team perspective here, which is probably the most important thing, to be honest, out of this entire conversation, is ensuring that you do have that in the financial year celebration.
Speaker 2:Take your team to the pub or something even better, something even better than the pub.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, if there is something. I haven't heard of, anything better, but there might be something better. If you've heard of something better, please email us and let us know, because I'm keen to know about it uh, I feel like I'm quite partial to a fancy pants dinner.
Speaker 2:I I'm, you know, I don't mind starting at the pub or ending at a pub.
Speaker 1:Oh sorry, yeah, you meant like yeah, and I agree, all of those things are great. So I put them all under the, the pub term being just anywhere good for food and drink. That sounds good to me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, fair, fair, fair, make fair, fair fair.
Speaker 1:Make sure you do that. If you're having this, you know. If you're listening to this and you haven't done it, come on. What are you doing?
Speaker 2:It's too late now You've missed it. Yeah, agreed.
Speaker 1:Well, you haven't Do it anyway, but you know you can. I think it's still okay.
Speaker 2:We did it in the last week of June, whereas last year we did it in the second week of July. I think it's fine, I don't think it really matters, as long as you're celebrating the team saying thanks, and I mean it's a tough one, like if you didn't have a great year.
Speaker 1:I guess it's. You know, in a way, it's not to celebrate the results of the year, it's just a thank you for the effort. You know we're trying, and I think this is a big thing in all of business. We're only going to go into the details of it, but I'm a big one for, you know, praise the behaviors, not the results. In a way, you know it's the same with sports teams. It's like you don't go out there as a coach and say kick five goals, um, cool, how you know what you know. No, no, go hard at the ball. Uh, work hard. Chase your man um, you know, defend as hard as you attack.
Speaker 1:You know these are the strategies you're implementing and as long as you praise the players who live and breathe those, you may or may not win the game, but that's the coach. The coach is deciding the strategy and they're saying I believe if we do these things, we'll win. Um, so if the team have worked hard, um, you know, maybe you haven't hit all the results you needed. I don't know if it's, you know, I don't know if it's necessarily on the team, you know, maybe we just need to rethink our strategy for the next 12 months, but we're happy with what the team tried to do. Let's go again.
Speaker 2:Let's look forward to the next year and maybe make some tweaks you know, that's exactly what happened at clarity street over the last 12 months. We didn't necessarily reach the goals that I had hoped for, but we did things in different ways, which highlighted opportunities for improvement. But as part of the strategy day, I like we had two days and I opened it up with right, what are our wins? What are we proud of? What did we do? Really bloody well, and we had basically two double whiteboards, so four whiteboards essentially, and we filled up every single one of them and I didn't stop until we'd fill them up.
Speaker 2:And the point was is to actually take a moment and go? We're actually, we're actually pretty good. Like sure, we can sit there and we can pull out all the things that didn't go well and you, you know all the things that went wrong and highlight them and talk about them until the cows come home. But how about we take a moment and actually celebrate the things that we did well? And I feel like far too often, it's very easy to focus on the not so goods as opposed to going well. We actually did some pretty damn good things here, yeah, and that's going to motivate people again, right.
Speaker 1:If it's all negative, then that kind of kills any momentum. So, yeah, some positivity, regardless of the results. A celebration at the end of financial year is a good way to do that. It's another way of saying thank you, we got this for the next year ahead and that just kind of gives people a spring in their step as kind of things reset for the year and it's a fresh light. So, yeah, absolutely worth doing.
Speaker 1:Um, just quickly, on the on the hr side of things, you know a few tools that are out there in the market that you know. If you, if you have a big team um and you're starting to kind of want to run your team reviews and performance reviews a little bit more formally and make sure they don't get missed and make sure everything's tracked and documented, and, uh, you know, those conversations you might be have might be having performance conversations more often than annually, probably should be having them more often than that. Pay reviews may not be more than annually, but conversations with the team probably should be. You've got tools like Happy HR, employment, hero, hr Central that are built for purpose.
