AccountKit Case Study: Blyth Partners

Blyth Partners is a Perth-based accounting firm servicing predominantly small-to-medium businesses across a range of industries. Directors Allister Blyth and Alex Hew and their team of seven staff support businesses with their end-to-end accounting, planning and taxation needs.

A few years back, Blyth Partners moved to the cloud and were on the hunt for a new software solution that worked with Xero Practice Manager (XPM).

“At the time, we had a few legacy products for mail registers and hire purchase schedules and things like that,” Allister explains. “What first led us to AccountKit was its ability to pull our client contacts out of XPM so we could group them and have one central database. But when we saw that it took care of all those other features as well, it made it an easy move.”

Since moving to AccountKit, being able to automate journals and pull up-to-date financials throughout the year has been especially crucial for Blyth Partners’ financial management and advisory work.

“As we moved into more virtual CFO work, equipment finance, Division 7a and inter-entity loan accounts started to become a problem, because historically you’d only do that work at the end of the year,” Allister says. “So it was making it harder for us to tax plan and give true positions of finances during the year.”

“AccountKit enabled us to post all those journals automatically on a monthly basis. Seeing the live numbers rather than working on historicals all the time is a big advantage for us.”

Allister says AccountKit’s integrations also help the team bridge the gap by enabling them to manage their key tasks in one place.

“We got to the stage where we had too many software packages and about 20 tabs open at any time. Because AccountKit ticks multiple boxes, it just makes life more simple and manageable.”

“It ties in with BGL SimpleFund 360 and CAS360 so we can remind people to pay their company statements, which people seem to forget and then get hit with a late fee. It fills a lot of little gaps in our service offering that, if you miss them, can be an irritation to the client. Instead, they’re impressed that we’re on top of all the little things.”

Time saved, problems solved and better client relationships

For Allister, the standout benefits of using AccountKit are greater efficiency and being able to provide a better client experience.

“We’ve seen significant time-savings with the CAS monitoring and compliance, Division 7a loans, equipment finance and inter-entity loan accounts,” he says. “I’d say there would be hours saved on every job. On the practice management side, being able to filter and dissect information quickly saves us hours as well. These are the sorts of reports we can’t pull from XPM without long-winded manipulation of the data.”

And when it comes to support and feedback, Allister says the relationship with AccountKit has been refreshingly collaborative.

“They’re very accommodating and always open to ideas. One of the features we raised was a client birthday reminder, and it’s now on the AccountKit dashboard. It’s little things like that that help keep us at the forefront of clients’ minds.”

“Being accountants themselves, the AccountKit team understands the little issues that we all face. And through working to solve their own problems, they’ve helped all of us.”

Want to try AccountKit for yourself? Sign up for a free trial, or join a webinar for a live demonstration of AccountKit’s key features.