All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
All Aussie Accounting Adventures - Tech Edition
Month-End Without the Meltdown: Tech, Timing & Keeping Your Sanity Intact
Is your month-end more “mayhem” than “method”? Because Amy and Jack are back and this time they are turning the dreaded monthly close into your firm’s most valuable hour (no, seriously).
We unpack what a modern month-end actually looks like (spoiler: less chaos, more calm), how to build a service clients rave about, and the secret sauce to transforming accuracy into real advantage. From spotting when a client’s ready for monthly magic to knowing when they’ve outgrown outsourcing, we’ve got the cues, the scopes, and the sanity-saving handovers covered.
Tech-wise? Oh, we go there. Think:
- Spend management that shuts down noise faster than a CFO in a boardroom.
- Payroll and HR tools that grow with your clients, even when they start hiring in Timbuktu.
- Reporting that goes beyond “meh” dashboards to chef’s kiss board packs.
- Forecasting that doesn’t make you want to cry.
- And automation that makes prepayments and intercompany less “WTF” and more “handled.”
We even talk workflows, BI, e‑com, inventory, and exactly when to pitch that fractional CFO magic without sounding like you're making it up as you go.
So if you’re tired of chasing apps like a toddler at a tech expo, or just want to run a smoother month-end without losing your marbles, this one's for you.
🎧 Hit follow, share with your favourite accounting sidekick, and drop us a review so more legends can turn month-end from a migraine into a money move.
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MUSIC
ENTENTE (@ententemusic) | Instagram
PRODUCTION
David Easton (@davidjeasty) | Insta...
Hey Jack, how you doing?
SPEAKER_00:Hey Amy, I'm good. I'm good. Very good. How are you?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, I'm pretty damn good actually. Pretty good.
SPEAKER_00:Wow, that's fantastic. I'm I'm happy to hear that. Nothing more to it, just good, just great.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, just good, just great, you know, just cruising along, you know, heading towards the end of the month. Another month wrapped up for the new financial year, you know. Lots going on.
SPEAKER_00:Month end. Time for month end. Is that a is that a tricky, difficult time for you, Amy?
SPEAKER_04:Um I would say not for me personally, just because of the way that I have things structured. But it is a topic that comes up very regularly, I feel, within businesses. Um, and I think that it's a good topic for us to unpack today around what is the month end process? You know, what do accountants do? What is it for clients? What does our whole thing look like? What do you reckon? Do you think we should talk about that today?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, let's do it.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah, I like it.
SPEAKER_00:Where do we start?
SPEAKER_04:Alright, let's start with what actually is a month end service offering and like why, like, what is it? Why would we offer it? Those kinds of things. You're the accountant, I'm not.
SPEAKER_00:The face you're making while you describe it. For those of you it was just a look of disgust at month end, to be honest. And I think that's how a lot of accountants would look at month end as well. You know, it's that um for anyone who's been in practice for a long time or forever, uh, you may not have ever dealt with month end to the point that uh an in-house sort of finance team or uh you know in-industry or in-commerce kind of finance team, accounting team would would look at it. But basically it's that that dreadful time where you know you roll off uh the end of the last month, and now, you know, hopefully all your transactions are in, and it's time to reconcile everything, um, get the books up to date, get your accruals in, get all your supporting work papers uh sorted and packed down, lock down the files so that you know we can actually produce some reports, maybe some consolidated reports, and deliver something to the board or management for some decision-making um stuff. So it's that process that really waits until the end of the month. It's like, look, throughout the month, we've we're doing some accounting, we're reconciling things, we're paying our payroll maybe fortnightly, we're reconciling our zero files every every day. Um, but there's certain things that we, you know, just because it's time consuming to do, uh, we don't do on a on a weekly basis or daily basis. We do it just once a month. For some businesses, it's once a quarter because they're not quite at that they don't need it once a month yet. And for others, they don't do it at all. One month then just isn't a isn't something that gets discussed. And maybe that's kind of, you know, you don't feel uh an overwhelming sense of, oh no, it's the end of the month, I now have to do all of these accounting things. Um, you know, so I guess businesses go through this journey where we move from really accurate numbers on an annual basis so that we can report the right numbers to the tax office to really accurate numbers on a more frequent basis, maybe monthly, so that we can make good decisions.
