Clarity for me looks like everyone knowing where the work starts, where the documents live, where the standard is, who owns the next step. You know, what’s been reviewed, what still needs attention. You know, that clear workflow, the firm, you’re not relying on like a one person with a good memory; it’s like, you know, no heroics, no single points of failure. Process is super visible enough for that everybody can see it, and they can trust it.

— John Munden, Chief Strategy Officer at Cloudoffis 

If there is one challenge I consistently hear from accountants and bookkeepers, it is not a lack of technology. In fact, it is usually the opposite. Firms have invested in practice management systems, document management platforms, client portals, workflow tools, digital signing solutions and specialist applications. Yet despite all of these investments, many teams still feel overwhelmed.

During a recent webinar presented by Cloudoffis, I was joined by Tyler Caskey, Partner at The Bean Counters, and John Munden, Chief Strategy Officer at Cloudoffis, to discuss why so many firms struggle with technology complexity and what practical steps can be taken to simplify workflows.

One of the most interesting observations was that firms rarely create complexity intentionally. Every software purchase usually begins with a legitimate business need. A new document management system solves one problem. A workflow tool solves another. A client communication platform fills a different gap. Over time, however, these individual decisions can create a disconnected ecosystem where information moves manually between systems and team members struggle to understand how everything fits together.

Tyler reflected on how accounting firms have evolved over the years. What was once a relatively simple environment built around a practice management system and spreadsheets has become a sophisticated network of specialised applications. While many of these tools save time individually, they can collectively create a complicated web of processes that becomes difficult to manage.

A recurring theme throughout the discussion was decision fatigue. Accountants are naturally cautious professionals. We want to make the right decision and avoid introducing risk. The challenge is that this caution can sometimes delay progress. Firms spend months evaluating software when a small pilot project could provide real-world answers much faster. Tyler encouraged firms to test solutions in controlled environments, gather practical feedback and make decisions based on experience rather than endless analysis.

Workflow visibility was another major focus. Both Tyler and John highlighted the importance of creating processes that everyone can understand. This is especially important when onboarding graduates, new team members or offshore staff. When workflows only exist in the minds of experienced managers, knowledge becomes difficult to transfer. A visible, documented process reduces reliance on individuals and creates consistency across the firm.

One practical exercise discussed was conducting a tech stack audit. This does not need to be a complicated project. Start by mapping all applications currently used within the business. Identify which systems integrate directly and which require manual data movement. Visual diagrams can quickly reveal areas where information is being downloaded, uploaded or rekeyed unnecessarily.

These manual touchpoints are often where inefficiencies and risks exist. Every time data is manually transferred between systems, there is an opportunity for errors to occur. Firms should actively look for opportunities to replace manual processes with integrations or automation. Even relatively small improvements can create significant long-term efficiencies.

The conversation also explored the role of leadership in successful technology adoption. Firms that successfully move from overwhelm to clarity typically have strong leadership support, internal champions and clear communication. Team members need to understand not only what is changing, but why the change is happening. Without this context, even the best software implementation can struggle.

Expectation management is equally important. New systems rarely solve every problem immediately. There is often a learning curve, data migration challenges and process adjustments along the way. Firms that recognise this reality tend to achieve better outcomes because they remain focused on long-term benefits rather than short-term frustrations.

Integration was another topic that generated strong discussion. Modern accounting software increasingly relies on APIs and connected ecosystems. Open integrations allow data to flow automatically between platforms, reducing duplication and improving visibility. Tyler shared several examples where integrated systems significantly reduced manual effort and increased reliability.

We also discussed client communication challenges. Even when firms implement excellent tools, clients do not always engage with them. Automated reminders, onboarding conversations and understanding each client’s preferred communication channel can all help improve engagement. Technology can support these interactions, but relationships still matter.

Perhaps the strongest message from the session was that perfection should not be the goal. No single application will solve every challenge. Every software platform has strengths and limitations. The objective is to build a technology ecosystem that supports your firm’s workflow, reduces manual effort and enables your team to work more effectively.

If you are feeling overwhelmed by your current technology stack, start small. Map your systems. Identify one manual process. Look for one integration opportunity. Incremental improvements often deliver far greater results than large-scale transformation projects.

Clarity does not come from adding more technology. It comes from understanding how your technology works together and ensuring every tool serves a clear purpose within your workflow.

