Back in 2018, Clarity street was lucky enough to jump out of an Uber, after attending a cloud meet up event hosted by Heather Smith, at the Practice Ignition Precon party (thanks to Sam from Go Cardless for shouting that uber and the socks!) and run into Daniel Fourie, who was also walking around aimlessly searching for the party. We hit it off right then and there and we were so excited that we booked in a chat for after Xerocon to explore the product in greater depth - we love how the universe works sometimes! Boy were we happy that we did have that chat, while the product at that stage was going under the radar in Australia, we saw the potential and couldn’t wait for the Xero Tax integration...fast forward to today and here's our reasons below. 

Why are they on our app stack? 
Why wouldn’t they be on our app stack is more the question to be asked? They would have been on here sooner but we had to wait for the Xero Tax integration to be able to offer a full cloud based practice management system. GreatSoft have positioned themselves as a cloud based alternative for the server based practice management incumbents targeting mid tier, already demonstrated with RSM Australia transitioning to the platform, and the big four. They are also building out their integrations with many of our app stack recommendations which will position them well to be a full cloud based alternative to the incumbents. 

What does GreatSoft do? 
GreatSoft does everything you would typically expect a practice management system to perform, time capture, billing, debtor management, job management, workflow management, client relationship management, comprehensive customisable/intelligent reporting, along with a mobile app that captures time and logs travel distance for reimbursements while on the go. The kicker for Clarity Street is that in Australia, GreatSoft was built with integrations front of mind and they have an API that, while is not “open” as such, it is available for apps to integrate with. We see this as a big plus over the vendors who typically want to control and build everything themselves to create their own suite. 

What are the benefits to an accounting firm? 
GreatSoft fills the void in the cloud Practice Management ecosystem at the moment for those typically larger firms who want to move to the cloud but don’t want to give up their level of reporting and accountability and who want the same look and feel as the system they are moving from. It’s also great for multi disciplinary firms that are used to having multiple businesses run through one practice management solution (something that XPM can’t do).  A firm that adopts GreatSoft will gain the benefits of not only being in the cloud and truly mobile, (so, more than just a VPN/remote desktop), but being able to leverage best of breed applications.  
 
Integrations 
Xero Tax and by default the broader Xero ecosystem: 
The moment Xero “officially” announced that GreatSoft was a fully integrated alternative solution at Xerocon 2019, Clarity Street almost cried with joy. The announcement meant that GreatSoft was basically a complete solution, and by integrating with Xero tax it, by default integrated with Xero ledgers, Xero Financials, Xero Workpapers and the other 1000 odd apps in the ecosystem that integrate with Xero client files.  
 
Other integrations within Clarity Street's app stack: 
The following are listed on the GreatSoft website as being live integrations at the point of publishing, but it would be a wise move to read their integration page here for updated integrations. 

• BGL  
• Now Infinity 

• Class 
• Mailchimp 

 Future integrations are: 

• Practice Ignition 

• FYI Docs 
• Suitefiles 
• Accountkit 
• ATO Smart Docs 
• ATO Mate 

​GreatSoft is a very welcome entrant into the practice management space in Australia and it will start to shake up the Australian landscape for those mid tier and Big Four firms, or any firm that is multidisciplinary or requires robust workflow, job and report management. The ability now for those firms to be cloud based and truly unchained from their desks, can only be a positive for their team members and by subsequently the bottom line. 

We wouldn’t hold it against you if you thought we had gone crazy and forgot that we are promoting an “App Stack”, as TOA isn’t an “App”. While this is true, the business Clarity Street is in, is that we are “Business Frustration Extractors” and we promote applications or resources that solve the frustrations of public practice accountants. One of those frustrations is capacity. We talk to accountants on a daily basis about their frustrations and apart from the number one frustration of workflow, capacity is usually the second thing out of their mouths. To be fair it isn’t usually so eloquently stated and more like, “we just cant get our work done, we seem to be always struggling to meet deadlines, we are burning out, help....”  

