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Firm of the Future 2018: Wealth Cafe (INDIA) – app stack and business model

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Meet the other finalists:

How much should an accountant know about their clients’ industry? Just the tax or a little more? Wealth Cafe, based in Mumbai, India, goes into the first meeting with new clients armed with a list of the critical apps for their trade, and the knowledge of how to set them up with QuickBooks Online.

Harsh Vardhan Dawar employs commerce graduates as the first line of engagement who handle the day to day tasks, and one CPA per team to handle taxation and advisory (delivered quarterly). Training is a priority, not just in tax and regulatory changes but applications by industry too.

FIRM STATS

Name of CompanyWealth Cafe Business Advisors
Location of Company Mumbai, India
How long have you been in business? 6
Number of staff?27
Number of clients?150
Staff to client ratio1.6
Do you outsource bookkeeping or accounting work? No
What % of your clients are on value pricing/fixed fee?100
What % of your clients are on cloud accounting software?95
What % of your clients are on QBO?95

 

Digital First: Why do you think you are a finalist?

Dawar: One is we have been using QuickBooks Online for quite some time now, close to 6 years. That has given us insight into the various ways we can leverage the application for different clients. The first question we ask is, what is the output you need?

One client might say, “Quick access to data at the click of a button.” Another would say, “I need fantastic reports”. Another says, “I need profitability product wise”.

Then we do a backend workout (to determine) how do we achieve that? What things work for what sorts of clients? We have a lot of clients in production and web development industries, so when we meet a client we know the pains they will have.

So when I talk to a client who knows about dealing with Amazon and Flipcard, we already have the solutions for them in the first meeting. (The client thinks,) “Apart from being an accountant he knows my industry and the solutions for it.”

So that sets the tone when we start, having some industry knowledge with the client. They expect us to know accounting and taxation really well,but when we know some of the pain points the industry has that gets us going immediately.

 

Digital First: How have you accumulated that industry knowledge?

Dawar: Suppose I have five or six clients in the production industry. They eventually refer us lots of clients in the same industry. If I solve the problems for dealing with ecommerce companies with stock and cash and sales, the same pain point is faced by others in the industry. So whatever learnings we have we keep documenting it. We have internal discussions with our team about the best way to improve the process. Is there a better way to do the same thing better for our clients?

 

Digital First: Who do you employ for this industry research? Accountants?

Dawar: They are bachelors in commerce. They understand the basic of accounts and banking and they know some accounting. We have a CPA who looks over them and leads the entire engagement, and seven to eight people in the team. The final authority lies with the CPA because he takes care of the taxation part. The grads and post-grads (masters in commerce) do the day-to-day work.

 

Digital First: That seems like quite a big team – isn’t it expensive? How many teams do you have?

Dawar: I am based in Mumbai, one of the highest in terms of payroll. We have three teams, each team works with 40-45 clients. The commercials work here pretty well.

 

Digital First: Are the teams specialised?

Dawar: We haven’t (made teams specialise by industry) because it makes the work less interesting.

 

Digital First: How do you share information between teams?

Dawar: When I went last time to QuickBooks Connect there was a lot of talk about value pricing. From the day we started our practice we have always had a retainership model. We do accounting and taxation, company secretarial, etc. We don’t work on a per hour basis. Every Thursday morning we have a one-hour training where we discuss the latest technology changes or talk about processes.

 

Digital First: How much time do you spend in training?

Dawar: One hour a week. That’s when the team sits together. In addition we would have external trainings and industry trainings that would be anywhere between 24 hours of external training which someone would attend in a particularly month. Industry training is typically a full day, usually from 10am to 6pm on a Saturday or Sunday. (Members from the team) do two trainings a particular month. In the last year it has been extremely important for us with the new goods and services tax.

 

APP STACKS

What apps do you use for productivity?G Suite, Office 365, Slack, Whatsapp
What apps do you use for workflow? CCH iFirm, Trello
Tax and Statuory accounts? KDK
Electronic signatures? Adobe esign
Document storage? Google Drive, Cloud HQ
CRM? None
Time tracking?CCH iFirm
Expense management? Greytiphr, Happay
Credit Control?None
Management reporting?None

 

Digital First: You work on weekends?

Dawar: We work as the banks work. We have the second and fourth Saturdays off.

 

Digital First: So staff are training twice a month, 12 months a year?

Dawar: It’s only one or two members going from the team, (no-one goes to 24 trainings a year). Anyone who attends an external training session takes notes which are discussed in the weekly training session with the rest of the team. (And we update our) internal SOPs. It can be regulatory, application or industry training.

