Rules help us control the fun! || App News + ApprovalMax

[00:00:00] There's a misconception that when you're scaling a business, that building controls early doors slows you down and it saps creativity and it makes life harder. I think that's a real myth. James Ashford bangs on about it, doesn't he? When he talks about his Go Proposal days, he built these processes from day one and you could see that enabled them to just go at it once that was in place. I was supposed to wear this amazing wig to an alternative tech conference, but forgot it. Everyone was massively disappointed.

[00:00:24] Do you know, John, where are you? Got so upset with me for being 19 minutes late to be early to the Xero event that we were both at in the Houses of Common. You should have said as you went through the security queue, why is there smoke coming out of your background? We got to meet some really interesting people that were excited about talking all about your business and pump payments, e-invoicing. I did once work at a firm, didn't use approval from that client that paid the wrong supplier £20,000. Can you imagine how?

[00:00:54] That's an awkward conversation. Painful that phone call was, because it really was. Should we be cynical about this, Ryan? I think we should. Who can not talk about Elon Musk and the Department of something doggy? Doge? What is it? Doge? It's doggy, right? Why don't you? Well, whoever you sound out the acronym, you know, it's a free world, we can do it in hell with what we want. The Department of Government Efficiency has been attacking the team that built the free tax filing software over in the US.

[00:01:21] On average, I think people spend seven weeks planning a holiday. No time is spent on budgets and planning and numbers and forecasting. Hello and welcome to another episode of Digitals in a Cruel World, brought to you by the Digital Disruptors.

[00:01:36] Today, we are delighted to be bringing you the latest in app tech, accounting tech news, as well as hopefully covering some topics that you're really interested in learning a little bit more about that are prevalent in the fintech and accounting tech space. Today's episode has been brought to you by the series sponsor Approval Max. And in particular, on this episode has been brought to you by Genesis.

[00:02:04] Genesis has launched JackPod, which is an AI powered bookkeeping solution, which we'll speak a little bit more about later on App News. Before I go any further, let's talk to our brilliant and wonderful co-host, one of whom seems to have sparse a few hairs today on the episode.

[00:02:23] So if you're watching us on YouTube, you will delight in the fact that there seems to be a new kid on the block, Roy, a new man about town. You've got a new, Stella's got a different groove today. Stella? Is that my name now I've got hair? Well, I was supposed to wear, if you are watching this, this amazing wig, this barnet to the alternative tech conference, but forgot it.

[00:02:51] Everyone was massively disappointed. There were boos and hisses. But I am now putting anyone that bothers to watch our podcast, not just listen to it. You can now see my amazing locks. And I think I look quite dashing. I think you look better. Cheers, thank you. I feel a bit bad saying that to you, but... You should, you really should. No, you look great. You shouldn't feel bad. You're giving him a compliment.

[00:03:21] Yeah, it suits him. Or fake hair. I can't do anything about it. There's something about you that looks more... Young. Her suit. Yeah, just informative. Informative. Just make up a word. Her suit, it means you look hairy. Oh, okay. I didn't actually know that. I've learnt something. I mean, the thing is, it's like, what we're saying really is like, Ryan looks better in acrylic.

[00:03:53] Perhaps. Yes. Or Ryan looks better in general when he's just stood next to me with his mouth closed and looking forward and just not able to offend. Do you know, John, Ryan got so upset with me for being 19 minutes late to be early to the zero event that we were both at in the Houses of Common. Okay.

[00:04:23] 19 minutes late to be early. He was upset at me. Yeah, very, very upset. It was a fallout raging argument in the queue to get in to the Houses of Common. Was this in the security queue? Yes. Yes. We had a blinding fallout for anyone that stood next to us. And I said, you know what? Just don't speak to me for some time. I just need to queue. I just need to... That's why I got the wig.

[00:04:53] So she wouldn't recognise me if I was walking past. Yeah. You've got to remember, Indy, that Ryan is like your mum and winds the clock forward like 10 minutes so you get out of bed early for school. Yeah. Two hours early is not 10 minutes. 19 minutes. I was being generous. You should have said as you went through the security queue, you'd be like, why is there smoke coming out of your bag, Ryan?

[00:05:17] We did make a pun like that early on and then decided that was probably a bad thing to do. No, we didn't. Ryan did. Ryan made some sort of reference to an explosive device. And I said, you shut up and not stand next to me when you speak like that. Just go. Yeah. Maybe it was helping to get lucky. We had a great time.

[00:05:44] We got to mingle with the good and the great in the House of the Common, didn't we, Ryan? We got to meet some really interesting people that were excited about talking all about small business and prompt payments, e-invoicing. Anyone else, Ryan? Yeah. I've got to talk to some quite very interesting government officials about what they're looking to launch in the summer.

