Chris Wheatley runs Scope Accounting, a suburban Brisbane firm he started in 2014. For years his workflow was "just Excel" and, by his own admission, he was reactive about it, which meant jobs could stall at 80% and quietly blow out. Since going all in on AccountKit's workflow, and after four years of using its lodgement statistics, he has the visibility he was missing: the team can see where every job is, when it is due, and how the firm is tracking against previous years. Along the way, AccountKit replaced a patchwork of tools for Division 7A, equipment finance and client structures.
Key points
- Scope Accounting is a tech-focused suburban firm in Bayside Brisbane, started in 2014 and grown from a two-person operation.
- Before AccountKit, compliance work was a patchwork of Excel and the ATO's own calculators; workflow was "just Excel."
- Division 7A was the first tool; unlike the ATO calculator, it lets the team model scenarios and click a payout button, and the stored data makes each following year fast.
- The firm went all in on AccountKit workflow from July, with recurring jobs for activity statements and annual lodgements.
- Without visibility, jobs used to stall; Chris cites a three-thousand-dollar job that took six months.
- The lodgement statistics dashboard, used for over four years, shows progress against previous years and helped the firm catch up after falling behind.
- He describes AccountKit as the closest thing he has seen to an old server-based practice manager, "and then some."
The firm at a glance
- Firm: Scope Accounting
- Who: Chris Wheatley, founder
- Size: Suburban firm, Bayside Brisbane; started 2014; tech-focused; grown from a two-person operation, now with a team of 14
- Clients: Small business and suburban accounting
- Stack: Xero, XPM, OneDrive and SharePoint, AccountKit
- AccountKit tools: Division 7A, Equipment Finance, Client Maps, Workflow, Document Management, Lodgement statistics
Before: "near enough is good enough"
When Chris started out in 2014, the good tools were expensive desktop applications, so like a lot of firms he made do. "You use the ATO calculator for Div7A, or you just hope that near enough is good enough and no one ever checks your work," he says. Amortisation schedules, equipment finance and borrowing costs were a patchwork, "a bandaid" over the gaps. When he saw AccountKit had those things in one place, "it just paid for itself," and adoption grew slowly from there.
Division 7A: from a saved PDF to live scenarios
The first tool was "the one that we all need," the Division 7A calculator. The ATO calculator, he explains, had "no scenario access, no modelling, you couldn't go pay out." You saved a PDF and never went back to it. AccountKit changed how the firm works a Div7A loan:
- at tax planning time, "we know what the dividend minimum needs to be,"
- the team can "click the payout button" to model the cleanest way to get a client sorted, and
- because the data stays in the system, "the next year we go in, bang, it's done."
As Chris puts it, "we're just getting the answer we want to different scenarios with the data that's already in AccountKit."
The workflow he was flippant about
Chris is honest that workflow was not always his priority. Before, "it was just Excel," and his approach was reactive: "have we done it or not?" The cost showed up in jobs that stalled. Work would get to 80%, come back to him, and he would lose track of it, because he was not watching a colleague's spreadsheet. "We were taking six months to do a three grand job," he says, "could have just done that in a week, because I didn't have the visibility." Since going all in on the AccountKit workflow from July, with recurring jobs for activity statements, BAS and annual lodgements like TPAR and STP, the dates live in AccountKit and expectations get set early. "Beforehand it was nothing," he says. "Now it's something."
Lodgement stats: seeing where you stand
The tool Chris singles out is the lodgement statistics dashboard. The firm downloads its lodgement list, imports it, and gets a progress chart showing where it is month to month. "We've been using that solidly for over four years now, and we can see when we're above or behind where we were in previous years," he says. This year the firm was well behind at the end of August, then caught up by the end of September. Part of that he puts down to a better staff mix, and part to visibility: "we've already done 80% of the work." As he sums it up, "it's all interactive and it's in one spot. We're not looking at various Excel spreadsheets. It's honestly all about visibility."
The modern version of the old practice manager
Asked to describe AccountKit to another accountant, Chris reaches for a comparison a lot of firms will recognise.
"AccountKit is as close as I've seen to that old-school server-based practice management system. It's doing everything we all used to back in the early 2000s, and then some, like all of the accounting tools."
- Chris Wheatley, Scope Accounting
His blunter version: "if you're complaining about not having any time to do the work, you're probably not insourcing to the right solutions, and AccountKit would be that right solution." He rates the support too, in particular that "you talk to everyone like a peer as opposed to a supplier," and that feedback gets acted on. "AccountKit definitely stands out."
See how it fits your firm
If your workflow lives in spreadsheets and you can't see where jobs really stand, it's worth seeing how AccountKit fits the way you already work. Book a demo and walk through it with the team.
