The Latest in Accounting Tech: Employment Hero, Active Workpapers and... CCH iFirm?!

[00:00:00] I want to get my hands on it. I want to have a little bit of a play. I'm going to be really honest with you guys, I have seen an early stage of their income tax solution and I'm a big fan. I guess this is probably just another iteration of Active building out their functionality. I've got something from Employment Hero. They have just announced you can now get access to their payroll software for absolutely nothing. Where they've landed is really, really cheap or free payroll software with a very powerful HR tool that sits over the top.

[00:00:27] As accountants, why should we be considering systems? If you can be the player that comes in and says, hey look, we're the experts here. This is what you could be doing to become much more profitable and we can help you with that. That's a huge opportunity. That's what makes us unique as accountants. We are their trusted advisor to clients. Somebody needs to be educating these service-based businesses on how to be running smarter and more efficiently. And it's your opportunity for the taking. You absolutely should not be doing this for free.

[00:00:57] You are generating value for your client. Make sure that you charge appropriately. Hello and welcome to another episode of the DigiTools and the Cruel World podcast brought to you by the Digital Disruptors. And as always, we're delighted to say that we are sponsored by one of our amazing sponsors, FYI.

[00:01:13] And we will be bringing also an interview that Ryan did with the team at Scurro talking about the red flags that you need to kind of consider before you move on to a PSA system that Scurro deliver and how to identify those. So you make sure that you do that change at the right point. And so there we are. We're ready to go almost. But of course, I need to talk to Mr.

[00:01:35] Peercy because he's here with me. No Indy, unfortunately, this week because she is still on her mini hiatus while she does these weird and wonderful things that we don't know about. But Ryan, it was Father's Day recently. So how did that treat you? Yeah, it was good. It feels like a distant memory now, John. There's been so much that's gone between then and now.

[00:01:55] But no, it was I got treated to a lay in, which is amazing, you know, young children and a nice breakfast made for me. A bit of toast, but, you know, they're young and they'll learn. And and then we went for a lovely walk down to the river and got basically a cream tea. So couldn't ask for much more. Sounds amazing. What about yourself? Sounds delightful. Yeah, I mean, I had a great day with Jess.

[00:02:25] We we did a little bit of gardening and we spent a bit of time together doing some things because she's she's so that she wants to grow all these amazing things like tomatoes and cucumbers. And oh, something I've never heard of before. Our cucu melon, I think it is, which is like a miniature melon. And yeah, so we were just doing doing things like that. And then we we did some baking as well, because it decided to rain because, of course, I live in the north. So even though the weather is amazing, it's still rain.

[00:02:56] And yeah, it was it was it's all it's all good. And yeah, just delighted to be to be back at it. You know, who doesn't love another work day? Exactly. And we I think it's because we love our jobs, John. We love looking at technology and making sure it is the right fit for the businesses we work with. If we can move the needle in any way, helping them become more efficient, more data driven and more flexible in how they operate, then I'm happy anyway. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:26] And for the time being, at least our kids can't turn Father's Day into an agentic A.I. experience. So, you know, I wish we would all be relieved about that. Right. Definitely. Definitely. Although I'm kind of intrigued to what that would be like. Right. Like they put the right prompts in. I'm sure they'd be much more creative and colorful. Mine would probably involve unicorns. Now my daughter. And and the color pink or red. Yeah.

[00:03:52] And maybe a bit like Wallace and Gromit, you know, and that lion that you said that you enjoyed. Maybe you'd have this sudden thing where you're like, right, time for daddy to get out of bed and they press a button. You just get tipped out of bed and dressed in a pair of shorts and, you know, polo neckers who so love to display. No, it's not polo neck as a polo shirt. Polo necks are completely different. As a polo shirt. Sorry. Yeah. All right. I mean, look, I'm a man. Fashion, whatever. You know. And that is essentially my dress code. So, yes.

[00:04:21] And I think that actually having a Wallace and Gromit style thing that gets me ready in the morning would be perfect. So if anyone does want to purchase that for me, either my lovely children or anyone that's listening to this podcast, I will take I will take that gift and I will use it daily. OK, so moving on from this hilarity and the automation of our lives completely. Let's get into some app news because there's a ton of things going on.