Speaker 1:There's a bunch of other tools out there as well, you've got some that do the like, the, the mps style, you know they send out the checks every every other week and people just kind of give some quick feedback. I remember our firm did that. I kind of enjoyed that as a quick way of firing back feedback and things like that felt like okay, cool, you know they're listening, because I was getting one of those every few weeks and I different questions to different people and um different things every fortnight to to kind of touch, touch base on. So anything else on, your.
Speaker 2:I just think if you're doing it manually or, more traditionally, word doc, that kind of style, if you are saving it anywhere, make sure it's not in the um, the document management system that everybody has access to. Please keep that very secure yeah, don't put the general folder. Yeah, don't put it in the general folder. Make sure it's in the management section and only the managers and or the partners have access. That would be my only caveat to that, because you're dealing with sensitive information, so yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:But I will say, take note of those conversations, like actually take notes. And if you do have one of your AI tools, like your Fireflies or your Odor or something that's wonderful, but also make sure you delete out the original from the actual system because otherwise everybody can potentially access it, depending on what your security roles are around that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, good shout. Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 2:What's our last topic, Jack?
Speaker 1:Well, it wouldn't be a tech podcast if tech review wasn't the final dot point on our agenda today.
Speaker 1:So I mean what we're talking about here is really, you know, as part of reviewing the end of the last year and planning for the year ahead. We've talked about your annual engagements, obviously critical capacity and workflow planning critical HR management critical. Your tech review is critical, is becoming more and more critical every year. You know tech is playing a bigger and bigger role in the business. So, just like we're reviewing the team, making sure performance is good, we're rewarding people who deserve to be rewarded. Tech is, you know, in a similar spot, we want to be doing a health check at the end of the year and saying what tools do we have, how are they going? What else do we want to be implementing? So I mean, this is kind of you know, a big part of what you guys do.
Speaker 2:so yep, what does that?
Speaker 1:process look like for you guys. What do you recommend there?
Speaker 2:I think the first one is to identify all like. First of all, look at the pain points in the tech that you've actually got. Are there any pain points in the tech that you're currently using? If there are, maybe identify them as the first point. But even just look at your, your P&L, if you've actually got like so. I'm a bit anal with this, but I've got all of my tech individualized on my P&L right, so I can actually see every single app and how much it's actually costing me. First of all, look at how much it's costing you, then go Jesus, I didn't realize that HubSpot was so much, because HubSpot really is actually that much it's bloody expensive.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I mean it does a lot but it's got, it's expensive and then actually work out. Is it is what we're paying actually correct? And that can sometimes come down to have you. Are you licenses? Have you got the correct number of licenses? Are you paying for too many licenses? Is everybody who has a license actually using the platform? That's a major one.
Speaker 2:Is there crossover of some of the functions and the features of? You know what one app does versus another app, but you know I'm using that app because I like that more. A good example of this is you know, we went through a period of time where we were using Slack and Zoom and yet we were paying for Microsoft and we have Teams and therefore again Teams for meetings and things like that. I still love Slack and Zoom way more, anyway, as opposed to Microsoft. But you kind of get where I'm going with this right, like why are we paying for these additional amounts? Basically, but I think the bigger one is actually the functionality of. Is there crossover functionality? Do we have to possibly think differently around the way that we're using apps to maybe get the best out of it? Are you paying for extra ledgers that you don't need? That's another one. A lot of accountants out there that might be actually doing that. So I think that that's just you know. They're just a few starting points of them.
Speaker 2:And then there's also the component of like, you know, what do you do to try and fix them or work out if it's right? Little things like, as I say, identify the problem. What are some solutions? Do you actually have a like? Have you looked at if you do want to fix something? Have you looked at a timeframe in the investment to actually fix something Like? So let's pretend that your onboarding process is not great and you want to look at that?
Speaker 2:Well, what are the options? When it comes to apps, have you identified the ones that might work? Have you looked at what your current app stack does already? Is there opportunity to change those ones there?