SPEAKER_04:I think if nothing else, though, a month-end process, regardless of what it looks like for your business, it's always it's a moment, it's a point in time that you can choose, a regular point in time that you can choose to reflect on what has happened. Not necessarily dwell, but reflect on what has happened over the course of the last, you know, 30-ish days. And did things go well? Did things not go quite as well? Um, and do we need what do we need to tweak and change for next month in terms of being aligned to our annual goals and things like that? Like I think there's also that, and I know we're not talking about month-end process from a goals alignment perspective, but that is ultimately why you would do it, in my opinion, is yes, there's some compliance reasons that you would obviously process things on a month-end basis. Um, but there's also an alignment perspective that happens when you are running a business, which is well, what's just happened over the last month? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is that aligned with what's you know going to give me or put me in the right uh steps and steed to achieve my annual goals as well? So, yeah, that's what happens, I guess.
SPEAKER_00:I totally agree. In that, you know, we can't we can't look at the big picture stuff 24-7, but we need to look at it more than once a year. So maybe it's a bit arbitrary that it's once a month or once a quarter. It just kind of depends on where you're at and the size of your business and how important decisions are as to when you do these things. And I think month end as an accounting process is similar in that it's always been monthly because that kind of probably felt like you know a clean moment in time. There may be, you know, there are compliance reasons for it as well. Uh, but potentially in future it won't be month end, potentially it'll be look, we can we can get our accounts up to date, including accruals, including recharges, including all these other bits and pieces. Uh, maybe we can do this stuff daily. Um, it's just that we haven't had the technology to do it until maybe now. So, yeah, so that's a little bit about month what you know month end is, and hopefully most people listening are familiar with it, even if you don't do it or you've never worked in a business that has it. I guess we're talking about a here as in the context of a service offering that firms seem to be delivering more and more of. Um, so well, maybe they're not calling it month end, they're probably calling it you know, fractional CFO work, outsourced finance function, outsourcing uh divisions and things like this come up. Uh maybe it's just monthly bookkeeping and payroll services, but it's that I'm gonna be more embedded in my client than ever before. Uh I'm not just gonna have an annual tax planning meeting and prepare the accounts once a year. I'm going to do this stuff and keep keep on top of it on a more regular basis. So yeah, I don't know. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_04:Isn't that the isn't that the the newest, latest buzzword? Fractional.
SPEAKER_03:When somebody's not quite part of your business, but they are.
SPEAKER_00:I feel like it's a good improvement on virtual.
SPEAKER_04:Virtual was the word such a wanky name, but I quite like I weirdly like it as well. But virtual was, yes, it was like a virtual CFO or a virtual practice manager. Well now that now you're not virtual, you're fractional. Anyway, we could dwell on that for a while. Let's move on swiftly. I think Amy down a rabbit hole. No, that's good. All right, so why are we offering it though? Why should firms offer it potentially?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, I think I think firstly, like you've got to be comfortable with the services to offer. Not everyone wants to be a full fractional CFO because they may not feel like they've got the skills to do it. And others, you know, will just be happy to do year-end compliance. So first and foremost, this is this may not be a service for everybody. But the ones who are offering it, it does feel like number one, it's an element of diversification within their client base. It's like cool. Uh, maybe you're really pro compliance is going nowhere. Maybe you're like, oh crap, I feel like this stuff's gonna be automated in a few years. Wherever you fit on that spectrum, you're probably somewhere in between those two points. And so you might say, it's nice to have some other services that we're offering. Um, so the diversification piece is one. Number two, I think, is because of technology, we're all we're all quite efficient at what we do, um, no matter what accounting services we're offering. So therefore, we're able to take on a little bit more work, get a little bit deeper with our clients. And I mean, do you got, I don't know, do you have something to say on that point?
SPEAKER_04:Well, yes. I I do find that interesting though, because I get I I feel like there's the perception that there is, you know, that we're more efficient and that we know we can take on more work. But I would also count that by saying is every time I feel like we get efficient in some other area, then the ATO just throws another um another compliance requirement at us, which makes you less efficient.
SPEAKER_00:Which I know that we can't maybe what I what I should say is that month-end accounting can be more efficient than ever and is more efficient than ever. So now as a thank you as an addition to all the other things you're doing, which as you say, probably correctly, aren't necessarily getting any smaller, um, you've now got this potential to bring on a new offering, which used to be, oh, there's no way I can offer month-end services to my clients because that's five team members working full-time to now being like, Oh, I could do a handful of month-end clients because I can do that in a you know, a day a month, and you know, all I need is these tools and I can kind of automate a whole bunch of that process. So I think as as a as a process, month end is going from something that used to be, you know, for some finance teams, 10-15 days a month of just actual legitimate team members working full-time to get it done, to for some businesses it's less than a day now. And so I think for any business that's doesn't have anyone in-house that's working with an external accountant, it's probably not significant enough to even justify that. So I think as an offering, it's getting more efficient to deliver. And then thirdly, I mean, this is probably just depending on the individual firm and partners and what they want to do, but I think it is a really good opportunity to do interesting work with your clients. Um, you know, I know where we've had discussions about advisory services and things like that. Um, and sometimes advisory can be a bit fluffy, as as like, you know, it's might be hard to sell it, it might be hard to, you know, what am I delivering you? It's like I'm an I'm helping, but I what's the black and white of it? I think And how do I charge for that?