[00:04:47] And as we spoke about last week on the on last week's path, there is so much going on. It's almost impossible to give him a ton of it. We have something being launched to cover the MTD for income tax changes that we're expecting in April next year. And this is coming from Walters Clure. And this is the CCH iFirm MTD for income tax solution.

[00:05:12] This for anyone that doesn't know, iFirm is the cloud equivalent of CCH's on-prem accounting suite. And I'm going to be really honest with you guys. I have seen an early stage of income tax solution and I'm a big fan. I think it is quite good looking from a user experience point of view. It's also seems to be quite seamless in terms of the way that it works. And once they have finished fully developing out the product, because for a large firm like us,

[00:05:41] it doesn't quite have all the bells and whistles we want. But I'm sure that will come because I've seen the road map for development. We're really looking forward to exploring iFirm as a solution and whether or not that would be something that will help us to move one of our compliance solutions into the cloud. But for the time being, at least they have got the product out there now. It is ready for MTD for income tax. So if you wanted to get into that early and start being involved in the beta testing, you can do that.

[00:06:07] And of course, CCH are very happy to be one of the recognized MTD softwares that are out there. You can do all the usual things I guess you'd anticipate to be able to do, which is you can import income and expense data from cloud software like Xero, like QuickBooks, like Sage. And this is really interesting because the ability to do that both in CCH's desktop solution and in some of the other equivalent desktop solutions was removed a while ago. And that was partly down to API pricing and some challenges.

[00:06:37] So, you know, if you want to be able to do this, you're going to have to switch into the iFirm products away from the desktop products unless it's going to be a manual process. And this also will act as bridging software so you can draw up information from Excel spreadsheets. So you've got a kind of a double whammy of being able to do two things at once here if you decided to do so. I mean, clearly there's a question mark around this because you know, Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, et cetera, all have their own MTD for it's solutions inbuilt into those products.

[00:07:04] So it may well be that you just do that submission of those quarterly returns from those products themselves. This gives you an option to do it all in one place and then you're centralizing your data all in one place as well. And then, of course, when you come to the year end stuff, you're able to do all of the year end adjustments and corrections, et cetera, that are required and do that final return at the end of the year. So there it is. That's the CCH iFirm MTD for income tax solution.

[00:07:29] It is out there now ready for people to use. As I said, I am quite a fan of this, which is very unusual for CCH products. And if they hit the roadmap, we'll definitely be knocking on the door when the time comes. I was going to say, John, this is feels like a complete pivot from maybe a year ago when we were talking about CCH. We're now liking the products that are in the market. And that can only be a good thing. Maybe we're just we're just so buoyed by all this AI conversation that we're just happy about everything at the moment.

[00:07:58] And that's what it is. Yeah. But I'm sure it is a great, great product. I've not had the chance of looking at it yet. And what I have come across, though, is that access have now released something called access evolve. Now, this is something that we actually predicted would be coming down the road and it's probably come a little bit earlier than we thought. Access for a while have been buying up lots of cloud native products in different areas, different areas of functionality. We always thought they're going to have to integrate this into a suite.

[00:08:26] And that's essentially what they've done with the, I guess, predictable element of layering artificial intelligence into it at the same time. So what comes in the access evolve suite? Well, essentially, you've got light year accounts payable. You've got Fathom's cash flow forecasting and management tool, but you can also get payroll, HR and CRM depending on what level of access evolve that you adopt.

[00:08:52] Now, this is all wrapped around the access financials core system. So this is their cloud native finance system. And what they've done now is kind of build out through the integrations into a single ERP that is cloud native with best of breed products, which is essentially what I guess we've wanted for a long time out there. Now, we've never been a massive fan of access financials.

[00:09:15] So it will really depend on how the integrations work and how the data flows to does its superpowers, relatively bland product. But I am intrigued. I'm intrigued to see how they do this because they have done really well in their acquisition strategy. They've bought some really powerful tools. And some of those didn't have, I guess, the APIs that would now do this. They've been going out for a while. That's why it's been really quiet with some of these tools and their release or software releases over the last year or so.

[00:09:45] So to see this all come to the fore with access evolve. Yeah, I'm intrigued to see what happened with it. And I guess the AI powered workspace and user experience that they're promising inside the tool will hopefully help power this further as well. I guess more details on this you can find via the article. But what I really want to do is I want to get my hands on it. I want to have a little bit of a play, see how it all works together and see is this going to be as powerful as we hope it is?

