Disclaimer: This article provides general information only and is not tax or financial advice. Tax obligations vary by business type and circumstance. We recommend consulting a registered tax agent or visiting ato.gov.au for guidance specific to your situation.
Mind you, there is plenty of tech out there that seems to be designed for its own sake. All the bells and whistles you don’t need, and not enough of what you do. Here are the best tools for accountants, according to someone who runs a practice on them.
If there is anyone who can tell you what tech to trust and what not to waste your time on, it’s our friend, Patrick Sargent.
Patrick Sargent is part of POP Business, a tech-driven accounting firm for small businesses.
1. Cloud accounting, with Xero as the hero
“How things are done has changed forever. What customers now need is raining gold from the cloud.
For us, the hero is Xero. It’s not that we also don’t love the other cloud software out there, it’s just that all the new tech is syncing with Xero (and the rhyme is also nice) and it could take a while for the others to catch up. So why wait?”
2. Weel is the answer to expense management
“Of course, this is a Weel blog, but seriously, it has propelled our business decision-making beyond belief. There is real-time access to how much, where, when and what the business is spending its money on and all you need is a little mobile app. How have we not had this tech before?
I could go and on, but just get it and you’ll see.”
Weel also covers the accounts payable side of your clients’ books. Weel AP is complete AP: capture, approve and pay, all in Weel. AI extracts details from every invoice, and supplier import takes one click. For accountants and bookkeepers, that means:
- Code, review and approve client invoices in Weel without holding or seeing the business’s bank account login.
- Pay BPAY bills (councils, utilities, telcos, the ATO) straight from Weel. The biller code and CRN are read from the invoice, and BPAY uses the same approval workflow as every other invoice.
- Submit approved invoices as a batch for one payment run, up to 100 invoices per run, with the batch signed off separately from invoice approval.
- Catch duplicate invoices and changed bank details before payment.
- Sync with Xero and MYOB AccountRight (both have two-way sync of bills and payments), and with Business Central on the Enterprise plan.
3. Google Meet and Slack make communication easier
“It's not just about getting the financial data automated. It’s about streamlining your communication with clients and employees.
So much of a consultancy practice is managing relationships and ensuring a high quality of advice is provided. To achieve this, Google Meets has been a massive help to enable better communication with our clients and the team, whilst operating online. Slack is also such a big help to keep the ball rolling on projects and to create a supportive and collaborative team environment."
Keen to improve your clients’ business efficiency? Book a demo today!
