The secret of top tier firms reducing rework and giving great advice
The international Bentleys network has over 700 staff delivering accounting and advisory solutions from 17 offices across Australia, New Zealand and China for connections across 70 countries.Heath Shonhan is a Business Advisory Partner at Bentleys Queensland. He leads the firm's Technology and Innovation division to explore new products aimed at improving business efficiency, making better decisions and strengthening business intelligence. After extensive testing and assessment, Bentleys Queensland announced a formal partnership with XBert.
What XBert does for Bentleys Queensland
XBert has drastically decreased time spent on manual checks and processes and has streamlined and standardised Bentleys Queensland's workflows and output.Heath says XBert is like an extra team member to scrutinise all that data and help encourage and facilitate self-review, bookkeeping best practice and data integrity. Senior staff, partners and managers have full visibility and confidence in the team and quality of work.
"We have a mix of skill levels in our team and XBert's risk alerts and templates reduce human error and rework and aids upskilling. Workload is tracked and managed with XBert facilitating self-reviews of work tasks and quality."
The bookkeeping team's target is to spend 50% less time on manual checks thanks to XBert and the ease of fixing surfaced issues directly in Xero.
"XBert's AI and machine learning drive many efficiencies for the team and mean the data, insights and reports are up-to-date and correct. We aspire to no longer have to worry about the accuracy of the numbers and move on to providing the right advice."
In particular, XBert's scanning of attachments in Xero, checks of imported data from document software, and the continual monitoring of the Australian Business Register for changes to and inconsistencies with a supplier GST (goods and services tax) statuses, business registrations and ABNs are huge time-savers. Alerts for incorrect coding, unusual billing and invoicing and duplicates are also team favourites.The team is also implementing XBert Workflow tools to standardise workflows and deliver consistency across their client base. In consultation with Heath, we refined XBert's customised and interactive Power BI Risk Reports for real-time, accurate client risk analysis. Reports are shared with clients to spark conversations on managing and mitigating financial risk.
“The real-time Power BI Risk Reports are a highly valuable tool for client risk analysis and a meaningful conversation starter.
Heath and his fellow partners and advisors can move past worrying about the accuracy of the numbers and instead dive into what the numbers mean for each client. They know their analysis and advice is spot on.
"Implementing XBert across our private client team enables focus on supporting clients increase their data integrity and reduce financial risk, while also internally improving our workflow visibility and reducing 'rework' (time 'wastage'). Better data = better advice around how we help clients think ahead"