[00:10:16] Well, I should confess, Ryan, that I'm on the access advisory board who were helping access to shape evolve and figure out how they should look and feel. And you're absolutely right insofar as, you know, I think we've been quite impressed with accesses acquisition strategy, but also a little bit confused. I think it's fair to say, you know, trying to figure out why they've been making these kind of various acquisitions, some of which didn't necessarily feel like it fit particularly well with access financials and their positioning in the marketplace.

[00:10:46] But yeah, you're having all of this together in one platform with the ability of you to sort of take the best of some of these technologies like Fathom, which is great at reporting and great at forecasting and maybe take this into a product like Unleashed, which is great for managing stock and inventory and all that good stuff. Having those things together is something that we talked about as an advisory board wanting to see more of and wanting to see more of this being developed and pushed out into the community so that we could get some real tangible understanding of what they were trying to do.

[00:11:15] But also, again, maximize the benefits of all this great stuff that they've got rather than having it sort of like individually pigeonholed into their product space. And I think that, you know, as an organization and individual organizations within the access group as well, they are very keen to do that as well. So it's all it's all good stuff. I've got something from Employment Hero. They have just announced that you can now get access to their payroll software for absolutely nothing.

[00:11:45] They've announced this because, as we know, there's a whole bunch of increasing costs coming in, you know, NI hikes, national minimum wage increases and a whole plethora of other stuff that's challenging businesses at this moment in time. And so they're wanting to appeal to small and medium enterprises in particular who have a challenge around running their payroll or want to make their payroll running more simple, more effective, faster and, of course, now cost free.

[00:12:09] So if you're really interested in doing this, you can literally go onto the website, Employment Hero, and you'll be able to find the link through to their free payroll software feature. Once you've filled out the details, you'll be able to sign up immediately and you can start adding your employees and do the transfer from your old system to the new one so that you can start processing payroll straight away. So this is a great thing, I think, from Employment Hero, particularly to get a few more people on board with their platform.

[00:12:36] Definitely. But we've got to say it's been a slightly chaotic kind of year or so of Employment Hero. They they had a really powerful embedded H&P payroll tool. It was being used by lots of accounting firms and then they decided they weren't going to have any other accounting firms use yet. So they kind of blocked it for bureaus. Then they rolled that back and when no bureaus can still use it, then they basically went, well, it's a fixed fee for bureaus, one thousand pounds a year, which is insanely cheap for an incredibly powerful system.

[00:13:06] And now they've gone and you can have payroll for free if you're a business. I mean, I am baffled with what they're doing, but where they've landed is really, really cheap or free payroll software with a very powerful HR tool that ships over the top.

[00:13:21] So I if I was in business, which I am, but with one employee, maybe not needed at this point, I would definitely be checking out Employment Hero because the system itself and the whole embedded HR and payroll flow directly into finance solutions with embedded payments. It just kind of helps with that full suite. We're talking about that with access, you know, we said about HR and payroll tools, and that will be then connected into their access financials.

[00:13:48] We've now got Employment Hero, which connects into so many finance tools that has HR and payroll all in one place. And you can get the payroll element for free. I think, yeah, it's no brains. Check it out, in my opinion. Absolutely. And I'm interested in that comment you said where you said that one employee possibly wasn't needed in your business. Oh, is that what I said? That was what I meant. I think I meant the software wasn't needed. I think maybe lots of people do think that one employee in my business does not need, but I should have a conversation.

[00:14:17] I'll sit him down later and have a conversation with him. I think you should, yeah. Just give him the reassurance that he's still going to be employed. No, no, I'm going to really drill into him and make sure he's terrified of the boss. It's going to be very interesting. Anyway, let's move on from this slightly mentally warping scenario. And talk about another release from Dext. They just do not stop. I think maybe we paused for an episode. We didn't have any news, but then we're back.

[00:14:44] And they have released not one, but multiple new bits of functionality. Firstly, GPS mileage tracking. Admittedly only in iOS, but you can now track your journeys with your GPS and automatically then allocate that into the Dext platform. Now, this is something that's relatively rare out there. And I know this is, I think it was my IQ had functionality.

[00:15:09] And it was like £10 per month per user, which is just like baffling from what it actually delivers. And then I think Xpend have this functionality and now Dext have it. So, yeah, I think quite powerful here. Am I a big fan of GPS tracks? I guess mileage claims? Not sure. Depends on the functionality internally. I've seen it done really badly. I've seen it done quite well.

