AccountancyManager is delighted to announce the appointment of Kevin McCallum to its board as their first Non-Executive Director.
Kevin is Chief Commercial Officer of FreeAgent, the online accounting software platform for the UK’s smallest businesses and their accountants.
He has worked within the accounting software industry for over 20 years and joined the FreeAgent team in 2010, playing an instrumental role in the company’s growth. This includes managing the relationship with NatWest, who acquired FreeAgent in 2018.
Working closely with AccountancyManager’s senior management team and drawing on his wealth of industry knowledge, Kevin will be assisting AM with their business strategy and plans for growth whilst retaining their existing strong focus on improving the business lives of all their users.
Speaking of the appointment, AccountancyManager CEO James Byrne comments: “I’m delighted to welcome Kevin to the AccountancyManager team. My co-founder Alex and I are extremely proud of the growth of the business thus far and the team we have built, but we still have big plans for the future.
Having someone of Kevin’s experience on board will be invaluable as we continue to develop the value AccountancyManager can deliver to our users and continue to build out our business.”
Kevin speaks of the appointment: “Having seen the progress of AccountancyManager these last four years, the potential for the business is very clear, and I’m excited to be able to play a part in realising this. I’m extremely proud of what the team at FreeAgent have achieved, and I look forward to sharing my insights and experience with the AM team”. Continue reading...
Last year was a big one for us, adding 25 new features to AccountancyManager and smashing targets across every team. We started this year in a stronger position than ever, with an ever-growing client base and some pretty exciting plans for 2021.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the team and what they’ve managed to achieve in the past year. Alex and I are committed, as always, to revolutionising the accounting industry and our vision is a world in which every accountant is utilising technology to eliminate limitations. This year’s promotions, role changes and new hires are testament to our success in 2020 and I can’t wait to see what the team achieves next – they’ve set the bar high.”
James Byrne, AM CEO
We take great pride in recognising the contributions of each member of the AM team, reflected by a number of recent promotions and role changes – as listed below. We also continue to grow the team in response to the needs of our users and have welcomed six new AMers since the start of 2021 – also listed underneath.
A warm welcome to Kevin, Mike, James, Luke, Joshua and Alice
Kevin McCallum – Non-Executive Director
We’re delighted to announce the appointment of Kevin McCallum to our board as our first Non-Executive Director.
Kevin is Chief Commercial Officer of FreeAgent, the online accounting software platform for the UK’s smallest businesses and their accountants Continue reading...
HMRC is a notoriously impenetrable institution. So the opportunity to interrogate a former senior tax investigator was too good to pass up. Turns out it was a rather fascinating three hours.
John Groves is kind of a big deal. A former senior HMRC tax investigator, he spent 45 years at HMRC and for a time worked as the Hidden Economies team liaison manager within HMRC’s Risk and Intelligence Service. John has also been a magistrate and spent nearly 18 months in the East and West Midlands Area working on joint operational work with border force. John now works at an accountancy firm and advises the team at AccountancyManager on all things AML and risk.
Most recently, John has played a key role in designing our updated risk assessment process. As well as improved usability, AccountancyManager now allows you to complete credit checks for individuals and businesses, store multiple risk assessments and flag them as high, medium or low risk. The suggested information to capture on each client has also been updated.
“Every accountant wants to expand their client base and have an interesting client base. But every client brings their own set of risks.”
John’s passion for risk – and unearthing the truth – is palpable. His stories of tense meetings with fraudsters, tax dodgers and innocent victims of money laundering could easily be the next big Netflix drama. As such, parts of the interview had an ‘off-the-record, please’ caveat. Continue reading...
‘An article, on our roadmap? Are you mad?’ When James (Byrne, CEO) asked for this to be written, eyes widened and gasps were heard. Software development times are infamously hard to predict and promising things too early can get us into trouble.
When we saw the final list, however, we had to agree – it’s too good not to share. Most of these features have been requested, voted on, or downright demanded by our users and prospects. So we hope one or two will put a smile on your face. While we can’t give you exact dates, rest assured that these new features will be released as early as possible this year.
There’s more where this came from
This isn’t our entire roadmap for 2021, just features we’ve already started – or are already in testing. We also haven’t included things like general speed improvements and minor updates. Just the big stuff. There’s more to come.
Short on time?
Here are the headlines:
AM confirms integration with Sage
A full-blown workflow coming soon to AM
Zapier, GoProposal… the integrations keep on coming at AM
2021: The year of integrations
Instead of the year of the pig or the rat, it’s more like the year of the spider or the octopus at AccountancyManager this year – with no less than eight integrations or integration improvements coming your way. These include but aren’t limited to…Continue reading...
When you’re looking for software to help you manage your practice, you’re likely to come across some familiar names. Global corporations with thousands of employees and multiple kinds of software for different industries.
