All things AP with Bogdan Uzbekov, CEO of Apron. Plus bumper app news

[00:00:00] We should surely have some Mickey Mouse imagery on here as well given that the IPs run out.

[00:00:05] We should.

[00:00:06] You see IP run out? Is that just because of copyright laws?

[00:00:08] Yeah, because standards affect 150 years.

[00:00:11] A couple of laws are in the US exactly but in the UK normally you get 50 years, don't you?

[00:00:16] Capra's it 75 standard.

[00:00:19] I was actually in the British Library the other day and I happened to know someone

[00:00:25] that's one of the oldest serving members of the British Library through a friend and he took me on a tour of the British Library.

[00:00:35] He worked there five years before the first brick was even laid and we got to know everything to do with the library.

[00:00:42] He even told me some really great stories anecdotally about the Magna Carta, the King's Library.

[00:00:48] We were speaking about IP and they had in the British Library stored newspapers from the 1870s and they were OSIRing those.

[00:01:00] And of course the newspaper companies then said that's our IP, is their copyright if someone was searching for it.

[00:01:07] And they put it out to Tender and apparently he was saying that copyright runs for 150 years.

[00:01:12] It depends what the medium is.

[00:01:14] I think it depends, doesn't it? Because also things like copyright on music it runs from the death of the artist, doesn't it?

[00:01:21] That's why certain of the Beatles songs are still well within copyright because a lot of the Beatles are still knocking about

[00:01:27] whereas other songs are starting to come out of copyright because they're the artists.

[00:01:31] If you think about some of the artists from the 60s who were just massively into drugs, they died in their 30s

[00:01:36] and so they're now coming to the end of that period of time of coverage from their estates.

[00:01:41] On Steamboat Willie, I know that the US Senate extended the copyright period out by two lots of ten years

[00:01:48] so it should have been out of copyright quite a long time ago.

[00:01:50] But did you say, Indy, that he was working there five years before the first brick was laid?

[00:01:55] Yeah, the foundations. The British Library.

[00:01:58] So he's 390 years old.

[00:02:01] No, for the Institute there is the British Library so they still had...

[00:02:06] Got it. So he was working, he just not in that building?

[00:02:10] That building was purpose-built. I think it was that they hid that he was telling...

[00:02:15] He was saying that the initial budget or something was like...

[00:02:19] I should remember that I'm boasting it was only the other day, it was like they'd budgeted like 20 million or something

[00:02:24] and it ended up being like 500 million or something ridiculous.

[00:02:28] It was so ridiculous.

[00:02:30] Standard budgeting variants are not surprised.

[00:02:33] But it's such a beautiful building.

[00:02:36] I really encourage everyone to go and give you British Library a little bit because it's beautiful.

[00:02:40] Hello and welcome to the Digitals in the Crawl World Podcast, the go-to place for all your accounting tech news in the UK and beyond.

[00:02:49] I'm your host Ryan Pearcy and today on this episode we are diving into app news as we always do.

[00:02:56] We have a great interview with Bogdan from Apron and we also talking again to Vipo from Aventrack

[00:03:05] but I guess before we do any of that we should hand the mic over to the infamous John Toon to hear a little bit about what he's been up to recently.

[00:03:13] Thank you, Ryan. I've had quite a busy day because I've been working from home and then I've been into Manchester to celebrate the end of fasting

[00:03:21] which is close approaching for some of our Muslim colleagues in anticipation that they'll be taking time off

[00:03:25] and it sort of coincides with the use of the airhead we've been doing a little bit earlier

[00:03:29] so it's good to see some of them and learn a bit more about the importance of fasting for them and their faith

[00:03:34] and also to celebrate breaking in the fast this evening with them.

[00:03:37] So that was really good and aside from that just the same old crazy stuff, right?

[00:03:42] It's just work at the moment but it's good. How are you? Thanks for your anyway.

[00:03:46] Yeah, not bad. I've been busy preparing for what's going to be a really interesting digital accounting show

[00:03:52] with a great talk from us at the end of the first day hopefully with some brilliant reveals of what we're planning to do through 2024.

[00:04:00] So if you are listening, you're going to be at the show, please do come along to our talk 4pm on the 16th.

[00:04:07] Do check us out. We're in the schedule but we're not alone. John and I, we are also joined by the amazing Indy Tatler.

[00:04:13] So Indy, how are you?

[00:04:14] Yeah, I'm really excited today. We've got Bob Denon, so my new favourite person.

[00:04:20] I thought it was like your roommate, effectively, isn't he?

[00:04:23] He was my roommate when we were at Canary Wharf. Yeah, that's right.

[00:04:27] I door stopped him and dropped in just to meet April after they raised their series funding.

[00:04:32] Get you guys. Like rooming in Canary Wharf, unbelievable. How fancy are you two?

[00:04:38] We were fancy. They obviously moved in as soon as they'd taken their funding and got themselves a nice little office on the same floor.

[00:04:46] And how did your first date go?

[00:04:49] It was not the best first date. I won't lie.

[00:04:55] Oh dear. I heard on the rumor mill, it's the first coding over girls. Is that true, do you think, Indy?

[00:05:03] Well, I can tell you it was a bit uncomfortable because I decided that I'd go and introduce myself to April.

[00:05:10] As you do, you're on the same floor. You think, OK, I'll drop in and see my neighbours.

[00:05:14] And I was introduced to him. He won't mind me sharing it because I'll bring it up on the interview later.

[00:05:21] But I went in, I was introduced to him and I kid you not, he stood from his laptop.

[00:05:30] I must have said to him, hello, I'm Indy. I'm on this floor, bankable, but also have this accounting tech podcast which, you know, I know that you're speaking to.

[00:05:41] And I was about to finish a sentence saying, you know, speaking to some of the people in this sector or area.

[00:05:47] And I kid you not, he looked at me and he said, I haven't got time for this.

[00:05:52] Put his headphones back on his head and sat down right in front of me and turned a 90 degree angle away from me.

[00:06:03] And did you get good sight of those headphones? Were they noise-canceling ones or were they like the cheap rubbish ones?

[00:06:08] And you could have just kept talking, I think maybe you would have heard every word.

[00:06:10] Even I have a little bit of shame. I was like, hmmm. And there was donuts, John.

[00:06:17] There were donuts on the way out. I didn't even get a donut.

[00:06:21] Well, do you know what? If I'd been treated like that, I would have taken the donuts with me.

[00:06:25] I would have like, fuck you guys.

[00:06:26] It was a donut-disturb moment.

[00:06:29] Yeah.

[00:06:31] Anyway, we're going to meet him later. So that'll be exciting.

[00:06:34] Maybe we'll bring that up.

[00:06:36] But April and obviously clearly doing some big things made a series of new releases so we'll hear from him.

[00:06:41] That's why I don't have time to talk to the little people. That's what it is.

[00:06:44] That's all right. I'm insignificant. What can I say?

[00:06:47] Or maybe he's fully adopted his London roots now and decided that he can't possibly talk to strangers.

[00:06:54] That must be what it is.

[00:06:56] Sure. I think that I quite liked his brash approach. It's something refreshing, isn't it?

[00:07:03] When someone says, I don't want to talk to you and they just about turn and look at the other person next to you.

[00:07:09] It's something else. Even I'm not that rude.

[00:07:12] Oh, I don't know about that. I might try it out and just see how it works for me.

[00:07:16] I'm pretty sure someone is going to insult me for it but let's see.

[00:07:21] It might be Bogdan style networking. Let's try it out our next few events and see how we do.

[00:07:29] Amazing.

[00:07:30] Well, I'll tell you what. We've got a standard account text in a few weeks.

[00:07:34] Maybe we should try that when someone comes up to you and asks a question.

[00:07:36] You're like, sorry, I don't have any time.

[00:07:39] I need to take this call. Goodbye. You are the weakest link. Goodbye.

[00:07:50] I will kick off app news for this episode and something a little bit different from the FT.

[00:07:55] They pulled together their FT 1000 ranking, which has looked at compound annual growth in revenue for businesses across Europe between 2019 to 2022.

[00:08:07] So a little bit out of date now, but they were really interested in how businesses had reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic and obviously business shutdowns and things like that.

[00:08:15] And what they had identified was there was a minimum average growth rate of 36.9% required to get into the list.

[00:08:22] And there was absolutely stonking numbers in here in terms of some international European businesses, some of which I've never heard of,

[00:08:29] but compounds annual growth rates in excess of 400 or 500% to get into the top three positions.

[00:08:35] So really, really impressive.

[00:08:37] But what was even more impressive was there was one of our favorite accounting tech tools in the list from a UK perspective, which was I plus it.

[00:08:44] They were number 19 in terms of the UK rankings if you separated it out.

[00:08:49] So yeah, Q DOS to them while done.

[00:08:51] So getting into that and being identified.

[00:08:53] I think overalls are about place 103 in the top 1000.

[00:08:57] So still pretty good going and they were only beaten by a business that I've never heard of, which is index.dev in the IT software category.

[00:09:05] And the only other one that stands out there where they beat us was where they beat I plus it was only fans did pick them.

[00:09:12] They got to number 73 in the list and just squeezed out of the top 10 in the UK rankings.

[00:09:17] Well done to my plus it.

[00:09:18] Yeah, you've got to be excited to not be in the top 100 right?

[00:09:21] Come on guys, pull your finger out.

[00:09:23] But no, it's amazing right there.

[00:09:25] I knew they were going great guns in terms of growth but yeah, listing that I think it's pretty amazing.

[00:09:32] 155% it was so that is quite good going isn't it right?

[00:09:37] It is you've got to be recruiting quite substantially to support that level of growth.

[00:09:41] So well done.

[00:09:42] And I've got something also from I plus it.

[00:09:44] They have basically landed the company of the year in the National MAT Awards or MAT Awards.

[00:09:50] So multi Academy Trust and this comes on the back of launching a product in 2023 called I plus it for education to service multi Academy Trust.