SPEAKER_03:And what's that?
SPEAKER_00:Providing a month-end offering is like a more yeah, there's tangible. It's like yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_04:And because you're not here is the thing that I have produced. See, here is the quantification of my value.
SPEAKER_00:And because you're so involved now, you can deliver the advisory on top. Um because you actually know what's going on in the business. And I think that's always something that people joke about when they talk about consulting firms, whether that be PWC or McKinsey or whoever. It's like the jokes are you get this person who's never heard about your business, come in, charge$50,000, and walk away and give you a report telling you how to make your business better. And it's like, what do you know about the day-to-day of my business? Literally from being a good idea. What do you know about my business?
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:But when you're in it, you're doing the month end, you're seeing the bookkeeping, you're seeing the payroll, like you're right there with them, um, and and you can provide, I think, some really interesting insight. So it can be interesting work as well.
SPEAKER_04:I'd agree with that.
SPEAKER_00:So that helps.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, no, that's good. So I guess at what point does your client need it?
SPEAKER_00:I think this part of the question isn't too hard to answer. You know, if you're if you're working with small businesses, which I think most people listening would probably be supporting small businesses, as a beginning, they probably don't need um anything like this. You know, they they have simple needs, they can probably do their own bookkeeping, um, and you're involved for compliance, whether that be Bazes or annual tax returns, some tax planning, then they kind of level up and and they go, okay, you've now got pretty frequent bookkeeping or some more complicated bookkeeping. It's becoming a bit of a mess for me to unwind at the end of the year. Um, I'm having to do a lot of cleanup, or you're asking me a lot of questions, or you're asking our team a lot of questions. I think that's probably a good sign that maybe they could use your support. And a really nice way, I think, of offering this to clients and pricing this is to say, actually, I can discount your year-end work. You know, overall you're gonna pay me more. But um, instead of year-end remaining the same, and now I'm offering to do your bookkeeping and sorry, and payroll. Um, what what what about I do your bookkeeping and payroll for that fee? But as a result, I can reduce the cost of your year-end work because I know it's gonna be cleaner and easier for me to do. So I think then that's the night natural evolution. You start to see either things are getting messier and busier, or unreconciled transactions aren't getting dealt with, or payrolls nearly getting missed, or yeah, you know, there's stress here from the business owner, or they're asking you a lot of questions to make sure that they don't have those problems. So you can kind of almost see it and feel it evolving and growing. Um and different people, you know, if you've got a business owner who's pretty good with this stuff, it'll they'll probably last longer than someone who's never really kind of grasped it and it's been a mess from day one. So yeah, and I think you start by offering bookkeeping and payroll, and that's that's the nice kind of first step in the door. Um at that point, you're still not necessarily producing really detailed financial reporting and forecasts and all this kind of stuff on a monthly basis, but that's kind of you can then evolve from that offering to okay, now we've got our books and payroll up today. That the business is growing, and you're running into some, you've got some pretty big challenges. Maybe you need to report some stuff through to banks, or you're trying to get um uh, you know, you're you're raising money, you need you've got DD happening, and you've got uh, you know, whatever the case may be, RD grants that you need help with. The business has these other reasons why accurate accounting information on a more regular basis is becoming critical to them. Um and so then you can say, well, actually, I can help with that. You don't need to go and hire someone in-house yet, which will be$150,000 a year or more, um, you know, for a finance manager or above. Um how about we continue to offer that service for a fraction of that, a fractional CFO? Um you know, if you feel if you feel like you've got the uh the understanding to deliver it. And I think that's key. Like if you're a bookkeeper and and you do payroll and that's not what fills your bucket and not what you feel comfortable in, that's fine. You just keep doing that and and they'll find someone to be the fractional CFO. But if you do have those that skill set or you've you've been in a position like that before, yeah, I think you can actually I think it can be a good win-win. The business doesn't want to have to go and hire a full-timer when they start from scratch. Um so to be able to help them bridge that gap all the way through to the point that they're basically paying you enough for a full-timer, and then it's that nice transition to to a to a full-time individual.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, cool. Okay, so not that you want to think with the uh think like this, but there is this is you know something to consider. At what point does your client outgrow month-end services that are offered to you and uh offered by you in a fractional CFO type style ra role?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's a good it's a good question. Um, I mean, I yeah, I certainly I'm not the guy who wrote the book writes the book on this kind of stuff. Um we, you know, at Mayday we work with a lot of in-house finance teams, we work with a lot of kind of uh outsourced finance function firms, and I don't think there's a clear definition necessarily of when it makes sense for a business to work with a firm versus higher in-house. Um and the journey looks a little bit different because that relationship. So if I'm an accounting firm and I'm um providing this kind of month-end service to my client, whether that be bookkeeping and payroll and some reporting and forecasting or whatever the case may be, as well as the year-end and and ongoing compliance, at some point that fee might grow to a point the client goes, This is becoming pretty expensive, and I'm I don't even have someone to just kind of chat with on a daily basis. Like I I'm paying this firm a lot of money, but I still don't feel like you're here with me on this journey.