TOA helps to solve this very real issue by creating capacity for your team via people, rather than an application. We are hoping that TOA will create some form of app in future, but until then, they are on our app stack as a capacity creator via people power rather than app power! 
What does TOA do? 
TOA are not your average outsourcing company, they take it to the next level and make sure the team member that is hired for your firm, is the right fit both from a knowledge and cultural aspect, and they handle everything in between. They specialise in the accounting industry and have a deep pool of CPA talent at their disposal. When you go through the TOA experience, and it is an awesome experience, you will come out the other side with a new, initially trained team member who is eager to be part of your awesome team! 

What does the TOA experience look like and what can I expect? 
TOA’s experience starts with an initial consultation, followed by recruitment of the RIGHT team member for your firm. TOA then provide everything that you need to integrate your team member into your firm including; 

• Initial training 
  
• IT & Security (very very VERY IMPORTANT) via apps such as Practice Protect 
  
• Equipment setup 
  
• Facilities management 
  
• Learning development pathways 
  
• Operations 
  
• Culture (very very VERY IMPORTANT!) 

By employing a team member that is located offshore, doesn’t mean you just pay the money, set and forget. Your new team member will need training and guidance from you, they will wear your branded clothes (if you desire), you will need to constantly COMMUNICATE with them and treat them as you would any of the team members who are in your office. They work SOLELY for you and are NOT shared with other accounting firms. 

It is vitally important that you do NOT overlook the team aspect. You need to have appropriate processes and procedures in place for your team, both onshore and off. If you don’t have these robust processes and procedures, you'll find that you're actually just creating more work, and reducing your capacity. You could implement these processes and procedures yourself before the hire or you could just talk to Clarity Street, it’s kind of what we do..... 

What are the benefits to accounting firms? 
Hiring a team member from TOA is designed to create capacity within your team, allowing onshore team members to focus on those more high value add services. That is not to say that your new TOA team member will not be able to do this work in time with the appropriate training and resourcing. You only have to look at the review page to get a sense of what you can expect from hiring an outsourced accountant from TOA. With the created capacity, you can have your team focus on meeting those compliance deadlines, perhaps even meeting them this year....  

Provide those advisory services that you have been promising you would to your clients, using apps such as Clarity HQ who will help start that conversation. You may even find that your new team member can help get this information ready for those conversations and maybe one day hold the conversation with the client?  

It sounds too good to be true? 
We mentioned earlier that the team member is yours and you will only get out of this process what you are willing to put in and we mean this. TOA are there to help and guide you but at the end of the day if you are not ready and willing to put in time and effort to train, manage and amalgamate your offshore team, then you will ultimately fail and most likely blame TOA for your mistakes.  

TOA make the hiring process simple, they provide all the necessary background checks, they provide initial training, setup and the facilities however what they cannot provide is your dedication to making this work. Please consider your willingness to manage a team member who is not sitting directly outside your office where you can walk out the door and sit next to them. Consider that you will have to turn on your webcam, put on your headphones and press that new meeting Zoom button to talk to your team member, (who is actually sitting thousands of KM’s from your office) about the task you have just assigned to them. They will make mistakes just like your onshore team, they will have family issues just like your onshore team, they will celebrate wins with you just like your onshore team. 

TOA is designed to create capacity, grow your team globally and help to address the talent crunch that is being experienced currently, especially in Australia. You need to put in the effort to integrate your offshore team member both structurally and culturally, put in place processes and procedures (this should be done even with on onshore team...) and train train train! 

If you just want someone to crunch data and process basic compliance requirements without wanting to expand your team and a have a global presence, then get in touch with us at Clarity Street, we have great connections in the industry that will suit your needs. If however, you want a team member that fits your culture and who you will in a short period of time, forget they are in another time zone, then it’s time to contact TOA! 

Why is it a part of our app stack?
Apart from the awesome name, the main reason we have included Clarity HQ into our app stack is because it solves the very real problem for accountants of “how do I start the conversation with my client around advisory services”.  One of Clarity Streets mantra’s is to leverage technology to provide people effectiveness and Clarity HQ lives into this by providing a technology platform that makes the first steps to advisory simple.

