Practice Management for Accounting Firms that use Xero

When Drive Accounting Director Emma Kenny set out to establish Drive Accounting, the goal was simple: Build a high performing practice that worked better for the people in it. Achieving this goal proved easier said than done. Emma reflects on a time before Link “For reporting purposes, we only had Excel and XPM for job planning, with no visibility of our capacity, which made it hard to accurately tell when we needed staff and whether we were over resourced - it was more gut feel” That lack of visibility created more issues. “We had no idea what our team’s true productivity and performance was and our teams were constantly asking what they were doing next.” Emma knew the business needed to operate differently. “It was taking us too long to track true client recovery and establish whether our fees were accurate. We were experiencing scope creep and the lack of insight in XPM was quickly becoming our failure. We needed to gain visibility over our business through better reporting.” After seeing what Link could offer, the decision was quick. “We met with Link’s team and quickly understood that Link had the structure, support, and the platform to provide the clarity we required, so we jumped all in.” Adopting Link into her practice was hassle-free. Emma comments “The Link team suggested a few structure changes for efficiency, set up all the reports we needed and ensured we had what was required to move forward…it was the easiest onboarding experience I have had”. With Link in place, Drive Accounting is now firmly behind the steering wheel. “I get accurate weekly reports… and no longer wonder where anything is at,” Emma says. The team now works with clarity and confidence. “My teams can easily see everything they need and they now know what’s next”. But the real outcome was achieving the firm’s original goals. “The goals we set for lifestyle balance, early job filing and workflow efficiencies have come to fruition.” With Link Practice’ industry-first workflow and capacity planning platform providing full visibility and driving accountability, the team hit 90% completion with 3+ months to spare and was fully filed a month before fiscal-year-end. “This meant the team earned paid time off on Fridays from Jan–March… there was no EOFY rush.” At the same time, with the clarity and efficiency acquired with utilising Link, Drive Accounting’s financial performance improved. “We knew exactly what these numbers were a few days after the financial year ended,” Emma says, with significantly stronger write-ups and minimal write-offs”. What started as a need for better reporting became a complete shift in how the firm operates. With the right visibility and structure in place, Drive Accounting is now delivering on its original vision - a high-performing firm where success supports both profitability and lifestyle.

Like most modern practices, Ake Accounting was short on time and in need of data clarity. When Director Matthew Davis was recommended to Link by several industry peers, the firm was able to unlock the insights needed to improve their business. “...reporting out of XPM wasn't sufficient for an accounting firm. With Link being built for accounting firms, it was bang on with the information we needed to improve our business” Life before Link was riddled with shortfalls ”we lacked the visibility we needed to make important decisions. Accountants all lack time, Link removes this barrier and instead provides the information you need to focus…accurate reports on WIP, team productivity and ROI, to name a few, all helped to significantly decrease our write-offs. With Link, we were able to develop the right strategies to tackle all of the key KPI's of our business” Link isn’t ‘just-another-app’, there’s a business behind the platform committed to delivering a service that extends well beyond the technology they provide. “The team at Link is amazing and the support we get is far superior to any other software we use”. Since amalgamating Link into Ake Accounting’s operations “The stress associated with running an accounting firm has reduced as we get a snapshot of what is happening with just a few key reports” cements Matthew. Operationally, Link delivers the data in an understandable format to make daily decisions, supporting practices like Ake Accounting to nail the fundamentals, which continues to deliver returns over time “Link was the biggest driver of reducing our write-offs and developing strategies to reduce these. At our worst we had high write-offs of around 30% in some years. This has now been reduced to effectively nil and we continue to utilise Link to monitor the progress we have made”. With Link, Ake Accounting has eliminated the previous time-spent on simply trying to understand their data and unlocked continued growth and greater results.

SBA has long been focused on delivering strong outcomes for its clients, but like many accounting practices, gaining clear visibility into the performance metrics of their business proved challenging. Prior to implementing Link, the firm relied on Xero Practice Manager (XPM) as its core system. While it provided a basic foundation, extracting meaningful insights was taxing. Reflecting on life before Link, Director Stuart Lowe explains, “Reports were manual, basic and hard to produce -  we had no reporting on WIP or job profits.” Without reliable reporting, the firm lacked the visibility required to understand their key metrics and drive performance. This made it difficult to confidently assess profitability, monitor work in progress, or make informed management decisions, ultimately limiting their ability to drive greater outcomes. SBA’s introduction to Link came through a combination of social channels and recommendations from industry peers, but it was the initial implementation process that solidified their decision. “The Onboarding provided by Link was excellent…we learnt about cleaning our data up, which helped immensely” With their data refined, the impact of Link was quickly felt across the business. Day-to-day operations became significantly more streamlined, with improved access to insights and greater confidence in decision-making. “Reporting on team performance, management reporting, and uncovering predictable outcomes from timesheet entries have all become much easier,” Stuart explains. Instead of operating with limited or unreliable data, SBA now benefits from consistent, accessible reporting that supports “greater management oversight and importantly, higher profits”, Stuart confirms when reflecting on the impact of working with Link For SBA, Link has transformed reporting from a neglected, manual task into a powerful driver of performance - providing the clarity and confidence needed to run a more profitable business.