[00:06:07] So if you haven't caught the recent Digital Digest that John and I recorded at the Alternative Tech Conference, please do dive into that because we explained a little bit about what they're looking to do. And I think it's going to be very interesting. A bit more of a spin off over the quite terrible help to grow scheme that came out under the last governing body. Yeah, I mean, I'm looking forward to hearing more about this. As you say, Ryan, we discussed it.

[00:06:32] And I think there is a great opportunity for government to do something to help assist small, medium sized businesses to develop and grow. I was also talking to a gentleman that was involved in the prompt payments agenda and he was talking about the recent consultation that he's launching to make sure that there is some movement on the prompt payments agenda that in the past seemed to have gone off the boil.

[00:06:59] Although he's saying that now they will be enforcing something or aiming to enforce something that says that small businesses all should be paid within 60 days as a cutoff. So I think 60 days is still quite long for a small business. But he said that was step one. And certain forms of payments or delayed payments, deferred payments, like in industry side, the construction sector will be done away with.

[00:07:29] So there's no way that you can do this type of deferred payment. They were seeking additional consultation on it. We did also speak and I presented him with a few different exceptions that he should consider. Certain industries where it's more common to have 120 day payment terms, pharma, for instance, and also how lending plays into that and whether that makes the bigger entity compliant with the 60 day rule,

[00:07:56] despite the fact that the smaller business can have the option to finance at a discount at their own cost. So there were some exceptions that he said they hadn't really thought about and he was looking for a consultation on it. So it was really interesting to bring it back to the crux of, you know, the forefront of small business. That in itself sounds really exciting, particularly potentially moving to a world of 60 days maximum terms for the vast majority of business payments.

[00:08:26] I mean, that sounds very promising. And like you say, great for some businesses, particularly those are on like 90 or 120 days. And for other businesses, would that mean maybe they get stretched possibly if we put like a mandated payment in? I mean, technically, we do have a mandated payment of 30 days because if you don't define your payment terms, that is the default to which you should stick to in common law.

[00:08:50] Now, the thing was whether it was a punitive measure or whether it's an incentivized measure. And I think that's where it hinges. And so there was still some input that he was searching for. But it was a really informative conversation that and the invoicing and in general, the rest of the people in the room that were it was really nice to meet the grassroots project for that was there from artworks.

[00:09:18] So that they had been a beautiful business fund winner. And we got to meet some of the artists that were benefiting from the win. Excellent.

[00:09:33] I'm going to kick off this week and the 2025 Intuit QuickBooks Small Business Index Annual Report highlighting technology, debt management and AI adoption as areas where accountants can provide crucial value to their small businesses clients in 2025. There was six key insights in the report.

[00:09:56] So debt reliance on credit cards is growing, providing short term growth, but also leading to higher interest expenses. So advising clients on debt management and forecasting will be key to avoid long term financial risks. I think that's fairly prudent advice, given that the way the small businesses can access lending has been very retrenched from traditional financial institutes.

[00:10:25] So it's very common for them to leverage credit cards as a means to access capital. Insight number two is on clients banking relationships and how that can impact the growth. So banks with a positive response to interest rate highs show better revenue and employment growth. Accountants can guide clients to the right kinds of financial partners. Not something that I've seen a lot of recommendation on in general in the space.

[00:10:51] We've really only seen that when Starling has come in to the market and Cash Plus Bank. But I guess there's more prevalence of it now with companies like Alica who are doing more with the accountants in this space. Insight number three, employment trends post pandemic are still shifting. So declines in employment and revenue for small businesses opens the opportunity for accountants to provide payroll advisory as businesses continue to adjust staffing levels. So there's lots of different options that we've seen in the market.

[00:11:21] So I guess it's not really a new insight for most accountants that already offer payroll. Insight number four is on technology adoption as a key driver, fairly, you know, in keeping with the things that we cover on this podcast, investing in AI solutions for improved efficiency, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:11:40] And then insight five, accounting software ranking as one of the most valuable digital tools for small businesses to streamline operations, find the right financial tools, improve efficiency. And the final insight was on AI adoption not being an optional thing, but instead leveraging it as a default to enhance client efficiency, provide accountants with more streamlined workflows, etc.

[00:12:08] And make it easier for you to service your clients. So they were the six insights on that report. I don't know if there was anything groundbreaking in there, but definitely I thought the first couple in terms of debt reliance and recommendations on banking relationships were interesting. I've got some updates from QuickBooks because they did the Get Connected event. Was it last week? A couple of weeks ago. I can't remember now. Is that QuickBooks? No, it was not a quick accounting event ever.