The app was built with mobile first in mind and therefore natively you can view every screen on a mobile device and it will scale to the best fit, we think this is a great way to address the ever increasing default way that data is viewed and consumed by accounting clients.

Currently the platform integrates with Xero and Quickbooks Online, and it also has a manual entry function (because accountants lived in excel before the clouds!). The app integrations mean that the data is kept upto date in real time allowing the advisor to hit refresh and have the very real conversations with their clients. It also uses blockchain technology for its document storage verification inside of the client’s data room, more on this below.
 
What does it do?
Clarity HQ is the first step before you jump into offering full advisory services to your clients. It helps you to quickly identify areas of concern or improvement from a client’s accounting file or excel upload. For the best results it would be advisable to actually run your eye over the bookkeeping before relying on the information, as we all know the saying “crap in crap out”. It uses 7 Key Metrics, explained below, to quickly give the advisor some high level talking points with their clients.

1. Cash Days: shows how long it takes for money to go through your business, from sales to getting paid.
2. Core Cash Target: is the ideal amount you will have in your bank account before spending on new projects, paying shareholders, hiring new team members etc. It's calculated by adding your taxes due and two months' worth of overheads for the current period.
3. Business Return: is our take on Return on Capital Employed for small businesses. It's like an internal rate of return for business owners to see if their sweat, time and money are worth being invested in their business.
4. Revenue Per Employee: is calculated by dividing your revenue, for the current period, by your full time equivalent employees. Every service based business should be using this metric!
5. Operating Profit (EBITDA) %: is your net profit before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation for the current period.
6. Gross Profit %: is calculated by dividing your gross profit figure by your revenue figure for the current period.
7. Revenue Growth: is calculated by comparing your current period's annualised revenue to the previous financial year's revenue.

​A real shining light here is that all of the above metrics can be quickly manipulated to show best and worst case scenarios, either individually or at a master level. 

​Off the back of the targets you’re able to produce an action plan for your client, including tasks, responsibilities and due dates, on how you might achieve the nominated growth targets and collaborate with them on each of the targets. At the moment you can only have one action plan at a time and there aren’t any smarts or AI built into this piece however, we can foresee in the future that if Clarity HQ identifies a piece of advisory, it will tailor the advice that the accountant is providing and therefore no two conversations will be the same with clients.

Is this not like all the other reporting apps in the market place?
Short answer is no. Clarity HQ are clearly positioning themselves to be the link in the chain before an advisor offers a full complement of advisory services to their client. What we mean by this is that the conversations had off the back of a Clarity HQ action plan would involve things like a 3 way forecast or cashflow budgets, these are not services that Clarity HQ offer. We suspect in the future there would be embedded links in the action plan to other reporting applications such as Fathom, Spotlight, Float etc. Who knows this may even be off the back of the new Xero ecosystem changes with Xero’s single sign on functionality and being able to register for a demo of the reporting app.

Clarity HQ is not only trying to solve the conversation piece around business advisory but provide some real knowledge for the accountant around the metrics it provides and the conversations that can be had via their business university and soon to be released advisor university.

We mentioned blockchain earlier and no, Clarity HQ is not going to ask for payment in Bitcoin, or atleast not yet!

Clarity HQ utilises the Ethereum blockchain to verify documents that are uploaded to their data centre. What is the data centre you ask? The data centre is a place for the client to store all of its internal business documents, for example their strategic plan, brand & culture, finance, systems etc. This is particularly relevant to any clients that are embarking on a funding round and who need to invite investors into a data centre to view all of the due diligence carried out on the business. No more back and forth with lawyers and sharepoint, all the documents are sitting in the client's data centre, verified and ready for inspection!  And don’t panic, all your data is safe and secure in Amazon Web Services AWS, (the same way Xero store your data), it’s just the time stamp that goes on the document from blockchain for the verification process. ​That is just one of the scenarios that could play out using this technology.