[00:15:34] I think I'd like to see, I'll have a play with Dext to actually see if does this work or does this gradually create more of a burden than just putting in what the starting and end postcodes are. They've also brought in auto descript for line items. So, this is something where you could do a smart suggestion for the description field based on looking at what the cost sales items are. But you still had to interact with it. Now you've got auto descript. So, automatically put that field in if you turn that setting on.

[00:16:01] You've got to be able to copy and paste receipts directly into Dext. Possibly slightly long-winded than drag and drop. Not sure why you'd need copy and paste. But still, there's some new functionality there. But bulk and approve. Bulk, approve and reject approvals. Bulk, approve and reject approvals. That doesn't really make any sense. But essentially, you can do it in bulk, right? So, if you've got approval, you can either reject it or approve it in bulk. I think that's what I'm trying to say. Like the run seal.

[00:16:31] It does exactly what it says on the tin. Yeah. There you go. You've got the fact that it's now the pages you're going on are going to remember how you sort them. And filter them. So, client list is the key one for that. And easier transitions between individual clients. This was something that when they brought out their new dashboard, became a little bit challenging for a navigational perspective. They've now improved that recently. We've got others. I mean, I could carry on. They've got more releases. But I'm going to pause for breath because I think I've covered the critical ones.

[00:17:01] Yeah. Well, as you said, Ryan, I mean, you know, they've, you know, it's been two episodes almost back to back where we haven't mentioned decks and updates. So, does it feel like to you that Steven Edgerton is like taking his foot off the gas? He's maybe just now that he's got his feet under the table a bit more at decks, he's sort of taking it a bit easy and, you know, chilling out a little bit. Is that what we're thinking here? Well, after the amount of releases I just mentioned, I think possibly we took our eye off the ball, John. And we missed the fact that there were actually so many releases out there that were going on.

[00:17:29] And only in this kind of summary post do we pick up how many had actually come out over the last couple of months. Well, there you go. It's one or the other. You know, you can take your choice who you're going to blame. Also, Stephen, it's probably a bit of 50-50 to be said. Probably. Yeah. But no, I think, you know, great to see more amazing stuff from decks. I'm like you with the GPS tracking. I think it's an interesting option. I think sometimes underutilized, actually, ironically.

[00:17:59] And I was an early user of MylarQ because it was one of these things that spilled out, weirdly, of Microsoft Labs that they had. That's one of the things that Satya Nadella launched to try and reinvigorate Microsoft and turn them back into a proper software company. And MylarQ was one of the products that came out of there, but it was a massive battery drain at one point. So in the end, I stopped using it. But great to see it. Mimo have just released planned payment dates.

[00:18:25] So if you're not used to the Mimo tool, money in, money out, does your receipts, does your payments. And from a payment perspective, it has now released planned payment dates. Now, why is this important? Well, actually, if you want to be working in a more modern and effective way, as you are operating inside your payment tool, you want to be able to schedule out when your payment's going to go out to manage your cash flow at the same time. So we're talking about, I guess, as we were on a prior episode about the fact you can, in the future,

[00:18:55] have these tools that are looking at your cash flow and then helping you align with your payments. Planned payment dates are going to be critical as part of that. So it's not a huge release. It's not something that, I guess, is going to revolutionize the world. But it's something that is critical for a tool such as Mimo. And I'm glad it's been brought in to help power their tool and make it better for all their users. Right. Next bit of news up for me, which I do know about, is a release from Cloud Capture,

[00:19:22] really an integration announced by Cloud Capture with Active and their WorkPapers system. Now, I guess quite a lot of people are probably familiar with Active because we've talked about them as a product in the past. They are a sponsor as well, which is ideal. But Cloud Capture is probably less familiar to people out there in the ether. And the whole purpose of Cloud Capture is to allow you to help to automate the processing of timesheets and the capture of the information that goes into timesheets. So this is a system that works in Microsoft Teams.

[00:19:52] It sits there in the background, wearing away, monitoring what you're doing so that it can then capture, OK, right, you've been in zero for 25 minutes. You've then done something in your emails for 10 minutes. You've sent a Teams message to this person, et cetera, et cetera. And obviously, over time, then it allows you to build up kind of a long list or a short list of the activities that you've done and the kinds of clients and things that you've worked on so that you can automatically allocate those to your timesheet.