Speaker 2:The major thing here that I would be saying is get your team involved, communicate with your team, asking them. They don't necessarily have to have a full hand in it, but the more you communicate with them to understand what apps are available, what they're using, how they're using it, that will give you a clear you know a clear pathway to work out. Well, what's potentially broken? Slash needs fixing. What do we need to roll out first? How do we you know just how do we actually go about it. Do we need to? Can we do it internally? Do we need to contact the app vendor? Do we need a third party provider to you know, an overall implementation partner, to reassess this, like we do tech stack reviews all the time? So there's lots of options out there, but it's mainly is the tech that you've got actually serving you well Like? Is it still serving the purpose, or is there a potential alternative?
Speaker 1:I feel like that's such an underrated thing just to spruik that service, not just because I think sometimes we can get a little uh, we forget how lucky we are as a, as a profession. That, um, you know I don't know if maybe lucky or whatever you want to call it um, you know, a lot of firms have the same obligations. They've got the same uh jobs to do for their clients. They've got very similar processes in a lot of scenarios. That has led to the development of a lot of amazing software applications.
Speaker 1:A lot of firms use similar tech stacks maybe 60% the same, 40% different, 80% the same, 20% different. Whatever the case may be, there's a lot of firms out there who run similar things. It's probably the same in the world of SaaS technology, where a lot of firms out there who run similar things. It's probably the same in the world of, you know, saas technology, where a lot of startups are going to run off the same core tech stacks To be able to say like look, I'm an accountant, I run an accounting firm, my, what I do great is talk to my clients and help their businesses. What I don't do great is annual reviews of my tech stack, because that's not what I do every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But to have an ability to go to someone who literally does this all the time, knows what's happening in the market, knows new tools, what they're releasing oh, you know that I can see here in this app, this stack that would have made sense 12 months ago, but this tool has actually released that functionality now, so you probably don't need that app anymore. These are just the little things like little wins that you're going to get very quickly from having someone external come in and review it and just take something off your plate. I think, like the older I get and the more senior I get in work, the more I can see you stop to think in terms of like, oh, but that's a cost, it's just, that's a huge time saver. Anything that someone else can do is like amazing, that's an investment, that's time saving.
Speaker 1:You know, I think there's a good portion of accounting firms out there who think that way and they're entrepreneurial, they're commercial. You know they want to focus on what's going to help their clients and for other stuff they're happy to kind of invest and bring someone expertise in and I just yeah, I think you know you can only say so much about it because it's your own thing and regardless of whether it's Clarity Street or not, right Like there's experts out there in the market, depending on what kind of firm you are, you know, I think it's definitely worth thinking about. Thanks, jack, appreciate that firm you are. Uh, you know, I think, I think it's definitely worth thinking about.
Speaker 2:Thanks, jack, appreciate that. Is there anything else that we need?
Speaker 1:it's just a it's just a props, for you know, there's expertise, not just in tech reviews. There's experts, experts out there that do this stuff for a living. They're good at it.
Speaker 2:That's why they do it well, that's the same like, just because you know I can, I can probably put my tax return together and do my set of financials together, but I'm not actually an accountant. I don't know. I should probably trust the experts to do that. That's why I have a listener my accountant who does that work for me.
Speaker 1:You could probably give up a weekend and try and do your own tax plan if you want. Yep Sure, you probably miss some stuff as well.
Speaker 2:Yep exactly.
Speaker 3:And you probably get some stuff that's wrong.
Speaker 1:Um, and now you know you're breaking the law, so you know, maybe just pay pay your account, pay the expert.
Speaker 2:Yep, correct, I'm with you on that one. Yeah, um, I think that's probably a good place to wrap. I think we've covered off a lot for the new financial year. I mean, if anybody needs any help, obviously reach out to myself and or jack uh, but I feel like these are some good places to actually like focus on for the new year ahead.
Speaker 1:Yes, very practical. And yeah, all the best to all of our listeners. I hope 2025 to 2026 is a good one for you and thanks again for listening.
Speaker 2:Thanks Jack, see you. Thanks Mike.
Speaker 4: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 3: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 it's podcasts or social media.
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