That's a wrap
Clarity HQ is only in its infancy and if what they have achieved so far is anything to go by, their future is going to be a very bright one! If they can continue to improve their business university and roll out the much anticipated advisor university, we certainly think they will be a pivotal part of your advisory toolkit!

A few weeks ago we were a bit stunned to see an article posted on the LinkedIn page of Matthew Burgess, founder of View Legal, stating that “View Legal and Now Infinity had ceased their strategic partnership as of immediately and that no further comment was being made by either party”. 
We found this a bit strange as the strategic partnership in our eyes was fantastic for accountants who wanted a corporate secretarial application, along with the backing of a legal team for documents in a straight forward, easy to navigate system. 
As I was sipping my morning coffee and replying to some emails after the Australia Day long weekend, I saw a newsflash pop up in my browser. I had to look twice to make sure that my eyes were not deceiving me, SMSF Adviser had just sent out a newsflash, “Now Infinity was purchased by Class Super", you can read the article here.  

My first reaction was, “wow what is BGL going to think about this”? My second reaction was, “awesome, seems like a logical acquisition to compete with BGL”!  

We believe this to be a good acquisition because we now have two very engrained SMSF providers in Australia, both now have corporate secretarial offerings that are/will be natively built into their platforms and offer their users no reason to move out of their software. The user will benefit by tighter integrations between the two platforms and more streamlined business processes.  
 
Point of Difference? 

Previously the point of difference between Now Infinity and BGL’s Cas360, was the legal documentation. Now Infinity had the backing of View Legal and BGL integrated with multiple providers, however this acquisition now aligns both of the providers with a “choice “strategy. 
Now, there’s an overlap of legal document providers between the two platforms as per their websites: 

• Acis 
• Topdocs 
• DBA Lawyers 
• BMR Corporate Solutions 
• Smarter SMSF 
• Cleardocs 

Will Class take a page out of the Xero handbook and decide that it’s best to offer choice to their users, even when you own a specific provider, think Hubdoc? Will Class now drop off some of the providers mentioned above and go with just one or two? Will Class stick with them all and offer integrations into Now Infinity for each of them allowing choice? Can that even work?  

The ASX announcement has indicated “The NowInfinity business will continue as a standalone operation as the teams work together to integrate the two businesses. There will be no impact on it’s clients or sales process.” 
“As part of the Class business, both teams can leverage each other’s skills and capabilities to deliver services that are more integrated, and this acquisition will allow those services to reach more customers. It will also enable the creation of new services and strategies at a larger scale.” 

At the time of writing, Now Infinity’s website still showed that one of their core offerings is “Legally backed, high quality documentation”. Unless they forgot to update the website before such a big announcement goes public, I would think that they have already moved to an integration with legal vendor/s or a strategy that will continue the seamless experience for their users. 
 
What does this mean for smaller corporate affairs applications such as Waive and Prime? Should they be worried or does this give them more of a chance to focus on other areas that they do well? 
​
We will be following what happens with the integrations for Class quite closely to see if there is any fall out or shift now that Now Infinity has been purchased and what this means for user of Class. Workflows will need to be re written for users of both Class and Now Infinity as the integration builds out over time. Firms will now have to reimagine how a workflow for a SMSF setup is created or documents are created from within Class utilising Now Infinity. 

If you are needing any assistance with understanding how the above may impact you or if you want to understand how a streamlined cloud based practice can operate please get in contact with us. 

You can still retry the payment yourself from the rejected payments list should you wish.  

We think this is a fantastic change and one that will certainly remove those admin hours that occur when chasing up clients for rejected payments. 

​You can read more about the improvement here. 

FYI Docs ​
FYI Docs has released a bunch of awesome new features in November including: 

• Timesheets from within FYI! 
• Cross linking of documents from within Excel 
• Full text search on contents of emails 
• New UI for navigation of groups, clients and jobs 
• Email signature improvements 
• Custom processes are now in beta 

You can read more about FYI Docs November updates on their blog here 

To highlight one of the releases, we think this feature is a big step forward in not having to live between both XPM and FYI Docs, it’s timesheets. 
 