SPEAKER_04:And or I actually want you here 24-7, and I don't feel like that person, like I want somebody actually here now because you know, you've got other clients, and why aren't you here at my beck and call 24-7 when I need you?
SPEAKER_00:And maybe that's what you start to feel a little bit of is and I've and I've spoken to a few accountants before who who started this offering with a couple of clients and then stopped the offering at some point when it got to the stage of like you need me in all these meetings, you're asking me to come in every day, like basically do something every day for you. It's it's you know, you're trying to manage your firm, you're trying to manage your other clients, and this one is even though it's a big fee, it's almost becoming distracting. So I think there's the element of at that there's a there's that nice, you know, actually, this is a good breakup because this is not my we have outgrown each other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's become too much. I can still and what a lot of firms retain their compliance work after that, um, because the in-house teams still, you know, generally have a firm external to do that stuff. So um you can still keep working with your client, you can still be offering more consultative, specialist advice type pieces of work. Um, but it's that, you know, okay, cool. They hired a maybe they hired a bookkeeper and a payroll person, or maybe they've hired just the CFO level and they've kept you on to do the bookkeeping and payroll. So there's generally a you know a blend as you grow up, and there's probably a blend as you as you grow out. But um yeah, I think it's more intangible stuff.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and I think you know something to remember here is where possible, try and have a hand in the process of uh your replacement, whether that's in the hiring process or whether that's at least in the training and handover and setting some expectations and things like that, I think that's you know, going to be really advantageous moving forward if if that is a possibility, if they do if you know if that client still remains part of your your practice, basically.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, absolutely. And I think something we haven't mentioned but can be useful too, is if you're a firm that doesn't feel comfortable with the higher-end offering, like that fractional CFOs type stuff, um, you know, maybe it's just not of interest or it's not kind of your uh where you feel confident, partnering with some fractional CFOs could be an option too, where where you kind of get to retain you're you're still in kind of control of the main relationship. This is your client that you have helped to grow. You know, the last thing you want is to go and lose a connection point um and have them go and sign up someone who you've never heard of as a CFO who then says, Oh, who's this mob doing your accounts? We should get that moved over here. So you can kind of remain a little bit more in control if you're have some relationships with these kinds of people, um, they can then provide that service and they can keep you um you know engaged as the books on the books and on the payroll.
SPEAKER_04:I think there's something to also remember here, which is I think if you can get a client, and correct me if I'm wrong here, Jack, but you almost need to a lot of accountants probably wouldn't see it this way. But if you have got your client to the point that they have grown so much that they are now too big and you no longer have the capacity to provide that service, then you've done a damn good job. Like you've done good kid, and also be happy about that, be happy that the client has evolved beyond your needs, you know, from you know, offering that fractional CFO kind of service, whatever, in whatever capacity that was. And if they do have to, because they've grown so much that they do actually have to hire in-house, you know, finance teams and things like that. That's just a testament to the service and the support that you've helped provide from, you know, when you first were engaged from that service moving beyond. And I don't I think it's something to remember from an accounting perspective is don't see it as oh, you know, they're breaking out with me to a degree. Actually, see it as you've done, you've done an amazing job helping your client to evolve that far.
SPEAKER_00:So no, absolutely. I totally agree with that. I think I think that's a massive um testament to you know, it takes a it takes it takes the business doing well, it takes keeping the accounts in order to kind of get to that to that stage. I will say I I I genuinely believe that that now more than ever, because of the technology and tools that are there and the efficiency around these processes, month end accounting processes that exist, you can hold on to these relationships for longer than ever. I'd agree. Um and and for some businesses indefinitely. Uh, but yes, inevitably there's gonna be some that that you can't um that will outgrow uh an outsourced offering. Um and I don't think it's not a bad thing, it's just a thing.