 

Digital First: How long have you been selling advisory services?

Dawar: Yes, that is where a lot of the time of the CPA goes. The routine work is taken care of by graduates. Services we offer include valuations (for investment and loans), clients setting up a new business want a business plan. Given that we have a good hold of the accounting already it makes sense that we add those services.

Advisory happens on a quarterly basis, not monthly.

 

Digital First: How do you do automation?

Dawar: We don’t have a lot of the (apps available in the US); we don’t use the localised versions. We look for alternatives here (in India). We share data with clients on Google Drive, and a payroll app called GreyTip. That also takes care of employees claiming reimbursements. We have two or three tax applications, like a KBK or Computax( Indian). These are equivalent to TurboTax. Sasent imports transactions right into QuickBooks Online for e-commerce. Clients can have a huge volume of transactions.

Digital First: So the application environment that is very vibrant in the US is in its infancy in India.

Dawar: A lot of new businesses come and ask us if we work with QuickBooks. If their CPA doesn’t know (QBO) I have seen them leave their adviser of the last 10 years and move to us. Because they want access to data 24/7, they want good reports. We have seen the customers push for access to the application and when they’re not being serviced they are ready to shift. That’s a huge positive. Customers are moving to the cloud. The current generation of advisers will have to embrace (the cloud) otherwise they will lose more customers.

MYOB Doubles Down on Supplier Feeds: Accountech.Live 18

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Banks feeds were the killer feature that fuelled the rapid rise of cloud accounting software. But the bank rec is not fully automated yet. MYOB says it knows what will take it another big step closer – detailed supplier feeds.

MYOB is investing in higher quality, direct feeds to plumbing distributors Reece and TradeLink and office king OfficeWorks, with line item detail flowing directly into AccountRight and Essentials.

The idea is to create a “holistic” approach to expense management, says MYOB product manager Dale Dixon.  

“We found that customers struggled to keep track of expenses on the job,” Dixon said. “The Reece integration brings in the (item) lines of what they purchased and also allocates to the job in the system.”

MYOB AccountRight can switch on tracking for reimbursables in each job. Tradies give a purchase order number at the point of sale which is added to the invoice. Then when the tradie invoices the customer the software automatically adds a selection or all expenses.

“In the past you got your paper copy of your statement and worked out which ones you have invoices for that work. Now you can integrate it end to end,” Dixon says.

MYOB is not the first to add feeds to major suppliers (Xero has OfficeWorks and Reece already) but it is the first to add line item detail. This one change will make a huge difference to the speed of bank reconciliation, says Dixon.

“We are working with a bunch of suppliers to automate those feeds. It’s not just about getting the bill in the system, it’s about automating the workflow,” Dixon adds.

The supplier feeds are one part of MYOB’s push to improve data processing. It has also switched from billsapp@myob.com.au to a unique email address for forwarding invoices to an “in tray”, similar to Xero’s Inbox.

Now a company can hand out the unique email to suppliers so they can send bills directly to the accounting software, or multiple staff within a company can forward invoices they have received.

MYOB Essentials can also store receipts as well as bills by attaching them to transactions in the bank reconciliation screen, Dixon says.

You can hear more about MYOB’s plans at Accountech.Live, November 13-14 at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Register for free now.

 

Session: The next killer feature in accounting? Holistic expense management

Presenter: Simon Dennis, head of partnerships at MYOB

When: 10:05am – 10:35am, Tuesday 13 November

 

Image credit: MYOB

Accounting goes niche with Rounded app: Accountech.Live 18

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Just when you thought there couldn’t be room for a new accounting software company, another appears. This time it’s going niche, and it is chasing the boom in self-employed or sole traders.

The first wave of these apps include famous brands such as FreshBooks in Canada and FreeAgent in the UK. Intuit is pushing the mobile-based QuickBooks Self-Employed in the US, the UK and Australia, among other countries. In an astonishing announcement, Saasu revealed earlier this year that it was winding back its SME efforts to focus on micro-businesses.  

And now there is the Rounded app. Rounded has clocked up 1,500 active users in two and a half years and recently added an accountant portal for managing multiple accounts. It is one of the newest apps exhibiting at the Accountech.Live expo in Melbourne on November 13-14.

DigitalFirst.com caught up with Oliver Garside, co-founder and COO, to find out a little more about Australia’s latest accounting app.