[00:12:38] Apparently it was so hard to get the invite, right? Well, I mean, I believe they had 400 people there. So it wasn't the biggest gathering in the world at Tobacco Duck. But I mean, I didn't get an invite. I'm not sure Ryan got one either. Did you, Ryan? No, no, not me. And there was an article specifically made up about how secretive it was.

[00:13:03] So, yeah, it was obviously spreading around the whole accounting space about who's going to get connected this year. Maybe they were doing it on purpose. Try to have a bit of buzz. Yeah, maybe. Maybe it's a great idea. Great idea to build up a little bit of anticipation, I guess. That's for sure. Anyway, there were two key things, I guess, announced at Get Connected. One of them, perhaps unsurprisingly, was all about making tax digital and their progress with the income tax data program.

[00:13:31] And then the other one was some more information about the rollout of Intuit Assist, which is an artificial intelligence platform. For anyone who doesn't know, Intuit Assist has been around in the US since around about November time. And it's been in sort of early beta testing in the UK for a little while now as well. But it's now had its formal release. And then, again, the whole MTD stuff, as everyone knows, everyone's well into beta testing now if you've signed up early for all of these products.

[00:13:58] And, of course, QuickBooks offers its ledger and sole trader products for smaller clients. And then you could move up into the standard packages, so Simple Start, Essentials and Advanced if needs beta to be able to accommodate all of those needs. And they have, just as kind of an aside to that, they have also added CIS reporting onto QuickBooks now as well. So you can kind of enhance and do that. So plenty of stuff going on. I think the beta testing regime is expected to carry on for another couple of months.

[00:14:27] And there'll be a wider rollout of that testing in April 2025 as we kind of roll into the new tax year. And obviously, more people want to be involved and things. But I guess the other interesting thing, as I said, which is the AI beta and Intuit Assist was that there's talk about not just being something that you can kind of ask or interrogate QuickBooks and get some data out of, but more about the fact that they're wanting to move this agentic AI conversation and sort of concept,

[00:14:53] which, ironically enough, is something that I was talking about at the Alternative Events Conference last week and whether or not this is potentially like a bit of an existential threat to accountants and bookkeepers. And just one of the things that they've given as a potential example of how this might help would be a workflow to help with onboarding new clients, which would be trained to understand what a firm needs from the process and then fetch the information from lots of places like Companies House, I'm assuming possibly AML software as well, and also picking up things like logos for your clients.

[00:15:21] And so you can pre-populate invoices and make sure that you can then sort of feed that back. And their concept is it'll feed that back into a bit of a dashboard so that either you as a business user or an accountant user could be able to check and just verify that the information being collected is correct. They've also proposed some other stuff around maybe being able to create or chase invoices and some other bits and pieces around categorization, which I guess we'd kind of be seeing anywhere in the bank feeds and the bank reconciliation process.

[00:15:50] But a whole bunch of exciting things from QuickBooks. And then the final little one was that they've released FRS 102 1A accounts into the product. So I guess that brings them back up to parity with the likes of Sage and Xero and Free Agents, we'd agree. So good to see that coming in. And I guess what we're kind of expecting now from all of these platforms is more of the same, more full 102, more charity accounting, and who knows what else will be demanded from the market. I've got something different from Nickel AI.

[00:16:21] No, hang on, not Nickel AI. I can't call him that, can I? Genesis AI, run by Nickel AI. So if he isn't already branding himself as Nickel AI, Nickel AI, you should. I mean, Genesis has launched JackPod, as I mentioned in the intro to this podcast, an AI-powered bookkeeping solution designed to streamline the often cumbersome task of data capture, invoicing, and reconciliation.

[00:16:44] So with JackPod, the AI agent Jack automates routine tasks, categorizing transactions and handling data extraction from invoices and receipts, all while a team of human experts step in to tackle complex exceptions so they can ensure accuracy and efficiency, and I imagine to train the model as well. So for accountants and SMEs, the key benefits are that you can, again, eliminate the manual entry, reduce errors,

[00:17:15] automate or streamline the workflow from document uploading to ledger posting, which is ultimately a good time saver, a good integration seamlessly with tools like Xero to make it easier to upload and sync the data and improve client collaboration, and things like, obviously, real-time bookkeeping, which means up-to-date financials, better helping for the decision-making of the business, the cash flow management,

[00:17:42] the lendability of a business as well, because I think that's one thing that open data will make a lot more accessible, is how good you are at being a credible business to lend to, scalability and efficiency, etc. So I think Jackpot is addressing a number of different challenges, staffing challenges in the market, and it makes it a really good solution for people who are looking for something where the technology can help,

[00:18:11] but also that they have the benefit of an oversight, human oversight, to train the model and make sure that everything is working as it should, because I know that that's been something that we have seen in recent months, weeks in particular, with some of the accounting softwares out there, that human layer of insight is still required and oversight. So great news for Genesis and Nickel.aii, and hopefully we get some good feedback on that.