[00:10:00] It's been a year and they're now already named company of the year by the National MAT Awards, which is just incredibly impressive.

[00:10:07] And the whole point of this is that they're trying to disrupt that market where you've got quite outdated traditional software normally server based.

[00:10:15] And apart from XFE, which are an amazing product based around zero.

[00:10:19] And there's not really huge competitors and we know about zero great product but does have its own transaction limits, which can cause issues on I guess the bigger mat.

[00:10:28] So I've just seen that opportunity dived in and seem to be doing really well.

[00:10:32] So I know that's on the back of other rewards.

[00:10:35] They've won as well over the course of the last year, which was the best enterprise accounting slash ERP software accounting excellence awards and won the FinTech prize at Tech Southwest Awards in order in 2023.

[00:10:46] So it seems if there's an award, they're going to go and win it.

[00:10:50] That's what I seem to be experiencing at the moment.

[00:10:53] Yeah, a cue DOS to them in the team.

[00:10:55] They are everywhere at the moment, which is good for them.

[00:10:57] Clearly the marketing is working right and maybe one or two competitors taking the foot off the gas.

[00:11:01] But as you say, in that Academy space in particular, probably I plus it and XFE are the only really quality options for schools in that arena.

[00:11:09] And the rest of the providers I'm afraid to say are a fairly sorry bunch which are taking advantage of a sector.

[00:11:15] But that is the way it goes unfortunately.

[00:11:18] Moving on then Alicabank have recently announced some integrations and partnerships with both zero and sage.

[00:11:25] They have direct integrations into both of those products for their business current account customers.

[00:11:30] Basically that means we've now got bank feeds life life for Alica.

[00:11:33] For anyone that's not aware, Alica is probably one of the fastest growing business banks in the UK.

[00:11:39] They had 2000 customers signed up to their business current account in December 2023 and were named as the fastest growing company of 2023 in the Deloitte UK fast 50s.

[00:11:50] Yeah, they are starting to be seen here.

[00:11:52] There are everywhere.

[00:11:53] They're definitely out and about the events that we're in.

[00:11:55] And I think they've got quite a compelling offering for that sort of larger s smaller m part of the SME market,

[00:12:03] particularly where they are definitely under safe by the high street banks and probably a little bit too big or maybe a little bit too complex for the FinTechs and the Challenger Bank.

[00:12:11] They've dip the toe in the water in the kind of account see market from a marketing perspective in the last year or so.

[00:12:16] But I'm expecting them to be pretty much everywhere throughout 2024.

[00:12:19] If there's an event, we're probably going to see them there.

[00:12:22] But that's good.

[00:12:23] Like they're doing it a bit different.

[00:12:25] They're trying to mix it up and it's unfortunate that it was fastest growing 2023.

[00:12:28] They missed out on that list from the FT.

[00:12:30] Their data is too recent.

[00:12:32] I know we work on real time data, but I do wonder if 2022 reporting in 2024 is real time data for the FT.

[00:12:38] I don't know if that's as up to date as they can get.

[00:12:41] Anyway, let's mix it up a little bit.

[00:12:43] I've got an acquisition.

[00:12:45] So the owners of coconut have acquired the cloud payroll tour my PAYE.

[00:12:51] Now my PAYE or my PAYE has been around for a long time have been integrated into tools such as QuickBooks Online and Zero

[00:12:59] and been handling that payroll, that timesheet functionality and a bit of expenses as well for a long time.

[00:13:04] They were probably one of the first non accounting platforms to integrate in.

[00:13:09] They were around when I was starting this realm of counter counting feels like they've been there forever.

[00:13:14] But I don't feel they've really progressed much in that period.

[00:13:17] They've been quite stable and consistent performer.

[00:13:20] And I guess we look at the products that Pennine Ventures, the owners of coconut have acquired.

[00:13:26] They had go simple tax, they acquired coconut have integrated them to go simple tax.

[00:13:30] And now they're acquired my PAYE, I think four minute entire suite of products now that they all integrate overlap and complement each other.

[00:13:39] So none I'd say are defining.

[00:13:41] I think they've picked up probably good deals.

[00:13:43] Those that may be not doing as well, maybe struggling, need a buyer and they're utilizing the tech to actually build something.

[00:13:49] A lot better from the existing products in the market.

[00:13:52] So interesting to see where that ends up.

[00:13:54] But yeah, that was one out of left field for me didn't expect that to occur.

[00:13:58] No, definitely not.

[00:13:59] But at least the thing you can say about the team at Coconut, they are a lovely bunch.

[00:14:03] Oh my God, dad jokes.

[00:14:05] We're doing dad jokes now.

[00:14:07] Moving on to something that I would just like to say that we completely foresaw for once in our lives because we heard the rumors and we got them out there on the pod.

[00:14:18] And now they've come true is that zero have announced payroll changes.

[00:14:22] And actually these are some genuinely exciting payroll changes because sometimes payroll changes are boring.

[00:14:29] So I think the key one that really stands out to me on this is that zero have changed the way that you can migrate from a previous system onto zero payroll itself by being able to load your full payment submission from your previous software into zero.

[00:14:44] And that will facilitate the transition of the records migrating the data from the old system to the new one.

[00:14:50] And that for me sounds absolutely fabulous because typically our recommendation for clients if they are looking to move to zero payroll is to wait for the tax year and so it only really gives you one very narrow window to make the change.

[00:15:02] Because you're moving payroll and tax data and stuff from one system to another typically has been fairly manual.

[00:15:08] It's always been a little bit fraught because it's quite easy to make errors and stuff.

[00:15:12] I've come up with one set before where I've not got the information correct and it's screwed up the payroll when you first test it and run it.

[00:15:18] And that's a delightful place to be.

[00:15:20] So I'm really pleased to see this.

[00:15:21] I think anything that makes that transition between products as easy as possible is always appreciated.

[00:15:25] So this looks really exciting.

[00:15:27] And as it happens, I do have a potential zero payroll move on the cards fairly soon.

[00:15:32] So I will definitely be testing this out to see how easy and simple it is over the coming weeks.

[00:15:36] There are a few other bits and pieces.

[00:15:38] They have increased the ability to enter more information about employees, contract your working patterns.

[00:15:44] If you're a payroll admin.

[00:15:46] So this means that if you have like non-traditional hours say for example like four day week, which is obviously quite popular for some firms,

[00:15:52] you can now start to add that in so it'll make managing a running payroll a little bit easier to do on a day to day basis.

[00:15:58] And there's a little bit more guidance in there around setting up pensions and stuff because I must admit in the age of auto enrollment,

[00:16:04] it's still somewhat of a challenge sometimes to understand exactly what we're doing with the schemes and who's contributing what,

[00:16:11] especially if you're not on the statutory limits or the statutory contributions.

[00:16:15] So I think anything that helps in terms of making that assessment easier, getting the contribution levels right,

[00:16:21] making sure that people are opted in or opted out or if you've got salary sacrifice arrangements, whatever it might be,

[00:16:27] there can be a wealth of complexity in this world.

[00:16:30] And Lord Ike's marked me come along and stumped the feet all over it and make a mess of it.

[00:16:35] They've tinkered with the pension side, I think quite regularly over the last few years and I think maybe that highlights

[00:16:41] that's a key area that people that use zero payroll have struggled with they need some additional support to make it easier and more streamlined.

[00:16:47] The ingestion tool right that I think that's great, but I thought that was when I first saw that for that as pioneering,

[00:16:53] but I have learned that other cloud based payroll tools also seem to do this and know that employment hero formerly keep a does it.

[00:16:59] But I think maybe I'm just so used to the traditional payroll tools where it was very archaic to ingest information from another

[00:17:06] payroll provider. I think this is great and it's only going to help people transition to zero payroll.

[00:17:11] Maybe this is one of the arguments for MTD for tax, right?

[00:17:14] Payroll has been digitized as a consequence of various things, RTI, auto-enrollment, etc.

[00:17:20] And the fact that payroll providers are now enabling the use of this information that's coming out of payroll systems

[00:17:26] to be used as part of that transition. Maybe this is one of the arguments around why MTD might be useful in the future

[00:17:34] when we get into it through a corporation tax because it might make that transition between software is a little bit easier.

[00:17:39] I've got something that was announced at the Festival of Accounting and Bookkeeping.

[00:17:44] That was that KPM have released a new time and fees module.

[00:17:48] Now, this isn't something pioneering. They had a time and fees module, but they've rebuilt it to be more built

[00:17:55] for the new SaaS way of working. Their product was quite old now.

[00:17:59] They've been around for a long time and they've been going through and re-engineering parts to make it modernized

[00:18:04] and make it fit for AI as they start to roll it out.

[00:18:08] One thing that did stand out to me, which I thought was an interesting comment, is they stated that

[00:18:12] accounting is moving away from time-based fees towards a more fixed fee model.

[00:18:17] And this has driven a race to get to the bottom price in certain parts of the industry.

[00:18:22] It does seem a bit of a weird analogy considering that a lot of businesses are actually upping their prices

[00:18:26] and charging more for the advisory aspect.

[00:18:29] Maybe that's the way that they're pitching to their clients, that their clients are more on the low cost, efficient turnaround.

[00:18:35] And that's why they've focused their new time and fees module on that.

[00:18:39] It's on churn rather than high-level advisory. All speculation, but that comment that quote by Dina Vahi, I think that's right,

[00:18:47] kind of alludes to the fact that's maybe the nature of their clients.

[00:18:52] There's been a thread on our accounting web on the announcers about charge-out rates and fixed fees versus hourly rates and things.

[00:18:59] I have a struggle a little bit with these sort of discussions or arguments because the vast majority of firms work on a fixed fee basis

[00:19:06] for probably the vast majority of their work and probably the only places where you're still in hourly rates

[00:19:11] tends to be in places like corporate recovery and corporate finance, R&D claims, maybe are on a sort of a contingent basis

[00:19:18] in some instances, but again that depends on the structure of your firm and whether you've got any restrictions around that.