[00:20:18] So it makes the processing of timesheets a little bit easier. But it also makes the capture of the information much more accurate because, you know, as you and I both know, Ryan, it's really easy to forget about the things you've done, particularly if it's like a thing that just takes a couple of minutes. And lots of firms work in different ways when it comes to time recording, whether you're working on like six-minute increments or 10 or 15-minute increments, you know, and whether you record some of those smaller tasks or not. So this just allows you to be a bit more specific.

[00:20:47] And within the background within Cloud Capture as well, you've got the ability to sort of track the time spent on things versus the time recorded and then sort of just figure out is there some massaging of the numbers maybe going on or is it like some internal efficiency challenges here? So it's really interesting to see that, you know, Active and Cloud Capture built this integration together. The whole purpose of it is that you're then able to take that timesheet of data and bring it into Active.

[00:21:13] And so you can see what's being done when it comes to completing tasks and seeing how long it's taking to complete activities. So with that background tracking that's going on, which is really neat to see. And of course, you know, I guess this is probably just another iteration of Active building out their functionality to kind of keep up with what we're seeing, you know, from the likes of FYI and Carbon, who have got a kind of similar kind of setup to this. Not quite the same.

[00:21:43] But yeah, we're seeing it. I'd love to see this in person. I'm going to reach out to the Active guys to see this in real life and just to get a real understanding of how this works, because I think it's a cool little development. Yeah. And I think, you know, if your accounting firm is spending the majority of the time in a work papers tool, the ability to automatically capture that and fit in your timesheet for them, that's a big kind of pain you're taking away.

[00:22:11] So it made sense, especially as, you know, I guess Active or Cloud system, Cloud Native in the way they operate, bridging that gap between a traditional way of operating and a more modern way. I think it's a great partnership that they've got and launched here. I have something on, I guess, a financial raise. So Sleek have raised 23 million US dollars as a Series B. Now, why are we talking about Sleek?

[00:22:40] Because essentially Sleek are an accountancy firm, aren't they? Well, not really. They're a kind of hybrid of accountancy and tech. And because of that, I guess they can raise these funds in the same way, because they're utilizing those funds to build on a tech platform to automate as much as possible and deliver a more powered and, I guess, customized service to their clients.

[00:23:02] So this is one of those, I guess, businesses that we've seen some bad press about in the US over the number of years, where they've taken lots of funds, they've built loads, and then the kind of customer pipeline has dried up and the shareholders are wanting more and kind of forced the business to pivot or do something. Hopefully, fingers crossed, Sleek is not that.

[00:23:30] We've got the almighty Glenn Foster, a friend of the podcast, working there. And they've always looked very professional in how they've operated across multiple jurisdictions, including in the UK. So, yeah, I think that hopefully this has been a very positive raise that they've taken on.

[00:23:50] They've not said what they're using it for, apart from building out their business and supporting their clients further. So, yeah, uncertain, but hopefully it's all for positive activities. Absolutely. Yeah. And I see where Sleek go in this world because the competitive landscape of our industry is changing almost daily, it seems.

[00:24:17] And, yeah, we've kind of got to keep on top of these things. You know what they're probably doing, John? Probably using it to build out AI agents. That's probably what they're using it for. Amazing. Amazing. Right. Well, from AI agents to, well, who knows what. But you've probably already seen this.

[00:24:40] But just to tell everyone about this, you know, HMRC have announced that 100,000 taxpayers were targeted by criminals and in the end, as a consequence, had to have access to their individual tax records at HMRC shut down. So all of their credentials, like the government gateway ID and passwords, have been reset. So those people affected are going to be receiving a letter from HMRC telling them that this has happened and instructions on how to get back onto their account so they can access their accounts and stuff.

[00:25:10] But what was also anticipated, so those letters, sorry, are going out on the 25th of June. But what was also divulged at the same time was not only had this happened, but the attack meant that HMRC had lost approximately 47 million pounds in the form of fraudulent repayments, mainly through pay as you earn.

[00:25:32] So, which seems really weird when you think about it, but this is where people have been logging in to those accounts and basically saying they had some kind of adjustment required, let's say, either tax code related or employment related. And so there was some sort of refund due. And I guess, you know, we know that there have been sort of challenges around, you know, making fraudulent claims historically for work where and other things like that.

