Together Digital Case Study

We made the switch to Xero a long time ago. But even though we were using cloud software, the rest of our accounting set up was pretty traditional. We had an external accountant service, and we were doing the day-to-day side of things. But those two sides of the coin weren’t particularly in sync, so we were still doing things retrospectively and looking at data that wasn’t real time.

When I decided to move to a new accounting service, I spent a lot of time looking at the different firms and digging into what they offered. The thing that really caught my attention on the Beyond site was how accounting is broken down into cycles. That struck a chord with me. Our company isn’t the size where it would make sense to have an internal accounts department, but we still need the different specialisms of a team. Reading about this approach, I could see the value in having these different people intervening in the financial management at different points. Our bookkeeper was retiring at around that time, so it made sense to outsource everything to Beyond.

The procedures that Beyond uses are unlike anything I’ve experienced from accountants before and, because it’s so process driven, I don’t feel like I have to chase up on things. The layers of accountability make everything efficient – the bookkeeper reports to the management accountant, who reports to the chartered accountant. I don’t have to wonder if the payroll has been done that month or if our financial statements have been submitted on time, I know it will have been taken care of. That’s huge peace of mind for me and means I can focus on other areas of the business.

Just because it’s an outsourced service, that doesn’t mean it’s a faceless service. I know the bookkeeper and the management accountant, we interact regularly – albeit remotely – and of course I have regular meetings with Rory as my outsourced CFO. I know who to direct a particular query to depending on what it’s about. It’s very different with a classic accountancy firm, where it’s not clear what people’s roles are and you can get bounced around quite a bit.

We transitioned to the new service and found it bedded in pretty quickly. Within a few months, everything was brought up to date and I could go in and see my balance sheet knowing it was accurate, which hadn’t been the case before.

I’d almost see using the outsourced accountant service as a decluttering exercise for the business. With better structure and financial data, you have clarity and confidence in your strategic thinking. There’s no lack of visibility there about what your tax liability or run rate or profit are going to be. That’s so important from a business owner’s perspective.

There’s a lot less management time going into the financial side of the business – and the time that does get spent there is more on the outputs such as business planning and strategy, rather than inputs such as bank reconciliation or filing a VAT return.

We went remote during Covid, and that was seamless from an accounting point of view because Beyond was already set up to do everything remotely anyway. All the systems are cloud-based, we already communicated via email and had monthly or bi-monthly meetings online.

From an operations point of view, we’ve seen an improvement in the quality and quantity of the work being done, plus an increase in the health and happiness of the team. We don’t feel that we’ll ever require the team to work from the office again. We want them to have the opportunity to work from wherever suits them best. We don’t have the difficulty of training and onboarding people remotely because we only hire experienced people and don’t have junior roles.

Going remote does put pressure on your standard operating procedures, that they’re up to date and easy to engage with. That’s something we’ve been tackling since going remote, but I think we’ve made a big impact on those at this point. There are playbooks for all the deliverables – whether those are big or small – so that the level of service delivery is standardised across the business.

We’re big believers in regular communications, so we have a stand-up meeting every day for the team, and daily and weekly check-ins on our KPIs. We always make a plan for the week ahead as well as looking at the week just gone to see how things went. For issues that come up, people have to decide if a team meeting or one-on-one meeting is required to resolve it, and otherwise we’ll resolve it in the team chat. This means that we can overcome roadblocks efficiently.

When we went remote, the physical meetings became virtual meetings, but otherwise there wasn’t a huge impact on how we communicate and collaborate internally. In fact, we find online meetings to be more efficient because people arrive on time and get to the point faster when it’s virtual. We still meet up on a regular basis to socialise and possibly do some specific work activity in-person instead of remotely. I think that’s important.

There are efficiencies in being remote. A simple example is the time we used to spend travelling to meet clients or potential clients. By having those meetings online, we save a lot of time each week, which gets ploughed back into the project so the client is getting better outcomes. I feel very passionate about remote now, but I would have had quite a different opinion a few years ago. If you had asked me pre-Covid, I would have said that being remote would have a serious impact on the work culture, but now I think that we are stronger than we ever were and the connections between us are better now than they were before.

When it comes to marketing and sales, clients want an agency that understands the local market and that knows what it’s like to export out of Ireland. So while we are remote, we’re still a local firm. It’s not like outsourcing to a company on the other side of the world. It’s possible that when Covid is truly over, some clients will want to have physical meetings again and visit us in our offices. We do still have an office so I’m keeping an eye on where the demand goes with this in the coming years.