[00:19:23] But surely pricing for our customers is for us to decide.

[00:19:27] If we want to charge a fixed fee for a job, we charge a fixed fee.

[00:19:30] If we want to charge an hourly rate, we'll charge an hourly rate.

[00:19:32] And if we want to charge some sort of combination of a percentage on something with a cap or whatever it might be,

[00:19:38] that we could do all of those things. I don't understand the fixation on its fixed fee or its hourly rates.

[00:19:43] No, it's fixed fee or hourly rates or something else or whatever you want to charge.

[00:19:48] And whether you do time sheets or not doesn't change the concept of how you come up with a cost or a price for a customer.

[00:19:53] Now, admittedly, I think that they've aimed their product to be more looking at if you are doing a fixed fee operation

[00:19:59] that when you're allocating time it's just easier to report against it because I guess maybe their traditional system

[00:20:05] was you clock up time and then you bill it all at the end rather than I guess more retainer or fixed fee level

[00:20:10] or traditional way of reporting.

[00:20:13] Yeah, fair enough. Fair enough.

[00:20:15] We're moving on then to something from Sahara.

[00:20:18] So they just announced the ability to add custom fields at a line item levels for anyone that's not aware.

[00:20:24] Sahara is an OCR tool so think along the lines of Dex, the ultimate entry, etc.

[00:20:29] They're typically aimed at sort of probably slightly larger, more complex businesses because they have probably a more comprehensive extraction capability.

[00:20:37] Also plugs into some bigger tools in the market as well as going backwards into things like Sage, Sage 50, etc.

[00:20:43] So you've got connectors that enable you to do that and they've got inbuilt approval processes.

[00:20:47] So they're adding line item level capability to add custom fields and that's quite handy

[00:20:53] because that can be useful when you've got purchase orders flowing through into the system with invoices.

[00:20:58] If you want something specific in there which can be tracked through to an invoice and also it leaves you the ability to do more things around tracking costs

[00:21:06] as the invoices coming into the business and obviously going into your accounting system.

[00:21:10] And I think it also potentially gives you the ability to reroute approvals as well, potentially in the future if that's not quite there yet,

[00:21:17] based on what's going into those custom fields.

[00:21:20] So I think it just enhances what they've already got.

[00:21:22] It brings a whole host of extra functionality, particularly if you're running out of things like cost codes or tracking categories or whatever it might be in your system of choice

[00:21:31] because you've now got the ability to add an initial field which might enable you to track more.

[00:21:35] In addition to that, they have a payment solution.

[00:21:38] Now this has been rumbling around in the ether for a while because I've been aware of a payment solution for probably at least three months,

[00:21:46] probably much longer than actually probably six months or so.

[00:21:48] But I know that it's sort of been in Balfour testing, not really been released out there.

[00:21:52] But it has now entered sort of public testing capability and they're ready to soft launch it fairly soon.

[00:21:57] So if you are a Zahara user or you're getting your clients on Zahara,

[00:22:01] I'd look out for that because payment integration is coming and it would be really interesting to see what that functionality looks like.

[00:22:08] I do know who their partner would but I don't think I'm allowed to say that it's got some good functionality coming.

[00:22:13] Certainly if they agree, I'll just be able to leverage the partner that they've chosen.

[00:22:17] And of course potentially Streamlines, an area that's challenging.

[00:22:21] I think particularly for the types of businesses they're looking at,

[00:22:24] that kind of payment service within the OCR product or within the sort of AP process is probably one that has more of an appeal

[00:22:34] than maybe some of the smaller businesses have a challenge around in terms of just the MD,

[00:22:39] doing all the bank payments and stuff, it's fairly straightforward.

[00:22:42] So if you get into a business that Zahara will get involved in,

[00:22:45] you're probably going to have a more enhanced finance function with approval processes and steps

[00:22:49] and access to banks at different levels etc.

[00:22:51] So I think this is where they can really make a difference.

[00:22:53] Yeah, I love this release from Zahara and I think you pretty much summarise that perfectly

[00:22:58] and the fact that they're in the slightly larger business space really enhances that functionality

[00:23:03] and that desire to bring everything back into a single solution which I do find now talking to businesses.

[00:23:08] As they grow, they add up more apps and it gets a little bit cumbersome.

[00:23:11] So bringing it all into one is more important for them.

[00:23:15] In addition, you've seen I guess as we talked about in the last pod,

[00:23:19] April and go from payments now to invoice capture and we're going from Zahara from into invoice capture into payments.

[00:23:25] So everything as I said at the start of year my predictions is consolidating.

[00:23:28] We're bringing everything into single packages and we're going to see more of that throughout the year, I believe.

[00:23:33] We're talking about I guess a higher level invoice capture tool back down to one that's perfect for smaller businesses,

[00:23:39] one that's been around forever.

[00:23:41] Dext, they have once again released a new bit of functionality this one in due date extraction from the invoices.

[00:23:47] You could set rules previously which you could just say the amount of days after an invoice put that into due date.

[00:23:53] This time it reads the invoice finds the due date and brings it in automatically

[00:23:58] and you can choose to either have that or override it with your set rules so that that flows into the finance system.

[00:24:04] Just another thing that they've been releasing and I was on their update the other day

[00:24:08] and they've got lots more that they're expecting over the course of 2024 even talking about some big releases in April.

[00:24:14] So I think we'll be talking about them on the pod over the next year.

[00:24:19] I'm ridiculously excited about that update because I think due date extraction was one of the things

[00:24:24] that was always a little bit painful to deal with particularly when you're putting it in front of new clients, new customers

[00:24:29] and they're like what do I do with the due dates? Oh, I have to build a rule.

[00:24:32] Okay, fine. Let's go into that and do that.

[00:24:34] So great little release and I look forward to seeing how it works and whether it works adequately because that's the important thing.

[00:24:40] There's no point in extracting due dates on that nonsense.

[00:24:42] So that's quite fun.

[00:24:44] Sticking with the whole accounts payable shenanigans, Nook have also released a whole bunch of updates as well.

[00:24:51] They've built something around the payment runs in terms of if you have a failed payment run,

[00:24:56] it will now tell you notify you why and then how to resolve the issues so that payment run fail.

[00:25:02] That's like neat little functionality brought in.

[00:25:05] They've also brought in the ability for you to change the scheduled date of a payment.

[00:25:09] So where an original implementation of the product you could schedule a payment for say a week on Friday,

[00:25:14] but then if you change your mind and said oh, it should go a week on Thursday,

[00:25:18] you then couldn't change that. You had to cancel the payment and go all the way back through the process,

[00:25:23] which was a little bit clunky. So that's a nice neat little update as well.

[00:25:27] And then around approval rules and stuff, they have now brought in the ability to edit rules.

[00:25:33] So once you've created a set of rules, you can then go back and edit them,

[00:25:36] which sounds a little bit weird because if you'd set a rule, why wouldn't you be able to go back and edit it?

[00:25:40] But that was how it had sort of been built and created at the time.

[00:25:43] So that's now there. And then the final one, and this is a fairly big one,

[00:25:46] is obviously because Nuke is making payments from a pool of money that you could have updated to your wallet.

[00:25:51] They will flag your huge, great big warning if you don't have enough funds in your wallet

[00:25:55] to actually make the payments that you've scheduled.

[00:25:57] And they'll tell you also not just that you're short, but by hiring much by

[00:26:01] so that you can literally through your banking process do your one click,

[00:26:04] your fund from your normal bank account and make sure that you're covered.

[00:26:08] So again, nice neat little set of updates there, which I think are all just leaning towards

[00:26:13] making the product even more easy to use.

[00:26:16] And then the final few bits and pieces, they have a new advisor role in the product

[00:26:20] which allows accountants to check the status of their companies that are using Nuke for

[00:26:23] so you can verify them and check that they're effectively up to date and correct.

[00:26:27] You could also do payroll on the mobile.

[00:26:30] You can make payroll payments on there.

[00:26:32] And they also support local Turkish payment rails.

[00:26:35] So that sounds like a delight, doesn't it Ryan?

[00:26:38] I've been waiting for that forever.

[00:26:40] Oh thank you for being outside to nail me to run on the Turkish payment rails.

[00:26:45] But no, what I picked out mostly from that news, John, is that they're going to tell me I'm short.

[00:26:50] I got bullied on that for years when I was young and now I'm doing it as well.

[00:26:55] I'm going to be hunting you down.

[00:26:57] Great big warning like.

[00:26:59] Yeah exactly.

[00:27:00] You're short Ryan.

[00:27:01] I'm flashing in my face.

[00:27:03] Let's wrap this up with something that's been doing the rounds on LinkedIn and that is the BBC article stating that AI is going to take the grind out of accountancy.

[00:27:12] And although that is what was stated, actually the focus very much on audit and this completely contrast to an article they wrote about six or seven years ago when they said that AI will replace 80% of accountants and bookkeepers.

[00:27:26] They're now just saying it's just going to make it easier, make our lives easier.

[00:27:29] The change the spin and made it so that actually all those boring monotonous tasks are going to be replaced by AI.

[00:27:35] And some examples they've set of this are summarizing documents, creating content, drafting documentation, advanced searching, analytics and insight and knowledge management.

[00:27:45] All of which I think we've probably been tinkering with and playing with since chat GBT and copilot was released.

[00:27:52] The main thing they flag is that this will replace a lot of the work that junior members of the audit team do and as I was a junior member of an audit team and the monotonous boring stuff that I had to do.

[00:28:04] I want to say, yeah, that's great but I'm also concerned about how we're going to develop and educate those individuals that are coming through audit service lines.

[00:28:13] And they are stating that their training programs are changing but considering how long it took for training programs to adapt to cloud accounting technology.

[00:28:22] I'm not sure how quickly they're going to adapt to training and how I don't have that something that John you are doing in your firm.

[00:28:28] I know you're very heavily audit focused.