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SPEAKER_04:So we just unpacked what the service is, why, when, when not to, etc. So maybe let's run through um from a month-end perspective, all the different tech options because there is a large variety of them. And we're only going to scratch the surface in some of these um that can support you in relation to this. Um is there anything you wanted to add in?
SPEAKER_00:No, I think I think when it comes to building the tech stack around your month-end workflow or around your clients who you're offering month-end services to, there's actually like you can probably find your five or six apps. Like, I genuinely, you know, there's 1200 apps on the Zero App Store now. So the idea of saying, oh, you know, we can find or we can service any business, and you know, like not with respect to 1200 tools, no. But to with respect to a month-end like core accounting workflow, I do think that you can find and probably deliver this with six or seven tools. That's all you kind of need to know. It means picking one when it comes to HR and payroll. It means picking one when it comes to spend management and banking. It means picking one when it comes to forecasting or reporting or consolidation, saying, look, I know there's options in the market, I can't know them all and be on top of them all. So do your do your experimentation, pick one, and then maybe on a periodic basis, just review that, see if there's anything new in market. But I do think you've kind of got these core areas of the finance tech stack that you you probably need a solution for. Not every business needs all of these solutions, like inventory is only going to be relevant to some. And even something like inventory, maybe that is something that you you like, look, I'm not gonna support inventory. It's just too deep and detailed. Just not ejam and find someone who's really good at that and you can work with on those. Um, but yeah, I think there's this kind of core areas, categories of tools. So kind of start there. We've got, you know, I think you've got your spend management slash banking. Um not so much your tradition traditional big four banks, you probably still need those. Um, but you've got um, you know, other tools we can kind of dig into that. Then I think there's payroll as a category. And payroll can extend to HR, but once again, it depends what you're comfortable offering. You might say, I don't really care, I'll let their internal HR or their fractional HR person manage that, but we're gonna look after payroll. Um and you've got differences there between if you've got professional staff or you've got you know more uh rostered staff, those kinds of things. I think you've then got your reporting and consolidation apps. So, you know, obviously it's one thing to get accurate numbers, it's another thing to report them nicely back to the client. Uh I think separately you've got forecasting uh and and FPNA, financial planning and analysis, so that's a category. Um I've just got month end accounting, so like accounting automation type tools, uh, which help with the facilitation of your month-end work. Yep. There's workflow tools. So these may not be as relevant to outsource teams because you know, Amy, this is probably an area that you can speak to on this topic is you know, when you're when you're running a firm, you've got a whole bunch of different types of jobs going. You don't want a separate system just for five clients to manage their workflow. Correct. But for in-house finance teams, they will often run one of these as their kind of core task management, making sure we actually close our month end on time.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, you may have, I guess, uh internally in practice, if you have like a if you are multi-entity or multi-divisional, you might have different workflow products literally, like if you know your tax and accounting might be through XPM, your workflow through might be through that. Whereas your bookkeeping might be through expert, hypothetically. So that does play to that point, but I get I get where you're on to that.
SPEAKER_00:Yep. Yep. So maybe if you offered this to, if you offered this service as kind of your primary offering to clients, maybe you would get familiar with one of those tools and say this works perfectly for for us delivering this. Um, but maybe not. Uh I think you've then got your your um business intelligence BI tools, so um, we'll get into those. Uh you've got some e-commerce specific tools, inventory-specific tools, um, and then I've also mentioned CRM, which I think to be honest, is probably a step beyond the scope of this. And and you probably don't need to be very involved in CRM type stuff. It might just be that you know you've got you're dealing with a client who's invoicing out of a CRM and that's then pushing back into to zero or something like that. So understanding how those processes work.
SPEAKER_04:Well, I guess it depends on what you're reporting on and what month end processes you're actually doing for the client because you know the CRM might actually be quite helpful from a sales and deals and pipeline perspective. Maybe. Yes. I'm not suggesting that it may be.
SPEAKER_00:I mean, I feel like that's quite detailed. I think that's where you're you're stepping really into a yeah, you're becoming quite commercial in your role with the client at that point. Stepping beyond just accounting, and that's fine. Um there's only so that that then probably opens up a few other kinds of worms as well. So yeah, spend spend management and banking, payroll, reporting and consolidation, forecasting and FPA, month end accounting, workflow, BI, e-commerce, inventory, CRM slash other things. So that's some pretty chunky categories. Mmm. Very. Let's roll with the apps, buddy. Let's roll. Let's do this. So so I mean, spend management wise, I think this is like low-hanging fruit for a lot of for a lot of businesses. Um I'd agree. And a lot of people listening is probably already f are probably already familiar with a bunch of these tools. So as a very low starting point, if they're not using anything, I mean, you've got your your dexts, you've got your hub docs for OCR, receipt scanning, just making sure we're reconciling our accounts properly. That's kind of, you know, low-hanging fruit.