Timesheets 
Clarity Street was part of the beta testing for the timesheets feature and provided some valuable feedback on the usability of timesheets within FYI Docs. Now that the feature is general release this will remove one more reason to go back into XPM! 

Timesheets can be accessed from your FYI client drawer and is a time clock icon at the top of the Drawer next to the quick task icon. 

Accountech.Live promises to be “the non-vendor specific tech conference of the year”, aimed to provide accountants and their clients with access to app vendors, speakers and round table discussions to help grow, nurture or expedite speed of growth. This year they were expecting in excess of 3,400 attendees registered and over 50 app vendors. In addition to the app vendors, there was a plethora of content for the attendees to fill their CPD hours. With all these app vendors and speakers, it was inevitable that there would be information paralysis for the attendees, this is where Clarity Street came to the rescue!  ​

Introducing Clarity Streets Guided Tours 

This year Clarity Street tried something a bit different and ran a Guided Tour on the first day. We aimed to ensure an ROI on the time and money that was given up to attend the free event and we wanted to make sure those who attended our tour, were not “sold to” or just given the standard sales pitch that every other attendee received. We selected a handful of vendors, BGL, Practice Ignition, AccountKit and ChangeGPS and ensured that the tour guests were able to gather insights into these apps that they wouldn’t normally receive. Some guests were already using a few of the vendors while others were just starting out on their cloud journey. We made sure both ends of the spectrum were catered for and received feedback that our tour was enlightening and engaging.  Along with visiting vendors we also mapped out what we thought were the must attend speaking or round table discussion events for the day, these included: 

• MyGov & RAM what it means for you and your clients 
• Round table talks (various topics) 
• How to thrive in an ever-changing world 
• Unified client view and other strategic trends in practice management 
• Drag your practice out of the 80’s and modernise workflow 
• War stories from the front line: How cyber attacks hit firms in 2019 

We had a great time on tour and look forward to making these a regular occurrence at future Accounting Conferences.  

​In addition to the guided tour, our key takeaways from the event are below:  

1. Where was Xero?? Do they know something the other major players don’t? Attendance felt lower than last year but will only be confirmed when actual attendance numbers are released by Terrapinn. 
2. MyGov ID and RAM are coming and accountants need to act sooner rather than later to enable this for their practices. 
3. MYOB and HandiSoft need to sort their sh!t out and their sales teams need to get on the same page with clear messaging when talking to potential customers. Our experience with both vendors were that if you asked one representative about their cloud strategy and then asked another, you would get two different responses and a very defensive stance! 
4. App vendors seemed to be talking more with other vendors than prospective customers at times, however this could be because their potential customers were drawn into the speaking events. We spoke to a few vendors who confirmed that they were considering if an ROI was actually achievable on the event, considering the cost of the vendor stalls, team wages to (wo)man the stands and travel. 
5. Speakers and round tables were A+ and for the most part vendors who hosted speaking slots were not selling...too much... 
6. Is there enough room in the calendar and budgets of accountants and app vendors for two Terrapinn events in a year or should AccounTech.Live and Australian Business Expo merge into one and alternate years and states? 
7. Will a trend emerge for app vendors to start hosting their own roadshows, either solo or with select other vendors, rather than attending big events? 

 
The quality of the speakers and the round tables were the highlights and the attendees should have received ROI just on attending those slots alone - yes MyGov ID and RAM are coming and Auskey IS being retired! Vendors on the other hand may be reconsidering if the event is for them, especially the smaller more niched vendors who may not have had a lot of exposure for the cost. 

​Account Kit, as previously mentioned in our blog series “our app stack explained”, is the sand between the cracks for Accounting and Bookkeeping firms. Account Kit is built by accountants for accountants and provides accountants with tools that no one else is building in the cloud.