DigitalFirst: Australia surely has more accounting software per capita than anywhere else. Why would you want to launch here?

Oliver Garside: The founder was a career freelancer, he worked as a graphic designer and filmmaker. He found that the options for managing a freelance business were not hitting the mark. He found it too complex, too expensive, and it didn’t deal with GST and BAS particularly well. So he solved his own problem and the feedback he got was that there was a broader application.

We are focused on Australia but it’s not going to be forever. We want to offer it in other markets as well. What makes this special is the focus on the use case. A lot of the more established solutions are really built for small business and offer a level of complexity and cost that freelancers and sole trader and self-employed don’t really need. One of the consistent bits of feedback is the design and simplicity and ease of use. It’s set up on a freelance use case and not a small business use case.

DigitalFirst.com: What are the differences between those use cases?

Garside: We don’t offer payroll. We can’t support anyone that has employees. That would be the main thing.

We also don’t have a general ledger or balance sheet. We have done a huge amount of work to use what you’d call friendlier terminology. Instead of a chart of accounts we have expenses. It’s just about making this as effective and un-intimidating as we can but still facilitating our customers in knowing exactly where they are at in their business at all times.

It is also producing professional invoices, which is huge, and using automation to give them time back in the day.

And when it comes to tax time it’s about connecting with the bookkeeper to remove the strife from going through the tax period. Our customers are organised much more effectively when it comes to tax requirements.

Left to Right: Grant McCall (Founder and Chief Product Designer), Nicholas Beames (Co-Founder & CEO), Oliver Garside (Co-Founder & COO)

Why did you personally join Rounded in 2016, when Xero was already growing so quickly?

Great question, especially when I had no interest in accounting. The first thing was how easy it was for me with no accounting experience to get how Rounded works. The beautiful design instantly appealed to me.

The other thing was that I felt the shift in the way that the world works. All the usual phrases like “future of work” and “gig economy”. That all boils down to the internet supporting people to work in a different way.

That freedom incents people to try different ways of working. Freshbooks isn’t built to deal with BAS or GST effectively. We felt we had identified a growing niche that didn’t need the cost or complexity of Xero or QuickBooks Online (QBO) but wanted effective, fit for purpose software. And I still think that is the philosophy that will make our business successful and has made it so successful today.

 

Funding and users

DigitalFirst: Have you taken on venture capital?

Oliver Garside: No, we haven’t had venture capital. We received a little bit of funding from an investor at beginning of the year but predominantly we are self funded.

And we are scalable in terms of development. So we do one deployment and it updates our three apps at the same time (browser, iOS and Android). We really make sure there is a consistent UX.

 

DigitalFirst: How many users do you have?

Oliver Garside: We have 1,500 active users right now and a few thousand people have downloaded the mobile app and had a look.

We have such a diverse range of customers. The thing that connects them all is that they are all sole traders. Musicians, journalists, tradies, small cafes and retail outlets, a variety of professional services such as doctors, dentists, consultants, architects.

Intuit is after the exact same market with QuickBooks Self-Employed. It is already selling heavily in multiple countries including Australia. What are your thoughts on that app?

We get a lot of customers that come to us from QBSE because their experience isn’t what they want it to be.

We think our app is better, of course. But we are at the opposite end of scale to QuickBooks we try not to lose too much sleep. All we can do is stand behind the experience that we provide.

We can’t position ourselves as the cheapest app in the market. Every now and then we lose out to $5 a month (QBSE’s discounted price) with new business but a significant number come back.

We take so much care over the design of the app and so much effort in the customer support they find that they are more than satisfied with the value the app provides. That’s the only thing that we can control and the one we focus it on.

 

Bank feeds and automation

DigitalFirst: What are you using for feeds?

Oliver Garside: We are using Proviso, they are used by Illion, previously Dun and Bradstreet Australia. They provide bank feed technology to lenders to make credit decisions based on personal loans, mortgages, and that kind of thing.

DigitalFirst: Why go with Illion and not Yodlee?

Oliver Garside: The price and the ease of integrating the API. We can offer 140 banks and institutions including credit cards. Feeds are hugely complex but a massive part of everything we offer. It’s pretty much impossible to have any credible accounting software these days without them.

DigitalFirst: You mentioned automation earlier. What have you built?

Oliver Garside: We will be rolling out some new automation features by the end of the year. We have a bigger development project due 1 January focusing on key areas of automation. One would be auto-categorization of expenses. If you have a regular direct debit that comes to your bank feeds that we can auto-categorise it.