SPEAKER_04:But yeah, BGL's brought out one as well.
SPEAKER_00:BGL2. Um, you've got um some functionality and zero natively around expense claims from staff and things, but I think that the tools that I see brought up and mentioned the most when it comes to more advanced so accounts payable workflows are approval max and light year. And you know, when you're getting deep into this stuff, there are nuances and small differences between the tools that you'll want to investigate and figure out which one's gonna work with your clients the most. If you're in hospitality and working closely with hospitality clients, it's gonna be one. If you're working with service businesses, it might be another. Um, both of those are are are primarily around the AP workflows, but I believe going everyone wants to get into payments and cards and things as well. Um, but the ones that I know have cards kind of at their core are airwollocks, so really easy to spin up. International accounts, if your clients are multi-region, they have cards, they have spend management. You've got Wheel, which is a different pricing structure to AirWallocks. Really good budgeting, really quick and easy to delegate cards out to team members.
SPEAKER_04:You've got OFX, which is another one.
SPEAKER_00:OFX is another one. Pro Spend is another that's come up a couple of times. Um and I believe they're doing some good work. Archie is Archie, is it Archie Is it Archie? Archway? I don't know. Haven't heard of it. Another one which is more credit card focused. Okay. I'm gonna sorry, Emily and I'm happy with that one. Emily the other day. Um so just give me one. You're right. Payroll. Archer.
SPEAKER_04:Archer.
SPEAKER_00:Well you are so close. I'm gonna choose an AMI that's that's been accounting. So it's not completely irrelevant, but um archer is like a wheeltime, but for credit card spend rather than debit cards.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, nice. Cool. Um, what about payroll?
SPEAKER_00:Payroll? So, I mean you've got zero payroll, which for a lot of businesses that accounting firms are going to be supporting will be sufficient. But I've also heard people say if the business has plans for growth, just go to something like Employment Hero straight away. So even if you even if you're not at the limit, like zero handles up to 200 staff, but from what I read, most people are like, oh, even beyond five, let's let's look to something a little bit rigorous with a little bit um yeah, with with better offering.
SPEAKER_04:I don't know. I I have I I have firms that uh just hate zero payroll with an absolute passion. I'm like, for what you do, it does, it does what it needs to do. Anyway, not for all clients, I get it, not for all client types. I understand that.
SPEAKER_00:You've got your tenders and deputies and things like that as well, more rostering specific, um, not my area of expertise. And then you've got some employee employment of record or employee of record. Um, employment here offers this, an app called uh a business called Deal offers this. This is kind of like your I'm we're we're now outsourcing payroll services and the employment of staff to these to these businesses. So, you know, if you're Australian business hiring over in the US, you might not want to spin up a US entity straight away. You might use something ideal or uh vice versa for employment hero. You find the relevant employer of record, uh, they will then hire the staff, the staff then have the engagement with them, you have it via that. It's all perfectly normal, it's just a different scenario, and they handle the payroll and stuff for you.
SPEAKER_03:Reporting and consolidation?
SPEAKER_00:This is a busy space, so obviously accountants and finance teams reporting is like a pretty important thing that comes up a lot. So there's a lot of solutions out there. Do your research, figure out, you know, there's ones that are on the more simple and easy to use end that you can spin up in a matter of minutes. There's deeper, complex ones that'll handle more advanced scenarios, but might be more spreadsheet driven or um you know just more challenging to kind of get to grips with in the beginning. So I mean you've got Sift, which I think is worth a special note because Zero's just acquired Sift, which means that you're gonna get that as part of your Zero subscription, um, I believe. And then I don't know, you've you mentioned some some of the new functionality that's coming off the back of that as well.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, um Zero is doing a prototype access, basically, like it's a um, you know, more insights as opposed to the dashboard. And they're just it's just they're just looking at it going, hey, do we feel like this is going to be better? And I believe that it'll uh, you know, a lot of it's basically powered by a bit of SIFT. But even still um SIFT in itself, like the dashboards are pretty cool. Like it's just it's just a nice integration. I've I feel like um it was a good acquisition for Zero, in my opinion. I mean, others may not agree with me, but I think that it's been a good option.