[00:18:42] Yeah, I hope Nickel.aii sticks. I like that one. I wonder if this is also trying to plug that gap that the likes of Dext experienced, where they'd roll out a tool, they've got lots of great features, but the features just new are fully utilized. We take on auto-publishing in Dext. There's always a tiny percentage of their clients that were using that. Maybe this is that way to overcome that when utilizing or working in partnership with Genesis. So interesting take on it. I've got something from Xero.

[00:19:11] They are launching Xero Simple in April 2025, so not that far away now. And just to make it clear, it's not Xero Go. For those that do remember Xero Go, it was here, it went. But we now have Xero Simple. And essentially what they're going to be doing is bringing in a much simpler offering with HubDoc for data capture, bank feeds and reconciliation, and pay-enabled invoicing up to 10 invoices per month.

[00:19:38] And this is going to be a cheaper option at £7 per month. So if you were using Xero Cashbook historically, you can move your clients across to Xero Simple. Similar price point is not the same. And it'll be perfect for those sole traders, landlords that have been, you need to utilize the tool for making tax digital. So I guess they tried to create that separate product in the past, and they've just gone back and gone, actually, we've already got it. It's already there.

[00:20:06] Let's just repackage it in a slightly different way. There's value for money for our clients. £7 per month still could be quite costly, depending on what the business is. You know, they're real micro, but I guess for those that need a bit more advanced functionality, the likes that Xero can present, this could be a good tool for them. Should we be cynical about this, Ryan? I think we should. I mean, this is just the constant Xero merry-go-round of repackaging products at the moment and trying to fix the price for them. I mean, it's all a bit of a nonsense, really, isn't it? And we'll get there eventually.

[00:20:36] I'm sure they will. Either that or people just give up and just carry on buying the standard products. Yeah. I mean, what do we say about it? I think when Xero came out, we're like, why are you releasing this? You've already got stuff there that you could just use. And I think maybe over time they've realized that and just gone, well, let's just do another package. As long as you don't remove things that are fundamentally needed, then it works effectively.

[00:21:04] And I think what's actually good in this release, unlike some of their packaging that cause some uproar in the industry, is that the fundamental tools you need for a simple business, such as BankFeed, such as the likes of HubDoc, are still there and can still be utilized. So I think that's a big plus in at least what they've done with this bundle. Yeah, I understand that. I mean, I still find it frustrating. You know, I mean, the whole Xero bundling thing is annoying. You know, they've got a core product, which is really great, which is our accounting stuff.

[00:21:32] Then they've got some NAF products like HubDoc and Payroll, which no one really wants to buy. And then they make you buy it anyway by just bundling it up, which is a cynical move, to be perfectly honest, just to jack their prices up where, you know, it doesn't help businesses and it's not convincing for customers. So, yeah, I mean, we'll get there in the end. It's a little bit like buying a BMW and then paying extra for indicators and stuff like that, really. Well, you do say that, John, but since I've launched my business, I am using Xero Payroll now because it was in there.

[00:22:01] So, yeah, it makes sense. It is working at least for one person. So tick that box. And it's simple. That's what Xero Simple is saying. It's simple. It's just... And he would have used payroll anyway. And that was the thing. And he probably would have paid less for adding payroll in the first instance. I think when you're a company at the size and scale of Xero, that it is sometimes complex to convey what is the best offer for the smaller business. And I think that they're trying to do a good job of making it easier to signpost that.

[00:22:30] So I get it. It doesn't work for everyone, especially because they're trying to cover so many use cases and they've grown bigger. And the companies that have gone on to Xero now are more complex. But for sure, you've got to appeal to that new cohort of businesses that are coming down the track. And maybe that's what this is for. Agreed. Well, let's quickly talk about another feature that Xero have rolled out, which is actually only available for the North American market.

[00:23:00] So USA and Canada. But this is the Reconcile Period feature. And yeah, this has just literally been launched. I think we talked about it on a previous news briefly because we knew we got a bit of a heads up that this was coming. It's been in testing for a little while. But this is now formally launched in the market. Only available, like I said, to US and Canadian Xero customers. And effectively, I guess if you want to pretend that you're back in the early 1990s or late 2000s, this is bringing back that manual bank reconciliation where you start out with an opening balance.

