During the last 18 months it’s been nice to see so many accounting corporations in South Africa innovating and embracing cloud know-how – whether or not that’s shifting from desktop or additional increasing the digital instruments they use.
We’ve seen the transformational affect this may have on practices. It’s serving to them to streamline processes, save time to allow them to step into extra of an advisory position, and supply higher help to the small enterprise neighborhood.
We converse with two corporations concerning the digital journey they’ve been on. For Cape City primarily based MGI Bass Gordon, the pandemic accelerated their transfer into the cloud, however now they’re embedding it even additional to save lots of important time.
For Pietermaritzburg primarily based VHA Accounting, shifting to the cloud in 2020 has helped to speed up their progress and develop their providers.
Taking again time and driving efficiencies
Since shifting to Xero, MGI Bass Gordon have seen a optimistic affect on the enterprise operations and efficiencies. Susan van der Valk says: “We’ve been monitoring a number of the time financial savings, and it’s serving to us to considerably reduce the hours we spend on guide duties. This implies we will make investments extra time within the extra vital issues like successful new purchasers.”
And so they can see these time financial savings mirrored within the numbers. Susan continues: “We’ve been monitoring the hours spent since utilizing Xero versus what the hours had been like on our outdated software program and the outcomes are actually spectacular. Utilizing Xero together with Swift CSV to streamline the method of importing statements has decreased our hours considerably, regardless of the variety of transactions we’re processing going up.
To place this into perspective, we have now greater than halved our hours on guide duties for some purchasers. For instance, we had been spending 58 hours manually dealing with transactions for one consumer, that is now simply 29 hours since shifting to Xero absolutely.”
The workforce has additionally been additional embedding Xero instruments over the past 12 months, like Xero’s VAT eFiling instruments. “Since we began utilizing Xero’s VAT instruments, it’s taken away the room for error.
What we actually like is the peace of thoughts realizing that you just get the right info into the SARS system every time. Let’s be trustworthy, there are few issues as irritating as submitting incorrect info after which making an attempt to take care of SARS to right it. So these instruments cut back the danger of penalties or curiosity.” provides Susan.
Moving into the cloud
For VHA accounting, shifting to Xero from desktop was an enormous transition. Nonetheless, it’s one which’s paid off. Reflecting on the transition, Vidyanth Bhola from VHA Accounting says: “Once we first set-up Xero it was fairly overwhelming and we had been nervous about getting all our workforce in control on the know-how and in a position to make use of it successfully.
However after connecting with our Xero account supervisor and dealing carefully with them to assist realise the complete potential for our enterprise, we haven’t appeared again. Since then, we’ve grown from having 44 purchasers utilizing Xero to over 150 at present. We’ve opened a brand new department in Umhlanga, employed extra workers and have plans in place to open new places of work in Johannesburg and Cape City sooner or later.”
Vidyanth credit a few of this progress to working with the Xero workforce to harness the complete energy of the platform. “We’ve labored actually carefully with the Xero workforce to take a look at methods we will increase efficiencies and enhance our providers. Related instruments within the Xero ecosystem like Hubdoc, Swift CSV, Analytics and connections with capital suppliers like Bridgement have helped us digitise practically each facet of our enterprise.”
Constructing an ecosystem of related tech
MGI Bass Gordon have been utilizing Xero’s App Retailer to help purchasers too. “One among my private favourites is Hubdoc. I really like with the ability to present purchasers how seamless it’s – a fast picture out of your telephone after which the receipt info goes straight into their accounting system. It makes purchasers really feel extra engaged and a part of the method,” Susan feedback.
“We’ve been working carefully with purchasers to suggest apps that can work nicely for his or her each day enterprise operations. We’ve added Syft Analytics to our app stack for a lot of purchasers because it’s such an important reporting software. The truth that it feeds off stay info from Xero helps us to have significant conversations.” Susan concludes.