[00:28:31] Yeah, I got a few comments around this sort of BBC story.

[00:28:34] Number one, it feels like it was at least 12 months too late if not two or three years too late.

[00:28:38] It was great promo for Hayes Mack because they would like the main firm that were featured in it.

[00:28:42] So well done Hayes Mack, your marketing guys have done an absolute number on them there.

[00:28:46] Q'd us to the fact that inflow as a byproduct of being used by Hayes Mack and data snipple were both referenced although we beat you to it BBC.

[00:28:54] We had the CEO of both of those on before you so what can you say but I think actually you make a very serious point and there was a very serious point in the article which again is not necessarily news because the industry has been talking about it for a while

[00:29:06] but it's about not just upskilling the existing workforce but also about training the new workforce coming through as we anticipate AI in its various guises will start to remove some of the monotonous tasks on which we deem it's necessary to cut your teeth on in the accounting and audit space.

[00:29:22] What are we going to do in terms of upskilling and training people on this?

[00:29:25] And actually one of the talks that I did at FAB there was a question about if accountants auditors aren't learning like the basics, how are they going to ever understand what an accountant or an auditor does?

[00:29:35] And also how do you then bridge that gap between going from a brand new trainee to trying to get someone to that level of experience maybe two or three years in where they can have a different kind of conversation with someone?

[00:29:46] My only sort of single answer to that is that I question the need for us to still be learning some of the basic things that we learn at accounting level and I can trust this with other areas and other skill sets and stuff that we all have in terms of just because our cars are turning electric and stuff doesn't necessarily mean that we understand how the batteries work.

[00:30:04] It doesn't necessarily mean that we're still expecting to turn a key in an ignition for example or use a manual box because none of those cars have them anymore.

[00:30:13] We don't lament losing those skills.

[00:30:15] That's not a problem, we can still drive a car from A to B.

[00:30:17] And actually I think what that's the important thing is just because the technology in a vehicle is changing, we still learn how to drive a car in the same way.

[00:30:25] And I think we should be considering how we learn to be accountants, how we learn to be auditors and tax advisors and stuff in a slightly different way.

[00:30:33] So the technology that we use doesn't really matter but what we can do is we could be a much more effective functional person with all the safety caveats and managing the risks, etc.

[00:30:43] So that's kind of my take on it.

[00:30:45] I don't have a silver bullet but I know that the Institute or the ICAW are changing their syllabus from I think it's 2025.

[00:30:52] So there will be changes coming into the learning that our trainees go through.

[00:30:57] What a perfect analogy to end on John.

[00:30:59] You should talk at some events.

[00:31:00] I think it's a brilliant public speaker.

[00:31:02] Thanks for your cut this engine, Ryan.

[00:31:08] We're lucky to have Vipo, a chef from a France track back on and in this section we're going to talk a little bit about an area that I think I'm still learning about which is the difference between outsourcing and offshoring.

[00:31:20] So Vipo can you just enlighten me what are the differences?

[00:31:24] People often get confused by the two so you're not alone there, Ryan.

[00:31:29] Outsourcing is where you have a job project and you essentially get somebody else to do it.

[00:31:37] So it can be something as simple as cleaning your car.

[00:31:39] Yeah, that's outsourcing.

[00:31:41] If you like in our world it's a set of accounts.

[00:31:44] It's doing the bookkeeping, doing a tax return.

[00:31:48] In terms of offshoring, it's where you are doing the work offshore.

[00:31:53] It's usually referred to as dedicated resourcing.

[00:31:57] You have a colleague who's assigned to you as a firm and they work solely for you or predominantly for you.

[00:32:06] So they're just embedded within your business.

[00:32:09] Got it.

[00:32:10] No, because I guess I was looking at similar to where you've got this fractional term now haven't you?

[00:32:14] So rather than having an FD you have a fractional FD but I guess if it's a pool of resource then it could be anyone that's delivering that fractional work.

[00:32:22] Is that right for me?

[00:32:23] Yeah, very much.

[00:32:25] And how does that... is there a benefit of I guess a business being able to provide both the outsourcing and the offshore?

[00:32:31] Yeah, so what the offshoring does is it's that individual or group of individuals learn your firm's way of doing things.

[00:32:40] So much like you'd have somebody within your own office.

[00:32:44] If I go back to my professional days I worked for four different accounting firms.

[00:32:49] They all did accounts and they all did tax.

[00:32:52] They just recorded them slightly differently.

[00:32:54] Yeah, so the beauty with that is if you have that same person they're used to producing files your way.

[00:33:01] Now that's great and that works but sometimes you'd have a peak.

[00:33:07] Yeah, and that resource isn't sufficient because we offer both what firms are able to do is say actually advanced.

[00:33:15] We want five people but there'll be some months where actually we need extra resource or we need all this additional work to be delivered.

[00:33:25] The beauty is that core team will manage that additional workload but they've got access to that additional resource which is part of our outsourced teams.

[00:33:39] So you've got your core resource that delivers X 100 hours, X 1000 hours a month but in addition you can call upon a wider team because we actually have them.

[00:33:52] Flexibility is probably the best term for this because it's the same thing that cloud enabled wasn't it?

[00:33:57] You could be flexible and I talked to clients where they've got an internal bookkeeper and if there's ever an issue that the bookkeeper has to take some leave with cloud

[00:34:04] you've got the flexibit and outsource that to someone in temporary basis and potentially pull their back and similar way if you're blending that offshore and outsourcing you do the same.

[00:34:12] Is there a difference in approach with tech perspective or are they pretty much aligned from how you operate for both outsourcing and offshore?

[00:34:18] It's pretty much aligned because for us what we're trying to do is remove as many friction points as possible and the beauty as you know Ryan with cloud.

[00:34:28] As long as the process is right, let's say bookkeeping you've got the OCR solution as a matter of course the rest will follow.

[00:34:36] So the data comes in it arrives into the cloud accounting software and it follows that process and once you have that it should just be is the person trained?

[00:34:49] One, how to do the job but two, do they understand that client business well enough to know that this is a direct cost this is an overhead.

[00:34:59] So I think it's those sorts of things that are key to making that be delivered successfully.

[00:35:06] Yeah standardization right we talked about in a prior session review.

[00:35:10] Standardization process is critical to enable that affected delivery.

[00:35:13] But are you finding that certain services favor offshore and outsourcing or is it still a bit of a kind of a muddle and mesh between them?

[00:35:21] The call services that are not time sensitive outsourcing works really well because as long as the process is right.

[00:35:29] So you're in the camps for example then not overly time sensitive.

[00:35:34] You follow a process.

[00:35:36] There's a proper QC process and we deliver the outputs to the accounting firm and that works really well.

[00:35:44] The newer services if you like that firms are now delivering so live bookkeeping for example, you're learning multiple clients how they run their businesses where they expect certain costs to appear.

[00:35:58] Those are the areas where offshoring perhaps works more successfully.

[00:36:03] And the reason for that is the individual concerned is able to know oh well it's client X they post this expense to this code because they see that day in day out week in week out.

[00:36:17] So we certainly see a difference from that perspective between that than the other one.

[00:36:24] But equally, you know firms who want to use dedicated staff on the account side.

[00:36:32] Those work equally successfully but it comes down to volume and the way that you embed that colleague into your wider team.

[00:36:42] Yeah, so I guess in essence you can provide what's needed but there can be trends like I could take payroll example right if you get on the payroll route time criticality of that it makes sense to go from like an offshoring rather than an outsourcing perspective.

[00:36:55] So are you seeing trends in growth of the different areas is one growing more quickly than the other month.

[00:37:01] Our offshoring business is massive now.

[00:37:04] It's huge.

[00:37:05] We started our business 20 odd years ago and offshoring in the space of a few years has probably grown to pretty similar size to our outsourcing business because that's what people have demanded.

[00:37:20] But because we've got an outsourcing, what we're able to do is deliver colleagues at speed as well.

[00:37:26] The firm came to us today.

[00:37:28] 10 days, two weeks later we can have a colleague assigned to them and that works pretty fast.

[00:37:34] We've already tested them in our outsourcing.

[00:37:36] You've vetted them.

[00:37:37] Yes, very much.

[00:37:39] I think that's the other thing that's personable.

[00:37:41] If you go back a few years it was all about tech and now it's back to being about people and I think that the whole thing of offshoring feels more personable because you've got that relationship.

[00:37:49] You've talked about growth from a scale perspective.

[00:37:51] I assume that you must be from the UK and one of the biggest in the market.

[00:37:55] Is that fair?

[00:37:56] Yes, probably.

[00:37:57] We've got hundreds of colleagues in India across four locations.

[00:38:01] We're a pretty significant provider and certainly in the large firm space we're probably the largest in that space across the mid-tier firms.

[00:38:12] That will definitely help with the scale as you say.

[00:38:14] Especially if businesses want to fit between offshoring and outsourcing and making sure that people have been vetted, you've got that scale to go through that process and make sure it's here to fit.

[00:38:23] Once again thank you for coming on.

[00:38:25] I think it's been great to chat and look forward to seeing you again soon.

[00:38:28] Thank you so much Ryan.

[00:38:34] Do you want to know what I got up to today?

[00:38:36] I went to go look at a house for a friend who's thinking of buying a house in London.

[00:38:40] A flat basically and went to look at two and the second one went to look at the person who'd been living there previously built this shed in the back garden space for one of a better word.

[00:38:51] Which was weird in every single way so you went into the shed and there was basically a double bed that wasn't really a double bed.

[00:39:02] It was just like a mattress on the floor and then there was a toilet that had been appeared to have been plumbed in but I didn't check if it was working.

[00:39:08] And then a shower tray with pipe work but nothing else finished around it.

[00:39:13] And yeah, it felt a little bit like the sort of place that you would take a hostage basically.

[00:39:18] Oh that sounds so creepy.

[00:39:20] I'm so sorry that everyone who's listening to this would think that sounds like you should report the man.

[00:39:27] I knew it was a man.