[00:23:30] You finish with a closing balance and you kind of just go and tick all of the transactions off that you want to do. And I guess this is particularly prevalent in those markets because bank feeds are incredibly unreliable. And so it's been well known that this has been a request that's been wanted. I guess also QuickBooks essentially have this kind of functionality in there. And some of the other North American products have had this functionality for a while. I hope it doesn't come to the UK because it's frankly a backward step.

[00:23:57] But it works for them to build out and establish their market presence in the market that they're trying to build out in, which is the North American one. It will come over here, John. It will. There's too many traditional people that want it. Such a waste of time, though. Such a waste of time. It's a waste of time.

[00:24:25] It's just an unbelievable waste of time. And it takes us back to using Sage 50 desktop, like I say, in the late 90s. So another one from Xero as well. Something that is a little bit more of a cash in the back pocket moment. So earn some money with the new Xero referral program, which is a $200 commission for every eligible new paying subscriber. And you refer to Xero.

[00:24:51] I think it's only available through the developer center from looking at the link that you click through. But it's a chance to offer customers an exclusive Xero offer, which is 90% discount for six months. That's so confusing to say on a podcast. There's zero offer and 90% minuses. It's not 0%. It's 90% discount for six months. Plus you earn $200 commission for every new sign up in Xero.

[00:25:21] So fairly good way of acquiring. What do you think, guys? Something that gets the customers back in the door? Well, they've obviously got to hit some metrics, haven't they? Because they're throwing some money at some people to do it. And maybe they've learned from the whole QuickBooks debacle that not to throw it at the accountancy market because we are cynical and we'll post it on social media. So instead, we get to pick it up and put it on a podcast. Yeah.

[00:25:47] And that's probably why it's not marketed to the accountancy market in the straight and open way that it could be. But like you said, you know, accountants need to remain unbiased on so many levels. So that's why you'll never get the accountant really pushing it down the throat of the businesses in that way. But someone somewhere is making that referral. I do it all the time, you know, to different businesses. You just want me to break it in commission. Yeah, I know. Get paid some commission.

[00:26:14] I mean, we do this in utilities, don't we? And banking and lots of other places. So there's no reason why they shouldn't make this a business offering. But as Ryan said, it's always a challenge for accountants. And there's definitely a bit of an ethical quandary there. So I'd rather it was this way than the other way. Definitely. Definitely. And let's wrap up the Xero news this week with the February apps of the month. Those that have come out onto the Xero app store.

[00:26:39] And if you caught a prior podcast, I had outsourced this to John Toon, but I was really disappointed with how I've done it. So I pulled it back in, taking control again. So what do we have that was released in February? We had Installer Pro, which was a specialist platform for fire and security companies dealing with workflow compliance and billing. I'm focusing on the UK side here. We've got Monzo that have actually integrated directly in. This is mostly for their sole traders and company directors.

[00:27:03] If you're doing it in the Monzo cards or expense cards and spending limits, et cetera, you can pull that information through and back and forth between the two tools. You've got a global one called Cloudify, which appears to be an invoicing, a quoting tool that sits between the CRMs like HubSpot and Pipedrive and then directly into Xero. So you've got ones like Ecom Ledger, which have been out there. And I can't pronounce this, but I'm going to go with RevUp Payments.

[00:27:31] So RVV Up Payments, which are for pulling in information for Apple Pay and Google Pay all into a brand new payment page. And you've also got AppVentury in the global scheme that's been released, which you've not seen AppVentury. It's a way for you to assess your current AppStack workout weaknesses and then find out or find providers that can help you improve that.

[00:27:59] And if you are an accountancy firm as well, you can obviously then do that across your entire client base. So a tool that is gaining more traction, I believe, is going to be at pretty much every show this year. You'll see the pink and purple everywhere. One little last bit of news for me. And this deserves like a massive round of applause or some sort of like, you know, rave cheering kind of thing.

[00:28:20] Because I think possibly my most favorite product person in the tech world at the moment, Stephen Edgington, published on LinkedIn the other day to say that Dex now offers single sign-on integration with Microsoft Entry ID and Okta. Which for anyone that doesn't know, this is if you work in a tech business serving the accounting market, this is now table stakes for anyone that wants to provide really, really simple compliance, user management and control.

[00:28:49] So that people like me who work for organizations with like, you know, more than a few hundred users, we want to be able to make sure that our staff are in the client data only when they should be and not when they shouldn't be. And also make it really, really easy to manage so that when we onboard them and offboard them, we don't have to faff about. So hopefully people like Xero, people like QuickBooks, everyone else is listening to this because I've been banging on about this for so long. And it's really nice to see that, you know, Dex have rolled this out pretty quickly.