DigitalFirst: Do you create the bank rule manually?

Oliver Garside: We will be able to use some AI in some instances. We are doing some work in the background doing some big data analysis of users’ records and building a list of the top 100 organisations for expenses. The more common ones we will use auto-created rules.

Everyone also has transactions that they categorise in their own way. So we will let people create their own rules as well.

DigitalFirst: Are these in-house AI skills? How can you afford that when you’re bootstrapping?

Oliver Garside: We are lucky that the people involved in the company from the beginning are some of the best engineers I’ve ever seen. We have a culture in the business that if you don’t know how to do something then learn how to do it. Everyone in our team works very, very hard to make this as good as it can be. We think we can do it.

DigitalFirst: What are the automations you have so far?

Oliver Garside: Recurring expenses, recurring invoices, a whole suite of smart reminders for when invoices have been paid and when they are overdue, and sending reminders to clients. It’s about making sure that things don’t fall through the gaps, especially when you have multiple invoices out at one time.

We have a stack of notifications as well. It helps our users keep on top of what’s happening in their business. When a BAS is overdue, that sort of ting. Our BAS is compiled on the fly. When our users submit a BAS at the end of the quarter it takes 30 seconds to pop into the ATO portal. It’s one of the features our users love the most.

Image credit: Rounded.com.au

Cloud Power – Testing the Limits of Accounting Software: Accountech.Live 18

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A funny thing happened on the way to the cloud. Small business accounting software became a lot more powerful.

The traditional line between desktop accounting software and ERP was pretty well defined. Sales guys had a solid list of advantages for ERPs – more customisable, scalable and could consolidate data in the business.

But now technology consultants are replacing smaller ERPs with QuickBooks Online and Xero, augmented with ecosystem apps.

Featured sessions:

Exploring the boundary between accounting software and ERP is a major theme at Accountech.Live, an expo in Melbourne on November 13-14.

Matt Paff, CEO of Value Adders, recently surprised an NGO in Sydney that was expecting to pay more than $10,000 a year to replace an aging ERP. Matt rolled out QBO and to the astonishment of the NGO’s CEO, it did everything they needed.

Matt Paff will be sharing this case study at Accountech.Live and explaining how the cloud has reset the parameters for small business accounting software. You can also catch a preview of  Paff’s session next week – just tune into this 30-minute, informal webinar at 12.30pm AEDT (GMT+11) on Thursday 18 October.

There is an obvious follow-on question. Where exactly is the boundary between small business accounting software and ERP in the cloud?

Accountech.Live has two excellent presenters working on the answer. Inbal Steinberg from Convertworx and Tim Richardson from GrowthPath will be sharing the results of experiments with DigitalFirst.com to identify the limitations of Xero and QBO. You may have already run into those limitations with your larger clients.  

“People perceive these cloud solutions as these huge things running on AWS and servicing hundreds of thousands of users so they don’t even think there could be limitations to the software,” Steinberg says. “You have to be aware of these limitations and know how to get around their them.”

Every accountant and bookkeeper should know where the current boundaries are for the accounting software they recommend. Xero does publicise a maximum 1,000 invoice-limit but only in vague terms, and it’s clear that the contents of those invoices affect Xero’s performance.

“We all know Xero users who have 2,000 or 3,000 invoices a month and it still worked. And we know someone who has 100 invoices a month with 100 lines in each invoice and Xero doesn’t work,” Steinberg says.

So how many invoices, and what type of invoices, can Xero and QBO take? When do they start to struggle? Come along to this session to find out. “The last thing you want is to get a client on a platform and for it to time out on them,” Steinberg says.

The session Testing the outer limits of accounting software – how big can you go? will outline ways of squeezing more out of your software before needing to move to ERP. But if you really want to know the nuts and bolts of these techniques then Steinberg returns to give you the low down.

Big clients slowing down their software? Workarounds for QBO and Xero is a breakdown of the inventory apps and programming techniques consultants use to save SMEs overspending on ERPs. Eventually an ERP is not just inevitable but the right choice for an SME. Come along to find out the tell-tale signs that it’s time for the Big Upgrade.

If you haven’t already register here for Accountech.Live and check out the rest of the agenda.

