Jacqui runs Black Cat Accounting on her own. Her strategy is to get software to do as much of the work as possible so she can hold off hiring, and AccountKit is central to that. She signed up for the Inter-Entity Loan Tool, which "paid for itself," then moved her workflow across from her previous tool and started using the Equipment Finance tool. Between recurring workflow, inter-entity reconciliations and equipment finance, the repetitive work she would once have hired a junior for now largely runs itself.
Key points
- Black Cat is a solo firm, four years old, run by an accountant with 17 years in the industry, serving small businesses.
- Jacqui signed up for the Inter-Entity Loan Tool; it turned hours of line-by-line matching in Excel into a single button press.
- The Equipment Finance tool automates a loan's entries for the life of the loan, so she just checks the balances are right.
- She moved her workflow off her previous tool because it was too reliant on XPM and its overnight sync; AccountKit's jobs are independent of XPM.
- Workflow auto-creates recurring jobs, so nothing gets forgotten.
- Three tools, workflow, inter-entity and equipment finance, cover the cost of the subscription on their own.
- She is now trialling the document management and smart redaction, and weighing up whether to drop her Adobe Acrobat subscription.
The firm at a glance
- Firm: Black Cat Accounting
- Who: Jacqui Trumper, sole practitioner (17 years in the industry)
- Clients: Small businesses
- Stack: Xero, XPM, Ignition, OneDrive, AccountKit
- AccountKit tools: Workflow, Inter-Entity Loan Tool, Equipment Finance, document management
- Approach: "Getting software to do as much as I can to put off as long as I can hiring someone."
The situation: inter-entity loans that drifted out of balance
Jacqui had two large client groups that kept paying for things across entities without recording the loans correctly, so the inter-entity balances drifted out of whack. Sorting that out, back when she worked at other firms, meant comparing the loan accounts "line by line" in Excel to find the differences. On a long list of transactions, that took hours.
The tool that paid for itself
The Inter-Entity Loan Tool was what brought her to AccountKit in the first place. "I was looking for an inter-entity loan solution, and that's why I signed up," she says. Instead of the line-by-line Excel hunt, "you press a button, it just finds it all and makes them go away." As she puts it, it "turned what can be hours into just a single button press," and on its own the tool "paid for itself."
Set it up once, then check the greens
Then she found the Equipment Finance tool. Set it up once, add a bank rule, and it runs the loan's entries automatically for the life of the loan, up to five years.
"I do nothing. I just go in there every now and then, see the ticks are green, and then move on with life."
Jacqui, Black Cat Accounting
Her workflow works the same way. She had been using another workflow tool, but it was too reliant on XPM: any change to a job or a client detail had to be made in XPM and then wait on an overnight sync. AccountKit's jobs are independent of XPM and sync both ways, which she prefers. Now she ticks the services each client needs, and the schedule does the rest:
- BAS jobs bulk-create on the first day of each quarter, across all the relevant clients.
- Due dates and start dates are preset.
- Repeating tasks cover anything else, including a to-do list that pops up each morning so nothing gets forgotten.
"Once you've set that up at the beginning, it just does it," she says.
Fewer tools in the stack
More recently she has started linking her documents into AccountKit. It talks to both OneDrive, where she works on live files, and her main document store, where the final versions live, so she can see everything in one place.
She has also started using the smart redaction, which finds the TFNs in a document and lets her redact them in one go, "a lot fewer clicks" than doing it in Acrobat. She is now weighing up whether she still needs her Adobe Acrobat subscription at all.
Made by accountants
Part of what she rates is where it comes from. "It's made by accountants, not just software vendors for accountants," she says, "and I believe they use it in their own firm." She also points to how responsive the team is: "They always listen to us and the feedback. They're not just building things for themselves." It does a lot of different things, she notes, and manages to do them well, which is why "AccountKit is one of the ones that I open every morning."
What going back would cost
Asked what would happen if AccountKit disappeared, Jacqui doesn't relish the thought. She would have to rebuild her whole workflow, go back to reconciling inter-entity loans by hand ("I could not sit there and do that again"), and relearn how to post equipment finance entries she hasn't touched in years. Her verdict on that scenario: "they're not allowed to leave."
See how it fits your firm
If you are running a firm on your own, or with a small team, and the repetitive compliance work is eating your week, it's worth seeing how AccountKit fits the way you already work. Book a demo and walk through it with the team.