[00:25:53] So there's lots of things that you can go through the system and claim for, and this seems to be what's happened, but on a massive scale, because I mean, 47 million across 100,000 people, that's quite a lot of people. You know, it's quite a lot per person. And, you know, most employment related sorts of tax deductions are relatively small generally. So perhaps surprising that this didn't get flagged sooner than potentially it did. Don't have a lot of detail around what's going on.

[00:26:21] But for what it's worth, HMRC did say that they had protected 1.9 billion from criminal attacks in the last tax year. So maybe in the grand scheme of things, this is, you know, this is a drop in the ocean. But yeah, still a little bit worrying, I guess. I mean, it's a very large drop in the ocean at 47 million. But I guess going back to what you were saying earlier, from AI agents to nefarious agents, is that what we're saying here?

[00:26:47] Yeah, I mean, we know that HMRC systems are not the greatest. And I think maybe that they need some more controls in place to help prevent this kind of activity occurring in the future.

[00:27:01] But something I did want to bring finally to the table regarding the UK government is that a while back, back in 2008, they brought in the prompt payment code regulations, which mandated undisputed invoices being settled by government departments within five days. And with all other invoices being settled in 30 days.

[00:27:23] And this is something that the government is very passionate about, improving payments of businesses, especially small businesses, to make sure that cash flow is moving very quickly throughout the economy. But what they seem to have forgotten is to actually handle this with their own suppliers in certain instances. So they've got over 2 million of owed invoices with both suppliers and customers. Only 300,000 is with their customers. They're owed just under 300,000 to them.

[00:27:51] But 1.65 million is owed to their suppliers. And this ranges from 19 days to 18 years of how long some of these invoices are, with the largest invoice of 757,000 dating back to mid-2023, being from the Ministry of Defence. Now, I can understand why that would be the Ministry of Defence being something that large. But I do wonder, why are they not paying them? What did that supplier not provide?

[00:28:18] Is it something we've needed for a critical war that's going on at the moment? It's just alarming how large some of these invoices are and how old they are. Now, if the government is trying to get businesses to pay payments, surely they need to resolve the 1.65 million that they are owed to their suppliers. You would think so, wouldn't you, Ryan?

[00:28:43] I mean, the fact that there's an unpaid debt going back to, what was it, 18 years, did you say? 18 years. Oh, man. I mean, the business on the other end of it probably doesn't exist anymore. And maybe that's why they can't pay it. They've just got it there. It's like, well, I can't pay them. Well, get rid of the bloomin' invoice then. Come on. Beggar's belief, doesn't it? I mean, let's hope they've done the VAT accounting properly on that. What I need is an AI agent to reconcile the books. Period, coach.

[00:29:12] Yeah, I mean, we laugh about this. But this is a serious issue. And I think also it also demonstrates a problem. The government have been doing some really interesting things and doing lots of consultations with various organizations. I know Sage and Xero and a whole bunch of other people have been involved around how do we try and make sure that money gets into small and medium-sized businesses as quickly as possible in the supply chain. And we know there are challenges with slow payments.

[00:29:39] I mean, this is an extreme example in some respects, but then also not when you compare it to, say, being in the supply chain to, say, supermarkets and other things. But yeah, surely by now, if there is that invoice outstanding for 18 years, someone somewhere must have managed to resolve whatever dispute there was around that. And that is a 50-50 thing. It's not just down to the government to resolve. It's down to the other party as well.

[00:30:04] And either they've just given up themselves or the process of dealing with government is so inefficient that they've just kind of bothered. Or maybe actually they haven't tried hard enough to recover the money themselves. And so who knows? Who knows, indeed. But what a depressing thought to end App News on this week. Oh, well, we'll make it more positive next week. I promise.

[00:30:36] We are back with Harv Nagra from Scoro. And we've talked about what Scoro does, what a PSA is. And I guess the red flags to consider when a PSA is needed for a business. But I guess as accountants, why should we be doing this? Why should we even be considering systems? And if you listen to the podcast, you probably know I'm very passionate about this. Very passionate about why accountants should be the core of helping or advising businesses on their systems.

[00:31:01] And with AI coming down the track, it's just kind of inevitable now that some of the work we do from a compliance aspect is going to be automated. Not fully. You know, we're still needed for assurance, et cetera. But it's going to change the way we operate and get the blend between advisory and compliance kind of out of whack compared to where we are now. But to help clients with their systems, to help them get the most out of, I guess, the advisory element we do, we're going to need to move more towards digital.

