Back in 2003 when I first started out in an accountancy practice, things were pretty much done how they’d always been. Sure, we now had digital systems, but a reliance on paper was still prevalent. And, what drove me crazy in my first role, was that data from two systems couldn’t be passed electronically. It had to be printed out and re-entered.
Other parts of the process also started to grate as I took on more responsibility and was trusted to prepare statutory accounts for clients who had used well-known software to prepare their records.
For instance, the fact that producing a trial balance report and entering it into the account production stage was a print out and data entry affair, even though the products were from the same software provider. Such a waste of time!
Yet to surface
After qualifying, I moved into a business where I could finally look at how to streamline our processes. But, bank feeds had still yet to surface yet so I wasn’t where I wanted to be in creating smoother, simpler accounting processes.
Then came 2011, which saw the days of cloud software providers. I was back working in a practice, and our company went for a hybrid of using QuickBooks Online and Xero.
One provider
When the time came for me to start my own outsourcing business in 2015, I decided to focus solely on accounting software and to work with one provider.
For this I chose Xero because you can use it to integrate client’s core bookkeeping accounts with a huge range of different software to help with reporting, forecasting, time tracking, bills.
While systems continue to innovate and while data entry still exists (albeit in a much less significant capacity) – the difference between what can be achieved in smaller timescales now to when I first started is almost hard to compare.