Great. Names you know, with decades of experience. So, why would you entrust the operations of your practice to a four-year-old independent software company from Warwick – only known to the accountancy and bookkeeping world?
Your impact on shaping the software
Perhaps the biggest benefit of using independent software is the impact you can have on its future. Imagine giving Google or Microsoft a call and asking for a new feature. (If you find a phone number, let us know.) We frequently ask our users to vote for features they’d like, hold feature-request sessions and receive many suggestions on social media.
“You’re always open to taking feedback and quite often you get feedback, put it into the product roadmap and those things will come through.”
Andy Sullivan, Complete HQ
AccountancyManager is still owned and run by the same accountant and developer duo that built it. James and Alex developed AM within a busy practice, adding solutions in response to the accountants’ and bookkeepers’ needs. We’re now a team of 25 with thousands of users and that approach hasn’t changed. Accountants and bookkeepers still, and will always, shape AM.Continue reading...
We were chatting recently about what really matters to accountants and bookkeepers, beyond saving time and increasing profits. It was a short conversation. Like us, your clients and prospects are why you do what you do, why your business exists and they’re your future.
Healthy client numbers and client businesses are only part of the picture. What drives the AM users we’ve spoken to is the personalities, ambitions and opinions behind the businesses. The real people you serve each day. So we’ve taken a break from interviewing AccountancyManager users, to speak with their clients instead.
AM’s Jonathan Stobart spoke to Henry Waddilove about his business and his relationship with his accountants, AccountancyManager users Venn Accounts.
In the business of making meaningful connections
Founded in 2017 by father and son, Justin and Henry Waddilove, Novus Business Connections Limited helps professional service firms engage with their ideal prospects, increasing quality leads and new business opportunities. In other words, they’ve taken telemarketing to a whole new level. Confusingly enough, accountancy firms make up a large portion of the Novus clientele.
Before Novus, Justin Waddilove had an illustrious career as director of sales for the likes of Kingston Smith, haysmacintyre and Moore Stephens LLP. Henry explains how Justin’s experience led to discovering a fundamental gap in the market. “Justin’s role at those firms was to increase the profitability and turnover of the business. So it wasn’t just a case of adding new income into the business, it was making sure that it was profitable work.” Continue reading...
We’ve interviewed a number of practice owners now, to see how 2020 has affected them and explore how they work. This week we’ve turned the tables to focus on the one topic that’s been central to every case study so far – your clients and prospects.
We want to find out what their top considerations are when choosing an accountant. How important is advice, technology and cost? Why do they stay with you – or leave? We spoke to three freelancers, each with very different experiences of 2020, to find out.
The Social Media Consultant
Amy Lainchbury owns Tasty Comms, providing social media strategy and management to the hospitality industry. She works with restaurants and events companies, taking care of their content, social media channels and paid advertising. She lives in London with her husband, where they rent part of their home on AirBnB. Safe to say, 2020 hasn’t been kind.
Amy’s accountant wishlist
Amy’s very happy with her accountants, a practice owned by her friend’s brother. She particularly appreciates their tech-forward approach. “They’re really up-to-date with tech. They’ve recommended and taught me how to use Xero, GoCardless and ReceiptBank so far. I do also sign off the YE accounts via a portal which is really simple.”
To be able to ask them questions any time.
For them to use the software I use.
To advise where I’ve done things wrong – not just fix it.
To occasionally have some banter!
“I do ask for advice. The last time was about income from AirBnB. They’re really helpful and have gone above and beyond in the past. This is definitely something I’d look for in any other accountants.” Continue reading...
This is it folks, our last article of the year. Before we all bubble-up and (hopefully) turn the computer off for a few days, we’ll leave you with some nuggets of wisdom for taking care of your mental health in the New Year.
“Mental health is something that lots of people are talking about more this year which is good. But it is difficult to maintain good mental health when lots of things are out of our control.”
When you’re busy, stressed or overwhelmed, finding time to look after your body and mind is hard, so we’ve found some things to try that only take a few minutes. They’re all taken from professional sources and the anonymous quotes come from our recent survey.
Mental health is on our minds – now more than ever
We recently surveyed 184 accountants and bookkeepers to see how they’ve been feeling. 93.5% reported experiencing higher than normal levels of stress this year and 69.9% have felt unable to cope – either a little or a lot.
“There are always pressures at work and home, the pandemic has made me more aware of these pressures.”
When asked whether they think about their mental health regularly, 60.9% of respondents said that they do. However, 16.3% of those have only started thinking about it this year.
5 simple actions to boost your mental health
None of these tips or activities will miraculously make you feel great, it’s all about – what sports coaches call – ‘marginal gains’. Making small incremental improvements, which added together, make a significant improvement.Continue reading...