[00:31:29] And we talked to Al, didn't we, in the last episode about the fact that although we've got the expertise to advise a business, that they need more awareness from a finance aspect. We can change them on that. If we don't know what systems are out there, we're kind of then stuck at the next step. So are you starting to have more conversations with accountants around the UK where they're considering or looking to build out that advisory arm to partner with some, I guess, more software vendors to go,

[00:31:56] okay, I've got this sweet spot, these clients, and I want to make sure that I can give them an option. Exactly that, Ryan. And it's, you know, there's accounting firms we're speaking to. There's also IT firms. You know, the classic example is that there was a core business there, but it's just smart thinking with kind of the advent of AI and the way, you know, the economy is that we're kind of developing service lines for ourselves.

[00:32:22] And that advisory arm for a business, like an accounting firm, is super valuable. You know, the maturity journey a business needs to go on is not automatic. It's not something intuitive. So they need advice. So if you can be the player that comes in and says, hey, look, we're the experts here, and this is what you could be doing to become much more profitable, and we can help you with that, right? That is fantastic. So that's a huge opportunity.

[00:32:50] And then the tech element with a platform like Scoro, that just, again, added value, helping them select the right platform, helping them implement. That can be also a lot of work. You know, I was formerly an operations director, as I said, in one of the previous episodes, and I had brought in Scoro at my agency. There was a, you know, we had an onboarding expert that was helping us from the business. There was still a lot of homework we had to do to prep for that, right?

[00:33:19] And when you're changing systems, whether it's moving from one PSA to the next or kind of disjointed tools to a PSA system, there's a lot there. So if the person in-house doesn't have the time or the headspace to do that, you could come in, step in, and help them collate that. So it's an excellent opportunity to develop a service line for your business. Yeah, and you touched on the fact that, you know, you're talking to accountants, you're talking to IT specialists.

[00:33:49] And I love the fact that we should differentiate ourselves here. We understand finance. We understand what business owners need from a data perspective, and we can work backwards from that. That's what makes us unique as accountants. We are their trusted advisor to clients. They want to come to us and go, you know, who should I be speaking to, whether that's a solicitor, whether that's an insurance specialist, but also on systems. Who can help us in this space?

[00:34:11] And either you should be doing this internally as a firm, or you should be partnering with people out there to help, you know, source the right answer if you can't do that yourself. We've been doing this for many years with other professional service specialists. And you say, you know, we could help with advisory, locating the right system, or implementation. And you tend to kind of build that up in stages. You don't just go, I'm going to do everything. You kind of build that up from a risk perspective. You might be able to direct them to a system or a range of systems.

[00:34:39] And then as you get more experienced in this, you kind of start advising and implementing. But something I find that we are unique on is that because the systems such as Scoro are very finance focused, the business itself can bring in the system. They can work with Scoro to do that, but then how it shares data into the finance system, how that should be structured, how the reporting works. That's when we come into our own. And we can just consult on that without necessarily, like, deeply understanding the system.

[00:35:07] We can talk about what they need to do and how the data needs to be shared. And that's where, I guess, as accountants, we differentiate. That's where we add value. And is that the kind of conversations you're starting to have with accountants? They're like, okay, you know, yeah, I can advise on a system, but actually you can advise everything that goes around that for a financial end. Exactly, exactly. And it kind of goes from, I think, to your point, it ranges, right?

[00:35:31] It could just be we're going to take what you have, kind of a PSA platform or Scoro, your implementation, and kind of optimize it for the reporting element and get all that working. But taking it deeper and, you know, like I was saying in one of the previous episodes or conversations with yourself, that some accountancy firms have now adopted Scoro. So that puts them even more better place to understand and recommend it to their own clients, right? But you don't have to go there.

[00:35:59] You can also just benefit from the training materials and get an understanding of it. And then you're moving from just kind of an accountancy firm to almost like a FinOps advisor as well, which is super valuable because people don't know this stuff. And it's your opportunity for the taking to be the advisor. And I think, Ryan, it goes beyond the accounting stuff.

[00:36:21] There's so little lack of knowledge in terms of kind of the metrics you should be looking at to really be running a smart business. And again, with the threat of AI and kind of what that means, people need to be running a more efficient business. So somebody needs to be educating these service-based businesses on how to be running smarter and more efficiently. Sounds good. And I love the term FinOps advisor. I am stealing that.