[00:39:29] It must have been weird. It was genuinely quite weird.

[00:39:31] And even the estate agents glossed over it quite quickly.

[00:39:34] It was like yeah, the previous tenant built a shed in the back garden and that was it.

[00:39:38] So you're walking it.

[00:39:39] Is a shed all the worst granny annex ever built by the sounds of it?

[00:39:44] It was definitely a terrible granny annex.

[00:39:46] I think you should go there after dark and put the blue light on.

[00:39:49] See what appears and then just be like all the fucking police.

[00:39:53] I'm not sure I'll be going back in there. Let's put it that way.

[00:39:56] Not willingly anyway. Let's put it that way.

[00:39:58] I did look up something. I don't know if you've heard of it called unplugged.

[00:40:02] It is basically what you're describing.

[00:40:04] They look like fancy sheds.

[00:40:06] Middle of nowhere, like a field usually.

[00:40:09] And then you've got like enough that you can like shower clean yourself and cook something.

[00:40:15] But it's basic.

[00:40:17] This does remind me of a story that I heard from Emma Thompson once.

[00:40:20] What the actress?

[00:40:21] Famous actress.

[00:40:22] Yeah, yeah.

[00:40:23] Because she obviously lives somewhere that's enormous and she's got this like shed that's on her property.

[00:40:27] I think it's a sauna and she quite often like jaunts off down there in the nude.

[00:40:31] And one of her neighbors reported that there was a naked man walking around her grounds one day and it was actually her.

[00:40:36] What I love about this story is that the way you introduced it, it was like Emma Thompson was your friend.

[00:40:41] And then when India I went what like yet you're thinking that's obviously not right.

[00:40:46] You actually meant like your unspeaking terms of Emma Thompson.

[00:40:49] I thought the same as Ryan.

[00:40:50] I thought no, it must be Emma Thompson an accountant that exists.

[00:40:54] Which you just don't know about.

[00:40:55] That famous accountant that walks around in the nude.

[00:40:58] That's what I should do with the bunker.

[00:41:00] Maybe that is my 20th thing.

[00:41:02] Yeah, that I should just make it a project and turn it into a sort of unplugged come to my place and then I send you to the bunker.

[00:41:11] I mean isn't a bunker by definition unplugged?

[00:41:14] The whole purpose of a bunker is to be able to survive a nuclear holocaust or a bombing without the need for power and your own self-sufficiency.

[00:41:24] So you've already got it in there surely unless you've titulated and got running water and electricity and stuff in there.

[00:41:31] Or India put a desk in there and it's now an Ibis hotel.

[00:41:35] You'll be charging £60 a night for it and breakfast is not included, it is extra.

[00:41:42] More than £60 as well.

[00:41:44] You could even have an air raid siren that goes off just to really make it authentic.

[00:41:48] Yeah, that's to notify check out time.

[00:41:51] It's your makeup call.

[00:41:53] No, that are my hosts.

[00:41:54] When you have to leave the bunker do you have to sort of like in that last final scene of Blackadder you have to climb up a ladder and face the hail of bullets.

[00:42:01] Yeah, that's also me to say get up.

[00:42:04] Yeah, that's it.

[00:42:05] Toilet paper is not included.

[00:42:07] As long as you're not doing an amethyst at the time, Indy.

[00:42:09] Hopefully I'm not mistaken for a fellow.

[00:42:11] Who knows? Who knows?

[00:42:12] Who knows? Who cares? I don't mind.

[00:42:14] I don't mind. It's fine.

[00:42:16] If it's anything like the images that we got done, if I'm mistaken for a woman, it's that woman. I'm taking it.

[00:42:27] Today we're joined by Bogdan, who is the CEO of Apron.

[00:42:31] Apron, if you haven't heard of it, where have you been has just released his latest product, Apron Capture.

[00:42:36] Apron Capture and Beta.

[00:42:38] And we're also looking to speak to Bogdan about some of the releases, part of his journey since securing his series A last September in 2023, which was an eye watering 14.2 million.

[00:42:50] Was that right Bogdan?

[00:42:52] 12 million bound indoors I guess that's 15.

[00:42:56] I was tracking the euros.

[00:42:58] Gosh, 14.2 million euros.

[00:43:01] And yeah, and it's a pleasure to have you on because we have wanted to have you on for such a long time.

[00:43:07] As you recall Bogdan from our very first encounter, which was probably the most unique introduction I've ever experienced in my life.

[00:43:19] You'll bring this up.

[00:43:20] Because I love you so much.

[00:43:22] And I'm so glad you're joining us.

[00:43:24] I will happily say that I'm glad that we've managed to turn that around because I thought to myself, my God, Bogdan hates me.

[00:43:32] And I didn't even know that was possible.

[00:43:35] I'm very glad to be here.

[00:43:37] Thanks for having me.

[00:43:38] So we met in your office and that was at least on a day that you were very fully engaged with what you were working on.

[00:43:46] And what I learned from you then on just one interaction, one meeting is that you're you seem very intense with your pace and how you want to run the business.

[00:43:57] And that transmits I think in a lot of the content that we've read since April has launched, you've been quite bold in your statements and saying actually good businesses aren't facing the FinTech winter.

[00:44:09] And I think that's probably been represented by the fact that April and seems to have gone through multiple releases in such a short space of time.

[00:44:17] So maybe you could talk to us again a little bit about the journey that you've taken so far and how's it going at the moment.

[00:44:25] And then we'll dip back into some of the past as well here.

[00:44:28] But yeah, keep yourself tell us a bit about April.

[00:44:30] Yeah, definitely.

[00:44:31] So so we started April a little over two years ago.

[00:44:35] And we started as a payments app.

[00:44:37] We wanted to build consumer grade payments experience for SMBs.

[00:44:41] And we started looking into both AR and AP, and then we focused on AP for reasons we can discuss.

[00:44:47] And yet today we're into NDP platform.

[00:44:51] So we've added a lot of new products and features and we can chat about that.

[00:44:55] So it's not payments anymore.

[00:44:57] We also process documents to manage a lot of people to manage expenses.

[00:45:00] We've built a truly collaborative tool for kind of bookkeepers and their businesses, their clients to interact in.

[00:45:08] And that day when I met you, it looked like you were fully coding, like you were in your focus mode.

[00:45:15] Is that something that you do as part of like your remit as CEO?

[00:45:20] I can code.

[00:45:21] I don't code at April.

[00:45:23] I'm not great at this.

[00:45:24] But yeah, product design work, product work is no different from coding.

[00:45:28] It's almost like another engineering domain.

[00:45:30] And I think that from everything that we've seen with April's swath of releases at the moment,

[00:45:36] what's been the major reason for you to shift and only work on the accounts payable side?

[00:45:43] The initial hunch for the business was to build a cash app for businesses.

[00:45:48] I don't know if you heard about cash app, but it's this Peter P payments app in the US.

[00:45:52] It's huge.

[00:45:53] People love it.

[00:45:54] Venmo is another alternative.

[00:45:56] And then the initial hunch was let's build a Peter P payments app for businesses.

[00:46:01] But then we very quickly realized that it doesn't work like that in businesses.

[00:46:05] If you're a consumer, there is money in money out.

[00:46:08] If you're a business, you're either skewed towards money out.

[00:46:11] Let's say your restaurant being your suppliers mostly or you're skewed towards money in.

[00:46:16] Let's say you're a wine producer and you're just selling stuff to those bars and restaurants.

[00:46:22] And then we looked at both AR side, AP side and AP was just much more broken and much more difficult to fix.

[00:46:30] And that was a signal for us if it's hard to solve, that means we can build a good business if we solve this.

[00:46:36] So that's why we decided to focus on AP.

[00:46:38] Cool.

[00:46:39] And you built the payment center first in New Bogdan and then you've gone into invoice capture,

[00:46:43] which is relatively well, it's only not even a month old.

[00:46:46] It's that new couple of weeks.

[00:46:48] Yeah.

[00:46:49] Yeah, exactly.

[00:46:50] It's a brand new and from what I've seen across the internet, it's gone down really well.

[00:46:53] People have been really excited about that.

[00:46:55] But have you got an end goal?

[00:46:57] Are you wanting to dominate the entire of the, I guess the AP place like you're going detailed approvals?

[00:47:02] Is it a whole, the whole of the accounts power?

[00:47:04] Is that what APROM will become?

[00:47:06] Yeah, that's the idea.

[00:47:07] We want to build one stop shop AP for SMBs, right?

[00:47:11] So we keep clear focus on small businesses.

[00:47:13] This is what we like.

[00:47:14] This is who we want to cater for and redefine SMBs as anyone from one employee, let's say to 100.

[00:47:21] And for those guys across Europe, we want to build one stop shop.

[00:47:25] And we pretty much have everything today.

[00:47:27] So we've got document processing, very sophisticated payments part of the product and workflows

[00:47:33] for both accounts, bookkeepers, businesses can use it on their own.

[00:47:36] And one thing missing is APROM card and experience card.

[00:47:40] And it's coming soon as well.

[00:47:43] We'll see if we can get our hands on it later this year.

[00:47:46] If not earlier next year, you'll see nicely designed yellow juicy yellow APROM card.

[00:47:53] We like yellow.

[00:47:54] That's aligned with our brand.

[00:47:56] So we're okay with that.

[00:47:57] Yeah.

[00:47:58] The approach to kind of building when it comes to APROM.

[00:48:02] So is it all developed by yourselves by APROM?

[00:48:06] So for example, that card that you're talking about, is that something that APROM then has built

[00:48:12] directly?

[00:48:13] How does that work?

[00:48:14] So we build everything in-house as much as possible.

[00:48:18] And the reason for that is because if you don't control your technology stack,

[00:48:23] the constraints from other vendors will propagate into user experience in the end.

[00:48:28] So let's say if you were not controlling payments, if you were to get payments

[00:48:32] from another like payment processor, they would have so many restrictions on who

[00:48:36] they can onboard, transaction limits and how batch payments work where people can

[00:48:41] send money and all of those restrictions would have to go into our products and would

[00:48:46] have to face customers.