SPEAKER_00:I think it's a really good uh a really good fit, especially, you know, we're talking about businesses like the ones we're talking about, where you know Zero supported so many small businesses for so long and been the go-to small business solution for so long that now, 15 years on from that, there's a lot of bigger businesses that use Zero that need some of this functionality. So it's good to see them investing in that space and delivering some solutions there. But in saying that, Zero is always pro-ecosystem. It's always like, look, if we can't solve your problems, we're happy for someone else to. So if SIF didn't meet your needs for some reason, I'm just gonna rattle them off really quickly here. You've got others. You've got join, J-O-I-I-N, you've got Fathom, who you probably all know about, futurely the old crunch boards, translucent, data sites, spotlight, calcs are as well. Um, and you can probably go searching on the app store and you'll find another 10 or 15 of them. So too many options to you don't want to know them all. Um, figure out which one you're gonna roll with, probably, um, and stick with that as best you can.
SPEAKER_04:Agreed.
SPEAKER_00:Cool.
SPEAKER_04:Um, forecasting FPA.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so forecasting's an interesting one. Um, you've got simple like cash flow forecasting tool like float. Um, yep. So that's there.
SPEAKER_04:You've got castaway for quite like it.
unknown:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Anyway, sorry, we digress. No, that's a good good shot. And then you've got your deeper three-way forecasting with something like castaway, and then there's another player in the market called XPNA, and they do kind of more detailed FPNA stuff. So um, yep, depending on what your needs are and what your clients' needs are, you've got a couple of a few options there. Um, I've then added a category for month-end accounting because I mean that is kind of what Mayday does. So when it comes to that, it's kind of like, what is that? Well, it's just, you know, we're not a reporting tool, we don't deliver reports, we just help automate the actual month-end accounting work. So we integrate with your zeros, multiple zeros, or uh, you know, whatever you need, and then um automate a bunch of the whether it's intercompany reconciliations, recharges, deferred revenues, prepayments, those kinds of things. Um, so as part of your month-end processes in getting to a point where the accounts are accurate enough to deliver reports, that's hopefully what Mayday can help with. Um, you've also got some functionality in something like Geocon, which is a spreadsheet integration with Zero, where maybe you're doing some custom work in a spreadsheet that you need pushed back and forth with Zero. So Geocon probably fits in that space, which is a little like it's uh it's quite flexible to do bits and pieces. It's great. Um, data sites, I know, does a bit of that kind of stuff as well. So um I think it's probably worth having some tool in that area. You've got your workflow. Yep, so your month-end workflow type stuff, um, which we discussed briefly. I mean, that is something that Mayday's going to do. So if you're interested in that, it's worth keeping an eye on our roadmap. But other than that, you've got uh an app called Easy Month End, which is your more simple level month-end workflow stuff, all the way up to something like numeric, which is significantly more expensive, much more of an ERP level workflow tool. Um but but hey, worth being aware of if this is your space and if you maybe you play in that really upper end of the market.
SPEAKER_04:Business insights. I mean, Power BI has been around for many, many, many moons uh now. And Vibe CFO is another one which is ex Atani. So if you knew Atani, uh it's had uh recently been reskinned to Vibe CFO. Um both of them are pretty cool in terms of the insights that it can actually give you without necessarily producing dashboards. I mean Power BI obviously does produce dashboards, it they work different, they work differently effectively. But um Vibe CFO watched this space in relation to the AI stuff, it's pretty cool things coming out.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and Cam Cam, who who built Vibe CFO, was very into the Power BI space for a very long time. Huge and so built this specifically for you know accountants, so it's worth having a look at. He's built AI into it as well, so it's quite cool. Um e-commerce. Yeah, I suppose if you're niching in e-commerce, and it is one of the more common areas for people to niche into. So if you're in that space, worth being aware of. I mean, obviously you've got your Shopify's and Amazons. Something worth keeping in mind here is one of the biggest problems people mention in this area is if you're in e-commerce, you're dealing with thousands of transactions a month. Yep. Oh, but Zero can't handle thousands of transactions a month. It's not designed to, no, you don't want thousands of invoices and thousands of bills going in and out of zero because it will slow things down. Um, but there's great integrations through an app called A2X, um, which my understanding is it works with both Shopify and Amazon and potentially other store types as well, which basically consolidates those postings back to zero. At the end of the day, zero doesn't need transactional level detail, it just needs the kind of daily postings. Same thing with you know, any, you know, if you're if you're servicing bakeries or restaurants or whatever, they don't need every single transaction from the PR point of sale going through to zero, they just need the daily totals. So um it's worth keeping that in mind if you've got any clients who are running into the the limits of zero. Um you've also got an app called Stripe is part of that, go cardless is part of that. If you're billing through different platforms, those tools do have integrations for zero. Um so you might have preferences there, is what you recommend to your clients. Um and Stripe in particular has another, there's another app called SubSync, uh, which helps with the integration between Stripe and Zero. So that's worth a look if you're a heavy Stripe user.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and that's I guess works in the opposite, which is uh sometimes you actually want the invoices to come through from transactions to pay if that's your payment gateway. Um and Subsync actually helps create the invoice from Stripe and into Xero. So the opposite, effectively, from what you know smaller businesses want.