[00:29:16] And just shows that if you've got any interest in security, then you'll take this seriously. I love what makes you passionate, John. Single sign-on. You are probably the most you could talk about on anything. You're so excited. All right. Well, I've got something a little bit different. It's from across the pond. And who can not talk about Elon Musk and the Department of something doggy? Where are we going? Or Doge? What is it? The Department of...

[00:29:45] I mean, doge. Doggy. Where are you? It's doggy, right? Oh, my brain. Jeez. Don't. You have to give a little pat on the head when he's done a good job. Yeah. Well, whatever... Give that man a bone, Ryan. Whoever you sound out the acronym, you know, it's a free world. We can do it however we want. The Department of Government Efficiency has been attacking the team that built the free tax filing software over in the US.

[00:30:15] Now, we've talked about this many times on the pod. The fact you've got issues over in the US with the likes of Intuit pushing a paid for service and hiding or, I guess, tucking away their complementary tool. And although the government has a complementary tool and you can utilize, it's nowhere near as effective as the one in the UK. So most people do not use it. Well, the team that built it are no more. Musk has got rid of that.

[00:30:45] And although the website is still up and running, we do not know what's going to happen. I don't think we're going to see the likes of that over in the UK. But I just found it interesting that the builder for a tool, who's going to support it? The team's gone. I am joined by Stuart Hurst from Cloud10. And I'm sure many people who listen to this will know Stuart. And we'll see some of his exciting and sometimes occasionally controversial posts on LinkedIn

[00:31:14] where he's either bigging up or slagging off people. And hopefully this is a bigging up session, but we'll see how we get on. But Stuart, delighted to have you on the show. And we're going to be digging into Approval Max, which I know is one of your most favorite products out there on the market. So maybe you could just give us a little bit of background just for anyone who doesn't know you and shame on them if they don't know you. Yes, Cloud10 accounting kind of started the 1st of April last year. So we're almost a year in. Going after that dinosaur accountant, that once-year accountant,

[00:31:43] which I'm quite well known for. Often in jest, but sometimes, yeah, pushing that a little bit. But yeah, we want to help clients on a regular basis. And we scale quite quickly. There's six, soon to be seven of us. And in 10 months and over half a million pounds of turnover. So it's been quite quick from... And it's just been fascinating, really, the speed of growth and the number of referrals that have been coming in. But you know the scene on the scene,

[00:32:12] the champion of technology and all things like that, and all things change. And I probably push things too much sometimes in terms of technology and trying to change things and drive the team absolutely bonkers. Which led to working with ApprovalMax, to be honest. So I'm head of accounting at ApprovalMax as well, which is one of my probably like God-tier apps in terms of structure and working on systems. So I got involved with that probably about 18 months ago in that frame as well of working on the scene with that,

[00:32:40] as well as advising a ton of other accountants and bookkeepers. And you mentioned the role that you've got at ApprovalMax. And maybe for anyone who's not sure what that entails, maybe you could just let us know a little bit more about this exciting role and what you're trying to do in terms of representing them from an accounting point of view. Yeah. So I think ApprovalMax is just, you know, I face God to you. Like in terms of what I do, so I do a few things really. One is help promote the product and push it out to a variety of businesses and indeed accountants and bookkeepers

[00:33:10] that are looking for something that can bring some control to the party. But also then in behind the scenes, I do some of the first wave, well, testing or feedback on certain new products. And, you know, there's some new things coming and it's amazing how in my head, it's all straightforward, but there'll be some random, what if this one in 10,000 thing happens and would that break it? And having to really go into that detail of, well, yeah, what do you want this to look like? And it's fascinating from that side because you've got this technical thing if it needs to work.

[00:33:39] And then this user experience of, does it look okay? And I just give my two pence on what I think of it. And I'm not afraid to say that's brilliant or that's naff. Let's get into ApprovalMax a little bit more detail. I mean, you know, obviously, I guess for many people that will be familiar with the product, they'll be really familiar with the approval side and it's in the name, right? But, you know, can you sort of dig into that and explore that a little bit more for me? Because, you know, there is an incredible amount of complexity there. There's all sorts of different types of approvals

[00:34:09] that you can go through in terms of different workflows. And obviously, you know, the key integrations with the likes of Xero QuickBooks, but then that's been expanded out as well in recent years into a much broader breadth of products. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, it's core, like you say, yeah, it's approving a purchase order, matching to a purchase invoice and pushing it through to the system. It's very basic level, but the ability to different levels of approvals with different people, with different values and different departments, different tracking categories,

[00:34:39] for example, if you're using Xero, makes it really nice, a nice bolt-on. Just for actual visibility as well, for someone to sit on top and see are things working properly and controls-wise. But then beyond that, just budgets that can go in there are really useful. So the thing that drives me bonkers with clients is kind of like, where do you want to get to? Oh, I want to do something, or I'm not sure, or I've got this rough idea. But like, I always say, if you're going to an airport on holiday with your family, you wouldn't say to them,