GreatSoft Brings A Cloud Practice Suite for Big Firms to Australia

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MYOB’s attempted purchase of Reckon APS at the beginning of this year – and its knockdown by the regulator – unearthed some pretty frank statements about the technology roadmaps for the two software companies.
Reckon’s main explanation as to why the combined entity wouldn’t be anti-competitive was that it was so far behind on its cloud strategy and couldn’t afford the investment required to catch up. Reckon has since reversed that position and says it is going full steam ahead. But the moment of candour has drawn the first major competitor to Australia (and it may not be the last).
GreatSoft is a cloud practice management suite born in South Africa from the original Sol6 software. Unlike Sol6, which has evolved into MYOB Accountants Enterprise in Australia, GreatSoft is 100% in the cloud. It is used by many large accounting firms, including three of the Big Four in South Africa.
GreatSoft has made a soft landing in Australia – targeting the MYOB and Reckon APS firms that were alarmed by the statements and reversals in the past 12 months. It has made contact with all the major accounting software companies and is busily connecting to popular practice management and tax compliance tools in Australia.
Worryingly for Reckon, the Australian managing director is one of the founders of APS and former manager of Reckon’s own accounting division, Brian Armstrong.
In his first interview as managing director for GreatSoft Australia, Armstrong reveals his plans for taking on Reckon and MYOB on home ground.

 

Digital First: So who is Brian Armstrong?

Armstrong: I was originally the owner and operator of Sol6 in South Africa. I then ran Sol6 Europe with Brian Coventry, then ran international operations from Australia. I then broke away and was one of the four founders of APS in 1997 and was CEO until its sale to Reckon in 2004. I ran Reckon’s accounting division until 2011. Since then I have been doing business consulting and in the last couple of years working with GreatSoft on their international plans.

Digital First: What is your relationship with Reckon these days?

Armstrong: Since leaving Reckon I have had nothing to do with them in anyway.

Digital First: Why?

Armstrong: No real reason. My time was up and it was the end of the road. They had never engaged with me in any way and I had no need to engage with them.

Digital First: What’s your relationship with GreatSoft?

Armstrong: The guys at GreatSoft I’ve known for 25 years or more. Bruce (Morgan, CEO) and Imtiaz (Lorgat, CTO) were part of Sol6 operation, they ran Cape Town. We did a back-to-back deal and Bruce and Imtiaz bought it out from me.

Digital First: Why are you getting back into the software game?

Armstrong: That’s a very good question. When I got out of it (and left Reckon) I said, ‘That’s me done’. I’ve been doing it all my life. There is a great opportunity and we’re aware of the challenges of coming to the market.
But as we look at more recent times and the announcements of MYOB and Reckon that they don’t have a cloud solution at this time… We feel that the timing is right.
We have talked to cloud (accounting software) providers and have been really surprised about how many are keen to work with us, in compliance and productivity tools. They have difficulty integrating with the legacy suites of APS and MYOB and they are locked out of that world. They see it as a great opportunity for themselves and we see it as a great solution for accounting firms that is really advanced and gives some freedom of choice with what they use. The closed world is a thing of the past.

Digital First: Practice management is a tough game with bigger firms. Glacial sales cycles, complex deliveries. Are you up for it?

Armstrong: It’s a sweet spot for GreatSoft. It is a more difficult delivery model, with more intensive support and reporting requirements. The company has had a lot of experience there. We have had a lot of people who have worked in multi-partner, multi-office and multi-service lines.
The timing is really a combination of three things – the product is there now and the openness of other providers to work with us and the fact that we think the incumbents are a fair way off bringing something to the market. And I saw that as an opportunity to help the guys with their expansion plans.

Digital First: What are the expansion plans? What are you thinking?

Armstrong: We had a stand at the Accounting Business Expo (before we started selling here) because we wanted to gauge interest. I guess I wanted to know how many firms were open to exploring the idea. We had a lot of interactions with a number of firms and it gave us encouragement that they want to find a viable replacement.
GreatSoft is not APS in the cloud – there are differences, but there are also similarities. It is scalable, it has been designed for larger firms, and that feedback has been great to get from the firms. We have been talking to a lot of firms about integrations and doing some proofs of concept and looking at database conversions. We have done it with APS and MYOB clients. That’s been quite a win for firms to see that yes, it can be done.

Digital First: So what happens next?

Armstrong: Now we have to get those integrations completed as soon as we possibly can. That’s going to take real effort in the next couple of months. We want to see the applications working and single client showing all the data from disparate systems.
We have legs on the ground – a business development guy Daniel Fourie and Imtiaz is here talking to firms. We are just visiting firms and talking them through what we can do and a lot of them are really interested and saying, ‘Show us what you’ve got’.

Digital First: Which integrations do you have and which are you working on?