Welcome to the Accounting Apps podcast. This has been adapted from a webinar presented by Cloudoffis. Today I’m joined by Tyler Caskey, partner at The Bean Counters, and John Munden, Chief Strategy Officer at Cloudoffis, and we shall be talking about simplifying your firm’s tech stack and workflow.

Heather Smith

Accounting firms rarely struggle with a lack of technology. Tools are in place, but they’re often underutilised, duplicated, or disconnected, making it difficult to get everything working together. So, we’re going to have a panel discussion exploring how firms can simplify their tech stack, improve workflow visibility, and make confident decisions about what to keep, what to consolidate, what to invest in, so you and your team can focus on what matters most.

Heather Smith

Now, to start with,

Tyler, can you share with our audience who you are and what you’re bringing to today’s session?

Tyler Caskey

Hello, everyone. I’m Tyler Caskey, one of the partners at The Bean Counters. We help businesses and accounting firms select and instal systems.

Tyler Caskey

I’m a chartered accountant and ex-CFO, and I used to be a partner in practice, and you know, one of my passion projects is helping accountants simplify and automate their accounting processes, from being in the trenches doing trial balance imports for the last 25 years. It’s one of my favourite topics.

Tyler Caskey

And John, let me turn to you.

John, can you share with us who you are, where you’re from, which is Cloudoffis, and what you’re bringing to today’s session?

John Munden

Yep, I’m the Chief Strategy Officer here at Cloudoffis. I help shape commercial strategy, market positioning, product direction, as we’re sort of scaling across the accounting industry. My role is really focused on connecting the dots between product, sales, partnerships, customer adoption, just making sure that Cloudoffis is not just seen as a software, but as a platform that helps to standardise, automate, and improve the way compliance work gets done. So, I’m hoping that we today we will start talking about, so it’s certainly that simplification of workflow piece, as well. I think that’s going to be an interesting topic as we get into that as well.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, looking forward to it. So, I’ll tell our audience a little bit about me, Chartered Accountant, like Tyler, certified bookkeeper. I’ve run a management accounting practice for close to two decades. I specialise in navigating the business apps ecosystem more on the content development side than the practical integration side, like Tyler. I produce a newsletter focused on accounting apps. You can subscribe at Accounting Apps.io and host the podcast, also called Accounting Apps, that explores the digital ecosystem. If you’re listening, you can subscribe right now.

Heather Smith

So, let’s start with the question: When you look at accounting firms’ current tech stack.

How did we end up with so many tools and so much overwhelm? Can I start with you on that one, John?

John Munden

Yeah, I think we got here with, um, with really good intentions. I think firms didn’t try and create chaos. I think they added tools to solve specific problems, like, you know, one app for documents, one for jobs, one for checklists, one for client comms, ATO data reporting, but every decision probably made sense at the time, and I think there’s a phrase where a horse is sort of a camel is a horse designed by committee, and it’s one of my favourite ones to realise, and I feel like, you know, over time those solutions have sort of started creating gaps between systems, and you know, work just doesn’t seamlessly flow effectively the way it should do through all of those products now, so you know, and there’s probably duplication, there’s you know, we end up sort of then doing re-keying, you’re chasing, you check in, and you know, and then it becomes like a technology trap that firms have effectively fallen into, so.

Tyler Caskey

Yeah. I started with two apps when I first started. I was over at KPMG New Zealand, and we were on APS, and that was everything, and I had Excel, and like literally we did nothing else in that in that box. Yeah, and then maybe we were using a server to save our documents down, that was was very manual as well, and I think what happened is the world started seeing the best of breed technology start to leapfrog the black box technology, and you know, APS, I know, has started to integrate as well, you know, like, and probably doing it quite well, they, the play there is, as soon as something came up that automated process, best part of the document management, you open up a client in the job, and then the document management system opened up my shareholder, my SharePoint folder, so Tyler doesn’t have to right click, go a new tab, which is what I do in my current system consulting business, you know, I’m still very much in that kind of process. Yes, and so we started grabbing things that automated, and each of those automations, yes, we’re saving time, but they do add, like, you know, this to the spider web, and sometimes when, uh, especially if you get a new person coming in, for people that are using it all day, every day, it’s no problem, but then a new person comes in and it’s different to what they’ve used, or they’re a graduate. It takes a while for their brain to see how things are connected and why we chose those products.

Heather Smith

Yeah, fresh eyes and fresh perspectives.