[00:35:08] let's all randomly go to the airport in one week. We won't tell each other. We won't tell each other where we're going. We won't tell each other what the budget is, and we'll pray to God that we all get to the same place, have a great time and do it. So why don't we plan, you know, on average, I think people spend seven weeks planning a holiday. No time is spent on budgets and planning and numbers and forecasting. So for me, it's weird that approval max is in many ways almost, though it's not directly a cashflow budgeting tool, it kind of can help force that issue. And it's the gateway drug, so to speak,

[00:35:38] into that realm of forecasting and budgeting. So getting, it's a great way of building controls and then going, well, this would be even sweeter because you can put budgets in here and then we can flag, are we on target, off target at source instead of kind of waiting till, six, three months later, six months later and hoping for the best. So, so the budgeting tool in it and the, the little color coding for like, are we on track or over is tiny, but in the minds of business owners,

[00:36:07] I just think that has a real impact in control. Yeah. And then just from the accounting side, particularly on larger firms, you know, when I worked at UHY, one of the biggest banes was a trainee that didn't really know a massive amount about the world of debit and credits and just the things messing live with somebody zero and putting the journal in and going strongly around or it's the wrong date or, and then you'd see all that corrections and like, and it was like, when do we change it? What's the approval process? And approval max has got a really

[00:36:35] underutilized like journal approval process that we can pop in there as well. So for people that don't want to touch source, zeros or QuickBooks, do the journal in there, get it reviewed and then push it through. And that's a, again, from a certainly audit and control perspective, a nice way of controlling, particularly you've got a lot of trainees in your, in your firm going wild in the aisles on people's online numbers. We deal with quite a lot of not-for-profit clients and they love approval max, but they also love a good journal, right? And they really love to have

[00:37:05] a journal approval process in place. And, and I mean, there's, there's other, there's other opportunities, isn't there around approvals, you know, underutilized feature. And I don't know if you've got any thoughts on that and also on sales as well, which again is another probably underutilized one in terms of the opportunity and about being able to control who is sitting in what product and where as well. Yeah, I think that's it. I think that's the crucial bit is controlling access rights

[00:37:34] because as much as I love Xero, the, the access rights are kind of like fairly basic, the four tiers or so kind of thing for what you can see and what you can't. And yeah, that control of, of what people can see is really, really useful in approval max. So, and yeah, the contact control just for, I mean, banking is the classic one of bank details changing and working through and, and the fact that it's flagging that and, and checking in any changes is certainly for, for us as an outsourced finance function,

[00:38:03] nevermind an internal business, like that flagging that something has changed, particularly if there are different people doing it or looking at it just gives me massive comfort. Yeah. You know, I did once work at a firm that didn't use, well, that didn't use approval max on that client that paid the wrong supplier 20,000 pounds. Can you imagine how, that's an awkward conversation. Painful that, that phone call was because it really was. We got it, fortunately they had a good relationship with that supplier and they sent it back and we got it to the right place. But they are sometimes surprisingly easy mistakes

[00:38:32] to make, aren't they? And then of course they're the ones that can be incredibly costly to a relationship. So having an, having an extra layer of control in place to manage that and just sort of flag that up before you, before you press that big red button is always quite nice to have. Yeah, 100%. And I think there's a misconception almost that when you scale in a business, whether it's an accounting practice or a, or a general business industry, that building controls early doors slows you down and it saps creativity and it makes life harder. And I think that's a real myth that actually

[00:39:02] you build the foundations right from day one and the control process. And yeah, you might go a little bit slower at the start in terms of that round one, but processes, you know, I mean, James Ashford bangs on about it, doesn't he? When he talks about his goal proposal days and now he's reflecting on that of like, he built these processes from day one and they were machine-like and you can see like that, that enabled them to just go at it once that was in place. And I think it's the same around like financial controls and general processes that baking these little bad boys in

[00:39:32] as soon as you can, as opposed to getting to five, 10, 20 people and then looking back going, actually. Well, it just gives you that reassurance, doesn't it? And that's the key thing. Just pivoting away from the approvals then, I mean, Approval Max have brought in OCR technology so they've brought in the ability to do invoice extraction now as well and slowly moving towards payments a little bit as well. Probably not being used at scale like some of the other things that are out there in the market but it always felt like

[00:40:02] it was going to be the next natural step for them in terms of going through that end-to-end process. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And like you say, it's still early days and probably an underutilized feature or a new thing that's still getting out there but yeah, the OCR stuff, it's nothing new or groundbreaking but it's a great little feature. Like I say, common sense in terms of where it went because it is quite a crowded market I would say at the moment in that realm. It's hard. I work with a lot of apps and a lot of different things in pies