[00:36:48] So we've talked about a PSA and the need to graduate to a PSA. And if you've got those bigger clients, they're going to need to do that. And there's, you know, Scoro isn't the only PSA out there. We always say in what we do, do your research, benchmark, and come to making a decision on who you want to work with. But if anyone listening wants to work with Scoro, how do they go around that? Are there partnership models? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We've got a partnership manager, one of my lovely colleagues named Lena.

[00:37:16] And we've kind of relaunched our partnership program last year, in fact. And there's three tiers. The first is the most basic. It's just the referral partner. So it's really simple. You just recommend a business that you think would be a good fit. And you don't have to worry about qualifying them. Although we do have some tools that can help you spot the red flags or kind of get an understanding if it could be the right model. So you refer them.

[00:37:43] And if they're a good fit and they end up signing on, you get a cut of the fees. The next level up from that, Ryan, is kind of the sales tier. So that's for businesses that have this kind of deeper understanding. And they get a higher reward for, you know, co-sales, essentially. And then graduating on to sales directly themselves. And then the ultimate tier is really the implementation partner.

[00:38:08] So that's where you've kind of really built up that tech advisory element. And, you know, you're going to support your customers with onboarding. So an even bigger cut of the kind of subscription fee for those firms. Yeah, and you've got the options here. You can either take it yourself or if you've got that thing where you want to be a trusted independent advisor and you feel, I don't want to take a commission on this. I'm just getting fees from advising my client.

[00:38:38] You can always pass those back to the client to make sure that they're getting, I guess, as much value for money from a system. And I think the key thing about the structure of partnership model is, as we talked about graduating into a PSA, you can graduate as a partner. You're moving upwards through that as you learn more and more and work more closely with the system. And from my experience of working with Scorrow, it is very much a well-supported model.

[00:39:06] You know, you're not just thrown in the deep end and you go, I have to advise on this system. But you've got a great team that can support you as you move through and advise your clients. And you can generate quite a bit of additional revenue from this if done correctly. And don't feel that you should be doing this for free. You absolutely should not be doing this for free. You are generating value for your client. Make sure that you charge appropriately. Yeah.

[00:39:31] So, Harv, have you got any, I guess, final takeaways from if people want to work with Scorrow, the best way of reaching out, engaging, having that initial conversation? Absolutely. So, we've got a dedicated partners page on our website. So, you can, of course, I am sure in the episode notes, Ryan, you can drop in my contact details as well. But if you go to scoro.com slash partner dash directory, that's where there's a link to become a partner.

[00:40:00] So, that was scoro.com slash partner dash directory. And that's where you can sign up. So, really simple to do. And, yeah, I think it's an excellent opportunity, of course. And, you know, free trial available on the website as well. And loads of training materials and self-guided implementation guides and stuff like that if anybody wants to check it out for their own business as well. Sounds good. If anyone wants to, I guess, find out what it's like working with Scorrow, I've been doing that for a number of years. Please do reach out to me.

[00:40:29] Happy to have a chat and advise or guide on where it's a good fit and whether that be a good fit for your clients. So, Harv, love having you on the show over the last few weeks. Thank you again for coming on. And if anyone's listening and wants to just maybe learn a little bit more about Scorrow, they can always sign up to your podcast, can't they? Absolutely. The Handbook, The Operations Podcast. So, check it out on Apple or Spotify or YouTube. And loads of advice for service-based businesses.

[00:40:57] So, kind of nuggets you can take to your own clients to advise them as well if you're in for that. Cool. Thanks again, Harv. Thank you. There we go. That wraps up another episode of the DigiTools in a Cruel World podcast brought to you, of course, by the Digital Disruptors. We're always keen to hear from you. And, of course, we have our newsletter and the weekly live feed that goes out. But we'd love you to jump on those and subscribe to those as well because there's more news and more updates that goes into those.

[00:41:25] And, of course, some of the things that we don't quite get out on the podcast, we can slip those out as soon as they're breaking news. So, you've got it right on your inbox straight away. And, of course, with the live feed, we can talk about some of these things in a little bit more detail. So, if there's something you want us to talk about, give us a shout. Or there's something you're really passionate to talk about as well. You're more than welcome to join us on that. But there you go.