[00:48:48] So that's why we always build as much as possible in-house.

[00:48:52] And again, the reason is unless you control it end to end, we'll not be able to build

[00:48:57] great experiences for customers.

[00:48:59] And a great experience for customers is like everything for us at APROM.

[00:49:03] And we can chat more about that.

[00:49:05] And not everything you can build right away.

[00:49:07] So when it comes to card, for example, we will not build direct integrations with

[00:49:11] visas and mastercard.

[00:49:13] We'll work with issuing processor, but yeah, the rest will built inside.

[00:49:19] Nice.

[00:49:20] Cool.

[00:49:21] And I guess on that, you seem to be heading from obviously payments to invoices

[00:49:24] to card.

[00:49:25] And then you've got others in the market that have gone like card to invoices

[00:49:28] that are heading towards payments.

[00:49:30] So who do you benchmark yourself against?

[00:49:33] And I know everyone always comes to the go, we don't look at our

[00:49:36] competitors, we don't look around.

[00:49:38] But you obviously you do, you get a feel of what others do in the marketplace.

[00:49:41] So who are you benchmarking yourself against the most?

[00:49:44] Or is there multiple people you do that with?

[00:49:46] Yeah, there are a lot of card players who go into bill payments as well and

[00:49:50] Doc Frost saying in OCR.

[00:49:52] But I don't think anyone was able to correct it yet, especially when talking

[00:49:56] about SMBs, all of the card players, if you lead with card,

[00:50:00] you have to work with mid-market to begin with because small businesses

[00:50:04] don't have enough volumes and don't have enough need for the card.

[00:50:08] And when you're in bill pay, it's also super critical to make sure your

[00:50:15] product works for counters and bookkeepers.

[00:50:17] And again, we don't see that too much with the European card players.

[00:50:21] In that sense, like focus on SMBs and focus on the whole AP,

[00:50:27] not just card issuing.

[00:50:28] I think that's pretty unique in Europe.

[00:50:30] In the US, there are companies like that in Asia too.

[00:50:33] A good example from the US is bill.com.

[00:50:36] Milia is another one.

[00:50:38] There's Ramp as well.

[00:50:40] Ramp is still very much card focused.

[00:50:43] But I know that one of their key KPIs now is to expand non-card transactions.

[00:50:49] Again, the way to do this is you have to be really good at understanding

[00:50:53] counters and bookkeepers and make sure your workflows work.

[00:50:57] But again, bill.com, Milia, those are pretty good benchmarks.

[00:51:02] We don't see much happening in Europe of similar products.

[00:51:05] And those two are ones that have started to dominate that market.

[00:51:09] So I can understand why you're not necessarily aspiring

[00:51:12] but looking at those as what can we do and make it unique to the UK and Europe.

[00:51:17] I guess there are others that have tried to do something similar.

[00:51:20] Dex tried to release a card at one point.

[00:51:22] That didn't really work.

[00:51:23] I haven't got into payments.

[00:51:24] Yeah, they did.

[00:51:25] It was a long time ago now.

[00:51:26] They partnered with one and it didn't really take off.

[00:51:28] But there's others in that like Theo are doing it from the card way

[00:51:32] and it's arguable whether they managed to penetrate enough.

[00:51:35] But it's interesting your approach on this.

[00:51:38] The bit I guess I'd like to understand is that everyone,

[00:51:42] especially in Europe is talking about where invoicing is going

[00:51:45] towards the e-invoicing, you know, linking systems together.

[00:51:48] And is that something you've got your eye on?

[00:51:51] Are you keeping that in the back of your mind?

[00:51:53] Considering that on how you build the platform that will link into e-invoicing?

[00:51:57] We'll look at it at the background.

[00:52:00] There's nothing active happening right now,

[00:52:02] but we do have some conversations with some other large firms in the space.

[00:52:08] The transition when it happens and it will happen undoubtedly will be a slow one.

[00:52:14] So there will be plenty of time to start taking action.

[00:52:17] Yeah, for now it's pretty early days I think in Europe,

[00:52:20] except for some countries in Italy, for example,

[00:52:22] they have implemented this on the regulatory level and it works super well.

[00:52:28] So we'll definitely watch the space, but nothing active going on at the moment.

[00:52:33] Cool. I think on the invoicing I think yeah, it will be slow to take off,

[00:52:37] but when it hits that it will be quick.

[00:52:39] Like it will be unlike making tax digital which is quick announcement

[00:52:41] and then nothing happens.

[00:52:42] It will be like drag it out and then when it does it,

[00:52:45] okay you have to turn this around quickly.

[00:52:46] Yeah, I think it's a good place to just keep your eye on.

[00:52:48] One thing and this may be controversial, I don't know,

[00:52:51] but it'd be really good to get your take on it is that James Ashford recently said

[00:52:54] about the fact that or made a big announcement about how when he launched

[00:52:59] Go! Proposal he had already drawn out some of the products he was hoping to sell to.

[00:53:04] So he had already planned to sell before he even created the product.

[00:53:07] Have you gone in, I guess in creating April and had that view

[00:53:11] or has your view world domination?

[00:53:13] Because there's generally one or the other in kind of how you attack this.

[00:53:16] Have you got a preference on the route you're going down?

[00:53:19] Definitely, yeah.

[00:53:20] We definitely don't call it world domination,

[00:53:22] but we want to build a public company

[00:53:25] and we want to continue innovating and building great products for people.

[00:53:30] We want to get to millions of subscribers, yada yada yada.

[00:53:33] So we're definitely on that route.

[00:53:35] Noticing the trend that you're following there with payments,

[00:53:39] invoice capture, moving to card.

[00:53:41] Now that to me just sounds like a bank in the making.

[00:53:46] And I am always curious with FinTechs in this space

[00:53:50] who are capitalizing on embedded payments

[00:53:53] because then they are one or two steps away from embedded lending.

[00:53:57] And obviously, this is a space that I work in

[00:54:00] and so I'm curious about it from that perspective.

[00:54:02] But I am when you're discussing it in this way,

[00:54:06] have you got a vision for being the replacement bank

[00:54:10] or being able to extend then lending and credit through April?

[00:54:14] Yeah, it's a great point.

[00:54:16] It's a great question.

[00:54:18] We don't see ourselves launching a current account

[00:54:22] and definitely not offering lending credit products

[00:54:25] because it's just a very different business compared to payments.

[00:54:30] So it's almost if a payments company wants to launch credit,

[00:54:34] essentially what they need to do is to build another company

[00:54:37] sitting right next to it, right next to the core payments business.

[00:54:41] And we think there are a lot of business bank accounts.

[00:54:44] We don't think it's a problem enough for us to go and fix it.

[00:54:49] There are a lot of companies out there tackling this.

[00:54:51] So I think we'll continue focusing on payments and moving money.

[00:54:55] And banks do that too, obviously, but banks core business

[00:54:59] is lending and keeping money safe.

[00:55:02] So deposits and credit in our core business will be payments, I think.

[00:55:07] But we keep very open mind.

[00:55:09] Now I only asked that because your background is Revolute.

[00:55:13] So that was why I wanted to ask that

[00:55:16] because obviously you are the ex-product leader of Revolute.

[00:55:19] And that's why I thought are we just seeing a return to

[00:55:22] what is a much stickier version of a tech company,

[00:55:26] FinTech company that is tackling it through

[00:55:29] solving a core business problem, which is the accounts payable

[00:55:34] and everything to do with payments, having a workflow,

[00:55:37] having SMEs engaged in that workflow

[00:55:40] and then building something again that would then

[00:55:43] at least allow them to solve their whole problem

[00:55:47] like the Jeffrey Moore crossing the chasm,

[00:55:49] a whole problem approach to what you're doing in payments.

[00:55:53] That's what it sounds like from the outside.

[00:55:55] So it's just good to be able to understand

[00:55:57] where you're going with it and where you want to end up.

[00:56:01] Yeah, totally.

[00:56:02] We definitely take a lot of learnings from Revolute

[00:56:05] and one is Nick the founder of Revolute.

[00:56:08] His formula was always let's build it 10x better, 10x cheaper.

[00:56:13] So this is definitely how we approach things to

[00:56:15] if you look at our capture products, we can discuss it

[00:56:18] but that's exactly how we think about it.

[00:56:20] And another thing like another kind of angle

[00:56:24] where we're very similar to Revolute is instead of building

[00:56:27] a mono product and then optimizing the financials of it

[00:56:31] and dancing around it, kind of we built a suite of products

[00:56:36] and instead of increasing our margins through kind of price

[00:56:40] hikes and stuff like that, we instead increase our LTVs

[00:56:44] and revenues from customers that we already have.

[00:56:46] So if you look at Revolute today,

[00:56:48] all the early Revolute customers only had an effects card.

[00:56:52] That's it. That was one product.

[00:56:54] And now is this full financial super app.

[00:56:57] If you take an average kind of Revolute,

[00:56:59] some revenues come from investment products,

[00:57:01] some revenues come from daily banking, some from effects, etc., etc.

[00:57:06] So we think about it in a very similar way

[00:57:09] and we think the AP as a domain, AP as a product

[00:57:13] and AP as customer need can sustain that approach

[00:57:16] and we already see it working.

[00:57:18] So we'll continue moving in the direction.

[00:57:21] And obviously you had this journey of Revolute

[00:57:25] and then you went into Cash App for not that long a time.

[00:57:28] Was there a trigger point where you were there and you went,

[00:57:31] ah, I've had that light bulb moment

[00:57:33] and this is what I want to build and this is where I want to do it?

[00:57:36] Yeah. There was no light bulb moment.

[00:57:38] It was just building up slowly.

[00:57:40] And I don't know if you know,

[00:57:42] but Square have these two business lines.