[00:40:31] but you can get certain for some clients death by number of apps. Like we literally some of them have got 15, 20 different logins to different apps which is great to be all on there and tech savvy but it is quite nice to have that kind of one to rule them all almost in this area and one safe place, one way of working and it's systemized. And just quickly, I mean, I'm just conscious of time and before we wrap up, I mean, what sort of the top three tips that you could give for someone maybe who's either new to ApprovalMax or maybe has been

[00:41:00] using it for a while but maybe has forgotten about some of the features or functionalities that they should be looking out for like the go-to basics for making sure you get a really good implementation? Yeah. Top three tips. Number one, if you come into it is like start with a blank sheet of paper like there's two, I think where things go wrong is when we try and shoehorn existing processes into ApprovalMax because that's the way we've always done it. So kind of blank sheet of paper and make the most of its capabilities because I think some people almost suppress

[00:41:29] the capabilities of it to fit in with what they've always done. So tip number one would be, yeah, just blank sheet of paper and go out its functionality. Number two would be probably the use of budgets that I mentioned but just bring that into that world and just for the financial enlightenment of the rest, particularly if you've got a larger team there's often a disconnect between like they don't see numbers, they don't know that commercial awareness and like that

[00:41:58] kind of budgeting is just fantastic to be honest. And the final one is just I would say from an accounting perspective like this can be a great add-on service and money spinner for a period of time in terms of I think people undervalue the price of implementation that kind of thing that they can sell that as a service but it's not a one-shot thing. You know, you mentioned the systems evolve, things work through

[00:42:27] and if you keep your eye on it even if you implement it and kind of and you're done, you keep your eye on those tools after three months, six months of what's changing. You know, there's some great audit trails on workflows that have changed as well in ApprovalMax and going back to that and just following up again is a there's some great money to be made in it from a financial sense of view in terms of adding value but also, yeah, for working with companies, building the relationship and, you know, doing nice things like it's a really

[00:42:56] it's not a one-shot thing that people think it is so don't kind of plug it in and go jobs are good and like it's a it's a continual review. Jobs are good and you can get much more northern with a phrase like that, right? But I think I think you're absolutely right. I think that last point is like probably undersold. I think, you know, we see too many accounting practices, you know, talking about doing sort of digital transformation or systems advisory work or whatever you want to badge it as but it seems to be a one-time hit and then they kind of get one and done and they're out

[00:43:25] whereas like, you know, you've just mentioned it and we've experienced this as well is it's like it's a great opportunity to be proactive. You know, it's a great opportunity to say, right, okay, now we've done this. What's next? You know, or do you need more support around this or do we, you know, have you just recruited someone and we need to have a think about how we maybe change your workflows and things like that. So many variables that come into this and a great way of just keeping that constant contact and keeping that sort of nudge effect of being there and them coming back to you and saying, oh yeah, we're thinking about doing this.

[00:43:54] It might not even be systems related. It might just be, I don't know, it might be really boring and tax related or something but it's still an opportunity, right? Yeah, 100%. 100%. And yeah, it's mad that, just that regular contact, like what that can, what that can do for the relationship and for the services and, you know, clients don't know what they don't know and if you're not screaming and shouting about your services or offering things up there, then, you know, we have so many clients that come to us for cash flow services and management accounting and it's funny because when they leave their old accountant, their accountant often kind of come screaming, oh, we do do that

[00:44:24] and it's kind of like, well, you didn't show it one time in three years or whatever. So, yeah, so, you know, don't be afraid to, I think selling probably is a dirty word in the accounting profession but don't be afraid to go at it a little bit and, you know, show what you can do. Perfect. Well, I think, Stuart, that's a great point to stop and thank you for your time. Thank you for representing ApprovalMax and obviously Cloud10 as well and for all of your, you know, exciting posts

[00:44:54] and the thunder that you bring to LinkedIn every so often and I do appreciate seeing that and especially the really controversial ones because I like watching the fallout. It's really good. Indeed, the comments is popcorn time on some of them, isn't it? But yeah, that's for sure. Well, thanks for that, buddy. Cheers. Cheers. Thanks for joining us on today's episode. We look forward to catching you on the next one. If there's any topics that piqued your interest, then please do reach out to us and if you're not already involved in our community, please do. Take the time to find out more about the Digital Disruptors.

[00:45:24] Join our community so that you can see our beautiful faces at the next few events that we're going to either be speaking at or hosting a micro event at. So, look forward to hearing your feedback and catch you on the next one. Branded.