Michelle Irwin runs For the Books, a bookkeeping practice that cares more about accuracy than almost anything else. AccountKit lets her deliver the accrual and prepayment bookkeeping she prefers, work that would not be worth doing by hand at the rates clients pay. The Inter-Entity Loan Tool, which first made her ask "where has this been for the last 15 years of my life?", saves her two to three hours a month on a single complex client, and the equipment finance and prepayment tools keep her clients' numbers accurate month to month.
Key points
- For the Books is run by Michelle Irwin, a registered BAS agent with 30 years in the industry, working with a team of part-timers who help deliver the work.
- The Inter-Entity Loan Tool is her standout; it replaced a highlighter-and-ruler process with a button press and saves two to three hours a month on one client.
- Equipment finance is set-and-forget: she sets up each new loan and just checks the balances are right.
- Prepayments and amortisation let her keep clients' accounts accurate and avoid a lumpy profit and loss, which she says would not be economic to do manually.
- For her, the bigger benefit is accuracy, not just time.
- She would keep AccountKit for three tools alone: inter-entity loans, equipment finance and prepayments.
- She is trialling the workflow and document management, and rates the support highly.
The firm at a glance
- Firm: For the Books
- Who: Michelle Irwin, owner and registered BAS agent (30 years in the industry; also an independent author)
- Size: Michelle plus a team of part-timers; she is the practice's only registered BAS agent. Owner since early 2025.
- Clients: Small businesses, with a growing interest in helping authors
- Stack: Xero, Dext, AccountKit
- AccountKit tools: Inter-Entity Loan Tool, Equipment Finance, Prepayments and Amortisation; trialling Workflow and Document Management
- On AccountKit: Knew it from a previous firm, and brought it into For the Books
The situation: a highlighter and a ruler
Michelle remembers exactly how inter-entity loans used to work. "I'm old enough to remember having to print out my old ledgers," she says. "I'd have three pages from one client's file and three pages from the other, and a highlighter and a ruler." She would go down the two lists by hand, "yep, that matches, that matches," then journal the ones that did not. On a hospitality group with 20 or 30 lines a month moving between entities, that took real time.
The tool she came back for
Michelle had used AccountKit at a previous firm, so when she started at For the Books and inherited clients with complex inter-entity loans, she knew what she wanted. One client alone has around eight entities that "regularly share money back and forth." Instead of the ruler, AccountKit reconciles it in "a click of a button and just get rid of all the ones that match," leaving her only the exceptions to deal with. Her reaction the first time she saw it has stuck with her.
"Where has this been for the last 15 years of my life?" — Michelle Irwin, For the Books
That one client saves her two to three hours a month. As she points out, it is time "you can't really charge out to a client" anyway, so the tool effectively hands it back to her.
Set it up once, then check the greens
Equipment finance works the same way. "Every time I get a new car, I set it up and I don't have to stress about it," she says. Occasionally the finance company's figures differ from AccountKit's by around $100, but as she notes, that is "not material across the life of the loan." She sends the schedule to the accountant and lets the tool post the entries. Her routine after that is simple: "go check that there's all greens all the way down." She does the same with insurance premium funding, setting it up once and not having to worry about it for 12 months.
Accuracy over time
Ask Michelle what she would lose without AccountKit and she does not start with time. "It's probably not so much the time, it's probably more the accuracy," she says. Without the tools she would not do the prepayments, so clients would get "a lumpy profit and loss" where a year's insurance lands in a single month instead of being spread across twelve. She prefers proper accrual and prepayment bookkeeping, "which a lot of bookkeepers don't do," and she is blunt about why it is possible at all: "that would just not be possible with the amount that people want to pay for bookkeeping without these sorts of tools."
There are three tools she would keep AccountKit for even if nothing else ever changed:
- the inter-entity loans,
- the equipment finance loans, and
- the prepayments.
"Those alone just save me so much time, so much money," she says.
Peace of mind if she is not there
As the practice's only registered BAS agent, Michelle also values what the workflow could mean if she were ever out of action. "If I was to end up in hospital tomorrow, it would be nice to be able to say to another accountant, go into AccountKit, load up this, and you'll know what you need to do," she says. When a team member was recently out with a back injury, knowing the three priorities that needed picking up was exactly the kind of oversight she wants. It is, she says, "that peace of mind that things can be done even in your absence."
Still improving
Michelle is trialling the workflow and document management now. She is candid that when she first saw them about a year ago she was not sold, but says they have improved so much since that she is keen to see where they land. That pattern, of feedback being acted on, is something she rates: "the last thing you want is a system that just stays static." The support, she adds, is "absolutely awesome." Her overall verdict: for the inter-entity tool, "10 out of 10," and for anyone who tried AccountKit a while ago and found it slow, "I'd definitely recommend they try it again."
See how it fits your firm
If you care about delivering accurate, properly amortised accounts without the manual hours, it's worth seeing how AccountKit fits the way you already work.
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