Armstrong: There are so many – superannuation, tax, compliance, document management, and accounting applications. We are probably working with at least 8.

Armstrong: It is complex at the moment. We have concluded business discussions with all the vendors we need integrations with.

[Updated with comments from Imtius Lograt, GreatSoft CTO: Some integrations have started – BGL, NowInfinity. Nimbus has completed and iManage has started. Xero is agreed but not started yet. There are a host of others – payment providers, debtor management (QuickFee, FeeSynergy, Apxium) – at the moment my priorities are determined by the firms we are in engagements with.
Quite a few of the vendors are happy to be part of an ecosystem including GreatSoft. We have met with 20 firms of decent size, and everybody wants in on this concept of choosing their solution platforms.]

Digital First: Which integrations do you have with accounting software?

Armstrong: Xero is a key one for us from a tax perspective. We are looking to deepen that partnership – they have a similar strategy with a connected practice and integration points with other providers. We are exactly the same (in philosophy) in the practice management space.

Digital First: Do you have your first customer in Australia? I heard you were close with one firm.

Armstrong: No, we haven’t signed them. We have done a proof-of-concept and a database conversion. We want to go about this in a slow, conservative way and not get ahead of ourselves. These integrations are a key piece for most of these firms. They say, ‘We hear you, show us’. That’s why we need to do the work.

Digital First: You mentioned a single view of the client? How does that work in South Africa?

Armstrong: We want to give the experience that when you view the client you’re getting a full view of all the information associated with the client. Not just practice management but tax, company secretarial information, superannuation, accounting – all that needs to be available and rendered in the client view.
In South Africa that’s what exists because all those applications are managed and owned by GreatSoft. There’s a lot of merit in an integrated strategy and it’s one I personally think that if you have an integrated view of the client there’s a significant benefit.
But that’s contingent on all those applications being state of the art. If you’re in the situation where they are falling behind, you will have integration (with a suite approach) but not the best applications for each function. Instead of trying to develop each of those themselves we are selecting the best in class. You would go into the client console and see all the data from disparate applications and databases. That gets more complicated as you go across multiple offices.

Digital First: What state is the API? Have heard that it’s not where it needs to be?

Armstrong: With one of the (software) providers the developers worked together for a couple of days and got it completed. It comes down to which providers are open and willing to work with us. There are different levels of API and integration. And giving these guys surety that we are working with them and not sharing data.
There seems to be a lot of distrust about sharing data or knowhow and using it elsewhere. You do need to be open and transparent with all the providers and the data flows that you need, and that’s only in the relationship with that provider and not with everyone else. And so we’re very respectful of that and the NDAs that we have in place.
We are making very, very fast progress – I’ve been surprised at the pace of progress today. I didn’t think we would get this far in this amount of time.

Armstrong: Our strategy around this open platform is the key for us. We have to maintain that open stance and I think that really is important for these firms that they have this freedom of choice that they have been lacking for some time now. I believe that we can move quickly on that and it does give us an opportunity. Developing cloud solutions is not insignificant and particularly when you’ve got a broad base of apps to move forward. We need to take advantage of that when it’s available. I do know it’ takes a lot longer than some of the timelines that I’ve heard.

Digital First: What functions does GreatSoft cover?

Armstrong: We cover the full gambit from time billing, time capture, expense capture, workflow, business process automation, and business intelligence reporting (on time, fees and billing). Everything that’s required to run the practice from an internal management perspective.

Digital First: Why would you not build a suite in Australia like you did in South Africa?

Armstrong: It largely comes down to the extent of the relationships with other providers and making sure that the integrations are seamless and elegant. If they are clunky people won’t want to go there. If you have these strong relationships then you are best in class. It doesn’t make sense to make a tax app unless you’re forced to go down that path.

Digital First: I know you do a lot with large firms, but what is the smallest firm in South Africa using GreatSoft?

Armstrong: In South Africa they have sole practitioners using it. But the more relevant example would be three of the Big Four are using it for practice management and for other modules as well. A lot of the second tier firms are using it too.

Digital First: How much will it cost?

Armstrong: For the practice management suite it’s going to be in the order of $50 per month for practice management and $60 per user per month with the business intelligence tool for reporting. It is a lot less than the incumbents and I think we have to go in aggressively to start with and give early adopters some keen pricing initially. All up we are going to be competitive.

About D1

Digital First covers news and opinions on accounting technology and is read by tech-savvy accountants who understand the importance of technology in establishing competitive advantage.
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