Bookkeeping best practice: how to grow your business

Growing – and running – any business can be tough. Anyone who says otherwise is telling big old fat ones. But using bookkeeping best practice can make it a whole lot smoother.But what is bookkeeping best practice? In these interesting times, growing and running an efficient bookkeeping business has its own unique set of challenges. Ensuring data integrity, having visibility across your workload, knowing what needs to be done, by when, managing your team and the work they’re doing, all while fostering strong relationships with your clients – it’s a lot.Just like a mechanic needs the right tools to service your car, bookkeepers need the right tools to help them deliver their services.

When you have the right tools, doing the work becomes less painful. In fact, it can actually become more enjoyable, less stressful and help you deliver those services to more people, more efficiently.We know bookkeepers have been crying out for a tool, specifically built for the way you work. And that’s why we built XBert. It’d be easy to show you a list of features, but we think it’s better you hear from your peers. Find out how XBert has helped these bookkeepers make work life easier, more streamline and achieve (and continue to achieve) their business goals:

Early Bird Accounts

Rachel Fenn of Early Bird Accounts has more than a decade of experience working in professional accounting firms before starting her own bookkeeping business. Faced with rapid growth, employing two staff and the view to expand to serve more clients, Rachel knew she needed to systemise and standardise her practice processes to ensure she was using bookkeeping best practice, so she could scale her business easily.When XBert was mentioned in one of the bookkeeping support groups on Facebook, she decided to take a look. She was immediately impressed at the product’s feature-rich functionality, and quickly saw that she could address multiple needs of her practice into one product.The extensive AI-Audit risk alerts, along with task and process automation, caught her attention.

“I loved the idea of XBert auditing my client files and ensuring we’re closer toward having perfect files right away. That, along with the data verification and being able to implement best bookkeeping practice at the same time, was what sold me.”

Read Rachel’s full story here

Streamline Management

Mother & daughter team Monika Stelzner and Nicole Lynch started their bookkeeping business in 1997. As true professionals, they have always adapted and evolved to implement bookkeeping best practice in their business, both for team efficiencies and excellence in client service. Now, well into their second decade of providing bookkeeping services, they have their most advanced and efficient tech stack to date. And that includes XBert.Working with trades and construction, TPAR is a big job and can come with its own bookkeeping challenges. While most of the work is done as the year progresses, when it comes time to lodge, all the work must be double-checked and issues can arise at the final hour.Before XBert was implemented Nicole ran into a couple of year-end issues.

“One of our client’s had a supplier that changed hands during the year. The business name stayed the same, but the ABN and GST status changed. It wasn’t until we prepared the TPAR and double checked the ABN we realised what had happened and so the race was on to create a second contact, reassign the transactions and change the GST coding. Because the business name hadn’t changed there weren’t any alarm bells.

“XBert now alerts us to issues like that as they happen, so we can address it right away and know when we get to year end everything is correct.”

Read Nicole’s full story here.

South Coast Bookkeeping

Trina Dando of South Coast Bookkeeping was looking for a way to standardize her practice processes – outside of her own head – and to help streamline her time as her business grew. Following conversations with the XBert Team, Trina decided XBert could be the solution to help her support her clients in the best way, while keeping the head count of her practice low. She signed up and became a crucial part of XBert’s development roadmap.After loading her first few client files, Trina immediately saw the benefit of the comprehensive list of XBert risk alerts and AI-audit features.

“The first thing I really liked was the ABN checks. These aren’t the easiest thing to do manually but you do need to keep on top of. Rather than this being a yearly, time-consuming task, it’s something XBert picks up really quickly and can keep on top of as you’re going through the year.”

This function alone has saved her hiring another Part-Time employee. Read Trina’s full story here.

BYO Group

They say you can't improve on perfection, but when Diane McCaffrey met XBert, that's exactly what happened. Since implementing XBert, they've freed up hours each day and have more confidence in the data. The time previously spent manually checking "walls of data" is now used for advisory.With XBert’s AI-powered bookkeeping process automation and audits surfacing issues, Diane and her team know they can rely on the quality of the data and insights. The value and efficiencies gained from XBert mean the solution is now included on all proposals sent to clients.

“We love perfect, and with XBert we can enhance what we do, do it faster and know it's right. Our checking processes have improved by 15%, and it raises the bar with regards to the level of service and integrity in the data. XBert blew me away with how quickly it picked up issues and inconsistencies. The automated ABN and GST checks are gold!”

The account managers at BYO Group open XBert every morning. Previously, they'd manually check thousands of transactions in files across many clients and run their eyes over 'bumpy reports' to ensure accuracy and correct account coding. Now, XBert gets there first.

“We have greater confidence in the data as XBert brings the variables to our attention, and we are checking more issues than before. We also find increased job satisfaction when reviewing work.”

Read Diane’s full story here.

Centegrity

As the Director of Melbourne-based practice Centegrity Bookkeeping and Business Mentoring Centegrity, Jolene Lutman was on the search for innovative solutions. That search brought her to XBert; which provides complete visibility, streamlined processes, and enables her to support and advise clients in more ways.

“In wanting to be more efficient and streamlined, I realised I needed smarter digital visibility of managing Centegrity’s increasing workload and client management. With XBert, clients and myself have streamlined our processes. I have full visibility across the entire practice and have peace of mind that we are providing an excellent standardised service."

Jolene was also looking for a smarter way of working and managing clients for her increasingly busy practice. To achieve these goals, she needed total visibility over work queues and client files, to optimise process flows, maintain consistency and quality work, and have more time for analysis and strategy with her clients.

“We set up Template Tasks to further improve and standardise internal workflows. The AI risk alerts, especially GST registrations and duplicates, automate time-sapping manual checks and the dashboards tell us what’s in the pipeline, and where to invest our time.”

Read Jolene’s full story here.

Built for bookkeepers

XBert is the most comprehensive audit and workflow tool built for bookkeepers.The sophisticated AI Audit, coupled with clever task and workflow management tools will not only save you time, they'll help you create a smooth, streamline system that helps prepare your business to easily scale.But that's just the beginning. With XBert's extensive feature set, you will:

• Sleep better knowing your client files are clean and healthy.
• Have effortless visibility over the size and complexity of your client files.
• Stop stressing about client retention with White-labelled Client Consoles
• Free up time, and have the systems in place, to scale your business.

Start a free trial with XBert and discover why it’s the ultimate practice productivity tool for accounting professionals.

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