This has certainly been a year none of us will forget, but we wanted to take a step back and try to remember it for what we’ve achieved too. It wasn’t until we saw the numbers that we realised just how busy we’ve been. Not compared to you guys, of course – AM users have sent over 3 million automated emails to their clients – but still.
We considered matching our annual review to the tune of the 12 Days of Christmas, but there was too much repetition. Instead, picture it as a gushing award acceptance speech.
Thank you to our users, developers and support team for 25 new features
Big shout out to our development team this year and to all our users that suggested ways to enhance AM. We’ve released a record 25 features, not including improvements or ongoing maintenance. The response on ‘socials’ has been fantastic to see, it makes it all worth it.
Our support team – as well as maintaining a 98% or higher satisfaction rating throughout the year – played a crucial role communicating user needs to the developers and providing (qualified) quality assurance before release.
Xero integration: Sync AccountancyManager with Xero and when you change client details in either place, the update will show in both systems. Create invoices once in AM and at the click of a button they’ll be in Xero.
QuickBooks integration: Sync client data between AM and QuickBooks, with invoicing to follow in the New Year.
Use multiple integrations at once: For example, use Xero and FreeAgent at the same time.
Anti-money laundering and risk: 7 new features
Revised risk assessment form: AM includes a guide for completing risk assessments that you can fill in. We’ve made this cover more elements of risk with help from former HMRC Tax Investigator, John Groves.
Store multiple risk assessments: …and annual reviews for each client and download them as PDFs.
International AML ID checks: Adding to our existing AML ID checks, we’ve expanded AccountancyManager to cover your international clients too.
Quick access to client AML checks: To see a client’s AML check, just hit the new button on the client file.
In-system credit screens for individuals, companies and international companies: As well as ID checks, you can now complete credit screens through AM – making it even faster to onboard new clients.
Not a feature, but we’ve reduced the price of our AML credits (used to purchase either an ID check or both an ID check and credit screen) to as little as £1.25 each.
Onboarding: 3 new features
Updated LoE templates: For all your automated emails, including those you sent at onboarding, we include a pre-written editable template, this totals over 40 templates. This year, we worked with ACCA to update our LoE templates.
Onboarding workflow button: Kick off your onboarding tasks with just one click, thanks to a nifty new button.
Automate ‘notes to self’ to chase up prospects: Need to remind yourself to follow up with prospective clients? Now automated and set the frequency of notifications.
Tasks, time-tracking and notifications: 4 new features
Target dates: This made a big impact on our users. Now, as well as external deadlines, you can set internal target dates for tasks.
Reallocate staff tasks: If your team changes, easily reallocate all tasks – and future tasks – within a client’s file to a new person.
Pause Time Logs: When you’re tracking your time on a task, you can now pause and resume the spinning clock timer or enter the time manually.
Notifications Manager: Stay on top of your notifications easily, with a full page view, additional filters and actions – including the option to archive in bulk.
Client portal: 2 new features
Tax liability: Your clients have always been able to see their tax deadlines in their portal, but now they can see the amount of tax due too.
Folders added: If you’ve arranged client documents into folders, this structure will be mirrored in the portal. Your clients can also create additional folders.
Automated records and requests: 3 new features
Bulk SMS: Keep your clients up to date by sending SMS messages in bulk. It’s a quick and simple way to notify them, and you can filter your list to target specific clients.
Automate your VAT payment reminders: We’ve enhanced our automation even further to include automatic VAT payment reminders.
Avoid sending duplicate emails: To ensure your clients don’t receive the same email twice, you can now remove duplicates at the click of a button.
Back in June we ran a webinar on mental health. It attracted a surprising number of attendees and a lot of positive feedback. Although it’s not a topic many people feel comfortable talking about openly, mental health is clearly on our minds.
How are you feeling?
We didn’t make the decision to ask people about their mental health and illness lightly. However, not speaking about mental health only keeps it, and the people suffering, in the dark. Hearing that others feel the way you do, can also be a small comfort – knowing you’re not alone. The more mental health is talked about, the more people can understand their own feelings and those of others.
“1 in 6 adults experiences a common mental health problem, such as anxiety or depression. 1 in 5 adults has considered taking their own life at some point.”
183 accountants and bookkeepers chose to take part in our survey, all anonymously. As the results show, mental health is a very real problem in the accountancy industry and that deserves all of our attention.
93.5% of respondents have experienced higher than normal levels of stress this year
Have you experienced higher than normal levels of stress this year?
We all know accountants and bookkeepers have been under a lot of pressure this year, so the first two graphs won’t come as a surprise. That doesn’t make them any easier to see. A total of 93.5% of respondents have experienced higher than normal levels of stress this year, with 63.4% reporting a significant amount higher. Continue reading...