[00:57:44] There's Cash App, Retail Arm,

[00:57:46] another seller card acceptance terminals for SMBs

[00:57:50] and I was part of Cash App

[00:57:52] and I was bringing Cash App into Europe

[00:57:54] and then seller team were doing the same

[00:57:56] and we were working very closely together

[00:57:58] and we were absorbing each other's products

[00:58:00] and how we think about payments and customer experience

[00:58:03] and there was a huge gap

[00:58:05] and I was struck by how they thought about,

[00:58:07] they also had their PDP payments in InWizCapture

[00:58:10] and we had our PDP payments

[00:58:12] which is just sending money for a pizza

[00:58:15] and it was a huge gap.

[00:58:17] We were building an insanely great experience for consumers

[00:58:21] and it was just a delight to use Cash App

[00:58:24] and send money to each other

[00:58:26] and at Seller it was very different.

[00:58:29] The InWiz payment part,

[00:58:30] seller solves card acceptance really well.

[00:58:32] The InWiz payment part was far behind

[00:58:35] so I started looking into it

[00:58:37] and then at some point,

[00:58:38] yeah also things got frankly quite political at Square.

[00:58:42] I couldn't run as fast as I could

[00:58:44] with my work, with product

[00:58:46] so I decided to believe and look into it deeper

[00:58:50] into the problem of business payments

[00:58:52] and that's how I had all started.

[00:58:54] Ah cool, so it wasn't that you'd always wanted to create

[00:58:58] a company yourself, you were like

[00:59:00] okay I'm gonna go do this and I just need the idea.

[00:59:02] It was more, you were butting heads

[00:59:05] at the place where you were,

[00:59:06] wanted to do more than you could

[00:59:07] and that's what drove you to go

[00:59:09] okay I'm gonna go off

[00:59:10] and I'm gonna do this myself.

[00:59:12] Is that fair assessment?

[00:59:13] I've always had that entrepreneurship bug

[00:59:15] as they call it.

[00:59:16] I've looked at many ideas before

[00:59:19] but nothing was quite exciting

[00:59:21] and then April just took off

[00:59:24] right timing, right moment

[00:59:27] and yeah, starts aligned essentially.

[00:59:29] That's good and I'm glad it happened

[00:59:31] because obviously you've come in,

[00:59:32] made it success and you're building

[00:59:34] and growing all the time

[00:59:35] but one thing I want to take us back to

[00:59:36] is that you mentioned earlier

[00:59:38] about how you've put the customer

[00:59:39] at the center of I guess everything

[00:59:40] you do at April

[00:59:42] and I know lots of products say they do this

[00:59:44] but to make a statement like that

[00:59:46] I assume you must have some sort of mantra

[00:59:48] or some sort of focus

[00:59:49] so how do you do that?

[00:59:50] How do you make the customer the center?

[00:59:52] Yeah, we just talk to them a lot

[00:59:54] so when we just started April

[00:59:56] before we started coding

[00:59:58] we first talked to

[01:00:00] if I remember correctly

[01:00:01] over 200 businesses and accountants

[01:00:04] in the UK and Germany back then

[01:00:06] and we even worked

[01:00:08] before there was April in EPP

[01:00:10] we worked for a restaurant in London

[01:00:13] as their finance team

[01:00:14] and we were managing their payment fronts

[01:00:16] manually doing all those mistakes that they do

[01:00:19] because it's all kind of manual and disintegrated

[01:00:21] and we were just learning how the workflow works

[01:00:24] and what are the pinpoints

[01:00:26] we were double paying people

[01:00:28] that particular restaurant had two entities

[01:00:30] so we once paid suppliers from entity X

[01:00:34] out of bank account of entity Y

[01:00:36] and then it took us a lot of time to fix that

[01:00:39] and yeah, and then we continued talking to them

[01:00:41] to them all the time

[01:00:42] every time we have a new product in mind

[01:00:45] we're always out there

[01:00:47] talking to customers

[01:00:48] understanding their world and their needs

[01:00:50] and then we design, we show them

[01:00:52] the first iteration, we go back

[01:00:54] we put PSI penetration

[01:00:56] we go back, get feedback

[01:00:58] so there's no magic

[01:00:59] yeah, I just need to keep close to customers

[01:01:02] Sometimes that's what apps just forget to do

[01:01:04] so it might sound simple

[01:01:06] but if you do it effectively

[01:01:08] then it makes a big difference

[01:01:09] so have you got like a core group of accountants, bookkeepers

[01:01:12] and customers that are your kind of beta testers now?

[01:01:15] yeah, yeah, so we have with the payments products

[01:01:19] like we've got hundreds and hundreds of accounting partners now

[01:01:22] who use the products daily

[01:01:24] and with the capture products

[01:01:26] we've had our alpha group

[01:01:28] they have been testing the products

[01:01:29] and helping us with design since Q3

[01:01:32] and then in January this year

[01:01:34] they started using it

[01:01:35] some of them with their clients

[01:01:37] then in March

[01:01:39] we opened access to a wider group of beta customers

[01:01:42] and that's dozens of accountants today

[01:01:44] who have access to apron capture

[01:01:46] and use some of them with their clients already

[01:01:48] give us feedback and we design the product together

[01:01:51] yeah, it's exciting

[01:01:54] and well talked about product

[01:01:56] but the one thing that I always like to ask is that

[01:01:58] when you're building something

[01:02:00] your favorite bit is not always the same as everyone else's

[01:02:02] because it's maybe something really techy in the background

[01:02:05] but like a favorite bit that you've built

[01:02:07] that you think is actually quite niche and quite

[01:02:10] and stands out

[01:02:11] but maybe people don't appreciate as much as you

[01:02:13] good question

[01:02:15] yeah, so I've got two answers here

[01:02:17] when it comes to our payments products

[01:02:20] one thing that's really unique

[01:02:22] and we spend a lot of time designing

[01:02:25] and implementing this is what we call

[01:02:27] bank agnostic batch payments

[01:02:29] essentially what it means is that

[01:02:31] there's no wallet, there's no balance in apron

[01:02:33] and people can come to us with any bank that they have

[01:02:36] whether it's HSBC, Barclays, Revolute, Starling

[01:02:39] it doesn't matter

[01:02:40] and they can batch pay their suppliers

[01:02:43] with their existing bank

[01:02:45] without the need to open a holding account

[01:02:47] nothing in the middle

[01:02:48] so they just come to apron

[01:02:49] their bank account comes from ledger

[01:02:51] let's say zero QuickBooks

[01:02:53] and then they can just select who they want to pay

[01:02:56] click click click

[01:02:57] and everyone is paid

[01:02:59] and that's super unique

[01:03:01] there are a lot of people who try to do this

[01:03:03] through open banking etc

[01:03:04] but no one was able to nail it

[01:03:06] and I believe we nailed it

[01:03:08] so I'm really happy about that innovation in payments

[01:03:11] it powers pretty much our whole payments product

[01:03:14] so just to clarify

[01:03:16] just so I understand this

[01:03:17] is it still using the open banking payment routes

[01:03:20] but via single pull?

[01:03:22] yeah, so what we do is we're

[01:03:24] we're in the flow of funds

[01:03:25] so we're a full flash payments company

[01:03:27] and then when people pay

[01:03:29] let's say 100 in voices, 10k total

[01:03:31] we take the 10k in one go to our accounts

[01:03:34] and then we distribute to suppliers

[01:03:37] instantly when funds here account

[01:03:40] yeah that's more or less how it works

[01:03:42] and then when it comes to capture

[01:03:44] there are a lot of innovations

[01:03:46] I have two things to mention here

[01:03:48] because those two things have simplified my life a lot

[01:03:51] as one of the clients of our accountants

[01:03:53] so I'm the ones that meeting documents

[01:03:55] and I'm the one who they chase for

[01:03:57] meeting documents so

[01:03:59] what I love most about apron captures

[01:04:01] that I can submit via WhatsApp

[01:04:03] and that's pretty unique too

[01:04:05] and that's great because I use WhatsApp daily

[01:04:07] so all I need to do now is just take a photo

[01:04:09] and send it to WhatsApp group

[01:04:11] that's it, WhatsApp channel

[01:04:13] super sleek, works without internet

[01:04:15] as easy as sharing photos as we send our website

[01:04:18] and then the second bit is

[01:04:20] we automated the need for accountants

[01:04:22] bookkeepers to chase the clients

[01:04:24] for missing ducks

[01:04:26] we started using apron capture

[01:04:28] our accountant would send us a spreadsheet

[01:04:30] via email so we have multiple spenders

[01:04:32] in the business

[01:04:34] and that's for your spreadsheet is like

[01:04:36] dozens of transactions long

[01:04:38] some of them are mine transactions

[01:04:40] some of they're someone else

[01:04:42] so I need to take the spreadsheet

[01:04:44] create a slack channel

[01:04:46] kind of slack group

[01:04:48] with all those people who spent money

[01:04:50] and say hey guys could you please complete

[01:04:52] we come all together in the spreadsheet

[01:04:54] one on top of the other

[01:04:56] and going to the docs, going to email

[01:04:58] and opening stuff

[01:05:00] collecting docs, uploading it

[01:05:02] and it was a messy process

[01:05:04] and it took me

[01:05:06] a great effort to complete

[01:05:08] and now it's all

[01:05:10] automated and it sits inside apron

[01:05:12] so we pull through

[01:05:14] and reconcile transactions from ledger

[01:05:16] and all accountants need to do now

[01:05:18] you select those transactions

[01:05:20] assign them to clients

[01:05:22] I received nice simple email from

[01:05:24] our accountant William

[01:05:26] that says William assigned transactions to you

[01:05:28] and then I log in to the apron

[01:05:30] everything is filtered by me I just go one by one

[01:05:32] drop documents right inside

[01:05:34] leave comments sometimes

[01:05:36] documents lost something like that

[01:05:38] and that's it

[01:05:40] and I'm biased obviously

[01:05:42] but this thing, the missing document workflow

[01:05:44] has definitely changed my Friday evenings

[01:05:46] or Sunday evenings depending on when I sit down

[01:05:48] to do those bookkeeping tasks

[01:05:50] yeah it's really been a game changer

[01:05:52] for me as a client

[01:05:54] well I think going back

[01:05:56] to something earlier where Indy was saying

[01:05:58] about when she first met you

[01:06:00] and you were deep in product

[01:06:02] I think you seem to come alive

[01:06:04] when we're talking about the details of products

[01:06:06] and the problems they solve so that's definitely your passion

[01:06:08] because founders have different passions

[01:06:10] some could be go to market and the customer side

[01:06:12] but product definitely feels like that's yours

[01:06:14] I've got probably

[01:06:16] one last question that I'd like to finish up on

[01:06:18] which is probably not even that big

[01:06:20] but integrations are critical now

[01:06:22] plugging into different things

[01:06:24] not just trying to solve everything

[01:06:26] but by working as a community

[01:06:28] so have you got other integrations

[01:06:30] that you're looking to build out in the future?

