Industry Updates

Annja and Roulon recently went to Accountex in London and it was amazing seeing the new developments that have happened since 2019, when we last visited. Regulations and governing bodies have made compliance for accountants stricter, but the standard of the accounting qualification is just getting better.

Now more than ever, the focus is on accountants helping businesses grow and helping the economy recover from what has been a very long hard period in everyone’s lives.

There are simply not enough accountants to serve the demand in the market, which makes it important that we work smarter and use the technology out there to improve our service delivery.

This is not just true for accountants, but for all businesses, and that is why our customers want to be able to access information 24/7.  It’s important that we acknowledge this demand and strive to provide this to our clients.

There was also a lot of talk about our impact in the profession and what we would like our kids to remember about our generation. The conclusion was actually short and sweet. Be considerate in everything we do. Think about our environment, not just the green stuff, but the people, and see how we can support one another.

This really resonated with me; Esi and I believe highly in the power of coaching and how we all have the ability in us to reach our dreams, if we can just get the opportunity to change the way we approach things.

We tried out a free coaching week in the UK for International Coaching week and it was highly successful. We’re considering how we can make this available more regularly, both in the UK and in South Africa.

There were loads of exhibitors and we had the opportunity to try some new tech out there. We still believe in Xero as the preferred accounting package, but Freeagent, Quickbooks and Sage are also very good accounting software with some amazing features.

Document extracting tools like Dext (previously called Receipt Bank) and Autoentry (we use this for clients that don’t have Xero subscription) are great tools, but because Hubdocs are free for Xero subscriptions, we feel that this is the best value for money for our clients. Freeagent has a good document extraction tool built into the software.

Worldwide the tax authorities are looking at digitising the tax systems to improve tax collections, and South Africa and the UK are no different. By keeping your accounting records digitally, you are saving yourself time, and making it easier to understand what is happening in your business, as well as complying with legislation.

As a firm, we have ensured that all our clients accounting records are maintained on Xero, so if you would like to find out more about how we have been doing this, or you would like to get access to your accounting records, and pull reports, please get in contact with us. We will love to show you how hard we have been working 😊. All of this is available online and with a few clicks.