SPEAKER_00:And that's that's the beauty of the ecosystem is different businesses are going to need different things, um, and there's different solutions out there. And then I mean maybe as a related item to e-commerce, I mean just related to other areas of business too, but inventory is quite uh a heavy one in that area. Um and so Syn7 and Unleashed seem to be the two big players there.
SPEAKER_04:So many apps.
SPEAKER_00:There are but that's why I think sitting on focusing on each focusing on the number of categories is better than focusing on the number of apps. So we had spend management as one, payroll as two, reporting slash consolidation as three, forecasting as four, month end accounting five, workflow six, BI seven, e-comm eight, inventory nine. We skipped over CRM, I think that's fine. That's nine categories, and you're probably not going to be needing, you know, BI, forecasting, and reporting. You probably just need one of those. It's probably just reporting. Um, it's only for really advanced scenarios you'd want more than that. So that takes off two. You're probably not dealing with a lot of you probably aren't dealing with all your e-commerce and inventory heavy clients. There goes another two. So you're back to like five, six categories for most that cover the basis for most clients. And if they've got none of these at the moment, it's such a leg up to even just have two or three.
SPEAKER_04:Just have one, yeah, exactly. Yeah. But I think one thing I will say though is it's not a one-size-fits-all. So, for example, right, your reporting and consolidation, I'm just going to pick that one. Even your forecasting, it is somewhat dependent on the client. So I know depending, like in the past, we've had a lot of and we've had a lot of accounting practices that I've come across that have basically gone, I've got this one client that needs this, this, this scenario, and they put an app in place, and then they think that that app's going to be relevant for every single one of those clients that they offer those, you know, sort of advisory services for. It's not always going to be the case. So sometimes you might need a couple of different apps that do roughly the same thing, but they might have slightly different variations of the way that they do it and what they report on. So you might have to have a couple of them basically, just bet depending on the client needs.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely. And it it may also be worth, I mean, if you are venturing down this road and and thinking I'm going to be working with some pretty significant clients who are going to have some pretty interesting demands or reporting needs. That there are there are also, along with fractional CFOs that you can partner with, there are also implementer type uh businesses who who whose expertise is in app implementation. Oh, is it right? So sometimes it might be like, look, they you just need some assistance getting the reports built that the client needs. Yep. But you're fine to run them every month and you can understand what the numbers are saying and help them decipher it. It's just the building out of the tech stack. You might need a little bit of assistance depending on the uniqueness of the of the needs. So, you know, it's no, it's nothing new to an accounting firm. I mean, we all have relationships with lawyers, financial planners. It's just also saying, well, maybe you need a relationship with a fractional CFO if that's not what you're doing. Um, maybe you need some software implementation gurus alongside you uh that you can refer to as well. So, you know, I think keeping these keeping that client relationship close and and and you recommending solution partners there is is is always valuable.
SPEAKER_04:It's been a big episode, Jack. I'm tired. Yeah, it's been a big one, buddy. Um, I think the final thing too, like maybe just to wrap to wrap this one up, from my perspective, um, I think it's to understand whether you should be offering this service, whether you can, whether you have a desire. If you want to do it, then do it. Structure in the right way. But there are heaps of apps out there that can support you. Um, identify what your service offering actually is on what that could look like. Not every client will need this, but equally saying that it is a good evolution of purely just doing year-end compliance for some clients that might actually want this. Equally, it's a good evolution and segue into then doing proper advisory if that's also where you want to head to.
SPEAKER_00:Absolutely, absolutely. And my uh takeaway or my uh final bit of insight would be uh please feel free to reach out to me. Uh, I would love to chat to you and um be your month end friend. So yeah, reach out anytime.
SPEAKER_04:Definitely. Thanks, Chad.
SPEAKER_00:No worries, no worries, Amy. Great to catch up and um thanks everyone for tuning in. Um, always good. Always good.
SPEAKER_02:See ya. Bye.
SPEAKER_01:Hey team, it's Ally 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_06: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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