[01:06:32] yes, so finally we started to look into it seriously

[01:06:34] and we're now integrated with

[01:06:36] Ledger Play's Unlea

[01:06:38] and it's zero in QuickBooks

[01:06:40] Unlea and the reason is we're focusing on SMBs

[01:06:42] Unlea as we discussed

[01:06:44] so we define as businesses one to 100 employees

[01:06:46] and they are mostly

[01:06:48] like 95-99%

[01:06:50] are on those two

[01:06:52] Ledger software

[01:06:54] and still we get a lot of requests for

[01:06:56] Sage, Pre-Agent, Sundice, NetSuite

[01:06:58] we've heard for the first time today

[01:07:00] from one of Larga County's firms

[01:07:02] and then same on the payroll side

[01:07:04] it's like today

[01:07:06] if you want to pay payroll on April

[01:07:08] you would have to upload a file

[01:07:10] and it's easy

[01:07:12] but it's still friction

[01:07:14] and we will start looking into it

[01:07:16] it's not going to happen

[01:07:18] fast but later this year

[01:07:20] we will start adding more

[01:07:22] integrations, stay tuned

[01:07:24] we just realized at some point that

[01:07:26] we need to be present

[01:07:28] where our customers already engage

[01:07:30] so if they want to be able

[01:07:32] to pay bills from

[01:07:34] their Ledger or

[01:07:36] if they want to be able to pay bills from

[01:07:38] their payroll software

[01:07:40] we have to make it happen

[01:07:42] and it's good for customers

[01:07:44] good customer UX

[01:07:46] we came to that realization

[01:07:48] and we'll start investing into it

[01:07:50] definitely, so what would we

[01:07:52] what would we expect first

[01:07:54] would it be the card payments or some integrations

[01:07:56] because it sounds like they're going to be about the same time

[01:07:58] we'll just overlap them

[01:08:00] some integrations will come first I think

[01:08:02] because we want to solidify

[01:08:04] what works good already

[01:08:06] and then we'll move on to other things

[01:08:08] cool, so

[01:08:10] what are the advantages towards the end of 2024

[01:08:12] but in the main time

[01:08:14] I guess you'll just be tinkering, updating

[01:08:16] there's nothing big probably happening in the next 6 months

[01:08:20] yeah so it's mostly improvements

[01:08:22] through our existing products

[01:08:24] and we'll be introducing

[01:08:26] sophisticated scheduling

[01:08:28] workflows

[01:08:30] we'll be introducing balance as well into

[01:08:32] apron app on the theme and site

[01:08:34] because the core of apron is wallet less

[01:08:36] and we believe this is great

[01:08:38] for clients too

[01:08:40] but some use cases do require a wallet

[01:08:42] and some clients do prefer to

[01:08:44] be able to top up a holding account

[01:08:46] and just raise payments from that account

[01:08:48] so we'll make it happen too

[01:08:50] this will happen in Q2 this year

[01:08:52] and on the capture side

[01:08:56] yeah we've got a lot of usability improvements

[01:08:58] coming, we've got a lot of

[01:09:00] new features coming too

[01:09:02] so May is obviously the JL admissions launch

[01:09:04] we will open access to

[01:09:06] anyone who gets

[01:09:08] on our website

[01:09:10] and then from May

[01:09:12] in starting summer

[01:09:14] we will start adding new functionality

[01:09:16] like we will start looking at the sales side

[01:09:18] we will start processing sales

[01:09:20] and voices, we will start processing

[01:09:22] bank statements

[01:09:24] because it was a big surprise but a lot of businesses

[01:09:26] don't have bank feed connected

[01:09:28] and some of them do not love it

[01:09:30] they don't like it at all

[01:09:32] sharing their bank data so they would just keep sending

[01:09:34] PDFs

[01:09:36] I really don't get why someone

[01:09:38] that doesn't like sharing their bank data

[01:09:40] would sign up with a payment sap

[01:09:42] it absolutely blows my mind

[01:09:44] but personally I would just go

[01:09:46] no we're not doing it

[01:09:48] just go to a bank feed

[01:09:50] but I appreciate that maybe that's something

[01:09:52] you need to know about

[01:09:54] but obviously people can, if they want to know more about APRN

[01:09:56] they can look on the website

[01:09:58] connect with your LinkedIn but if they want to meet you in person

[01:10:00] which shows are you going to be at this year

[01:10:02] digital accountants show

[01:10:04] then we'll be at the accountants

[01:10:06] and then

[01:10:08] Zerocon

[01:10:10] we're also on ICB Roadshow this year

[01:10:12] same as last year

[01:10:14] and most likely

[01:10:16] HECA will have their Roadshow too

[01:10:18] so we'll go there

[01:10:20] and all the events at the North, Accountants North

[01:10:22] yeah we'll go there

[01:10:24] we're live meeting people

[01:10:26] you've asked about how do you

[01:10:28] build products for customers

[01:10:30] so one of the HECA's is people who build products

[01:10:32] and senior leaders in the company

[01:10:34] need to be at the stand

[01:10:36] they need to be talking to customers

[01:10:38] you will always see

[01:10:40] our product managers are senior leaders at the stand

[01:10:42] and that's because

[01:10:44] the whole company needs to be close to customer

[01:10:46] so we'll go to all of them

[01:10:48] and we'll meet as much people as possible

[01:10:50] that's the point

[01:10:52] that sounds really good and a really good mindset

[01:10:54] thank you for coming on being really open

[01:10:56] and honest and giving lots of insights into what your roadmap looks like

[01:10:58] and hopefully you've enjoyed talking to us

[01:11:00] 100%

[01:11:02] thanks for having me Ryan, really appreciate it

[01:11:04] and that brings another podcast

[01:11:06] to an end thank you for listening

[01:11:08] hopefully you've got some great insights

[01:11:10] from our app news

[01:11:12] our interview with Bogdan and having the amazing

[01:11:14] Vipple from Advanced Track come on

[01:11:16] our amazing sponsor

[01:11:18] and partner in this journey

[01:11:20] as the digital disruptors of which

[01:11:22] this podcast is just one part of

[01:11:24] if you haven't got involved with the other parts

[01:11:26] of what we do

[01:11:28] please do check out our website which is

[01:11:30] www.digital-disruptors.com

[01:11:32] we have a weekly webinar series

[01:11:34] where we dive into tech products

[01:11:36] specifically updates and how to handle digital transformation

[01:11:38] we do

[01:11:40] events at conferences

[01:11:42] and we've got a systems advisory network as well

[01:11:44] and we've got some other things coming out during the year

[01:11:46] so do check out the website

[01:11:48] make sure you follow us and keep in touch

[01:11:50] now

[01:11:52] as we do these pre-conference events

[01:11:54] we have a digital account show coming up

[01:11:56] and we have a big event for that

[01:11:58] I'm going to hand you over to John

[01:12:00] who knows a bit more about what we're doing

[01:12:02] Thanks very much Ryan, yeah we have

[01:12:04] Digi Games, how creative is that name

[01:12:06] coming to you and this is one of the series

[01:12:08] of pre-con events that we'll have

[01:12:10] as Ryan said it's running the night before

[01:12:12] Digital Accountancy Show

[01:12:14] and we have picked a cracking venue

[01:12:16] I think because we're going to go

[01:12:18] to the immersive game box

[01:12:20] in Shortich in London, in Shortich

[01:12:22] we've got a number of people that we wanted to get there

[01:12:24] we've got capacity for about 90-100 people

[01:12:26] we've already sold half the tickets

[01:12:28] so if you're interested in coming along

[01:12:30] get involved

[01:12:32] but it is Monday night, April 15

[01:12:34] tickets are on sale on our Eventbrite page

[01:12:36] so you can find it by going to

[01:12:38] www.digi-games.eventbrite.co.uk

[01:12:40] or you can find it

[01:12:42] on all of our socials and things

[01:12:44] but it'd be great to see you get along there

[01:12:46] I also believe

[01:12:48] there's a little bit of that inside of knowledge

[01:12:50] but I think that's who is talking at Digital Accountancy Show

[01:12:52] is going to be at the event

[01:12:54] so if you're a stats fanboy or girls

[01:12:56] you can come along and get an autograph

[01:12:58] or a tattoo or whatever you like

[01:13:00] we'll facilitate all of that

[01:13:02] Who doesn't love stats in this game?

[01:13:04] We love stats don't we?

[01:13:06] I've not even got my ticket yet so please don't buy them before

[01:13:08] I've got the chance to buy mine

[01:13:10] otherwise I'm going to be very miserable

[01:13:12] but no, realistically I'd love to have you all turn up

[01:13:14] and please do come and say hi

[01:13:16] if we've not met before

[01:13:18] if we've left a review on our podcast

[01:13:20] please do so

[01:13:22] we love hearing from you

[01:13:24] we try and bring them up and talk about them in the pods

[01:13:26] just because we love to hear your thoughts, comments

[01:13:28] and what we should maybe do to improve it further