Heather Smith

So, from your vantage,

Tyler, what are the common technology traps that you see firms have fallen into over the last few years?

Tyler Caskey

I think the number one for me is like decision fatigue and not making a decision. The these decisions now don’t need to be as big as they used to be. Yeah, if you’ve got a practice management system, that’s that’s a pretty big play, but I’ve seen some small accounting firms of like five to 10 people swap document management systems and task management systems three or four times in their first three four years, because they grew a bit more, they found technology that they liked a bit more, they suited their business as they pivoted, so you know really these changes are not as big as they used to be, as number one, and the second part is like I always call us accountants, like we’re super conservative about making a mistake, and we, we think everything needs to be a three month process with signed off by every single partner, and the thing I learned when I was a partner in practice is if I liked a piece of tech, I grabbed it and I installed it into my team, and you know, as long as it didn’t impact our compliance process, so that way I got hands on real life, you know, understanding of yes, this works really well, and you know, it might be as something as simple as a consolidation tool, you know, that I had a group that I didn’t want to do Excel consolidations, so that to me was a really nice play. About I tried to not be conservative, I tried to take and own the risk myself, because sometimes you don’t need to do things that impact 100 people in the business. Maybe you can just help, you know, your accountant sitting next to you that’s doing 21 entities consolidated in Excel, maybe we can grab an app and do that.

Heather Smith

So, firstly, I’d like to encourage anyone, if you do have questions, pop them into the chat area. Someone put their hand up, but I wasn’t sure, that maybe that was a mistake, but jump into the chat area if you do have questions.

When firms say, “Our team is not using the tools properly,” what is the problem there? Is that something, Tyler, you could talk about?

Tyler Caskey

Yeah, for sure. I always think it comes from the fastest outcome wins. So there’s usually two parts where accountants, if we’re, if we’re rushed and stressed, we’re going to do something cheap and quick to get the answer out, you know, and the amount of tax risks or depreciation schedules I’ve seen that are quickly done in Excel for small clients. Yes, that might benefit people in that year, but what, what you’re really doing is you’re cannibalising that person’s time again next year, because they’ve got to do that manually.

Tyler Caskey

So, I’ve seen this literally since day one of accounting, is I had accountants that were really good at getting the answer, and I was saw the accountants that were really good at getting the answer in the most efficient way that benefited the client and the and the accounting firm long term, and that might be from a good work paper process, you know, John, I know we’re in a work paper discussion here, but work papers were one, how they save documents, like a lot of my team, like they didn’t used to save documents in the right files, because they’re like, “Oh, they’re in my email, so I don’t need to do that. So, so that one, that quick and fast rush process is, I think, the most important. The second part there is around like compliance and consistency, like accountants, like we really gotta be professional in our end result, and there’s not a lot of room for error there, so I’m a, I’m a big fan, and the less manual work we need to do, the more automation, the more integration we can do in the accounting process. When, especially if I’m talking like trial balances, importing, I’m talking fixed assets, those things need to be automated, because if you do it for a small client, you immediately get like a large client with 1000s of transactions, and if those are moving manually, chances of error skyrocket. So I really look at how we can create processes in the accounting firms that make things automated, efficient, and reliable without as much human interaction as we can have.

Heather Smith

I’m gonna sum that up with the old fashion term, a stitch in time saves nine.

Tyler Caskey

Oh, yeah, yeah, I love it. I love it. I’ve got one. I’ve got one. Do it once, do it right. That’s like that’s our play in our whole business.

Heather Smith

John, let’s talk about when firms that you’re speaking to are looking to adopt Cloudoffis, what problems are they keen to solve?

John Munden

Yeah, they’re often trying to. It’s typically they’re trying to solve a process within their firm, but that probably hasn’t really been clearly defined. So, what we’re trying to do is really slow them down, so they really understand exactly how we’re going to solve that process for them over a longer term, so it’s like, so it’s super clear up front in terms of the way that data will be flowing through the practice. You know what the review processes are going to be looking like for firms to look, because what we’ve noticed as a trap that a lot of firms will fall into is that they try and create their own version of a workflow, but literally by partner, and feels it feels sort of like flexible at first, but it then it creates this inconsistency, particularly when you’re trying to bring on new team members, and you might have teams moving across, you know, between partners, or you might be offshoring work, so it’s trying to get that real significantly consistent workflow, and sort of really trying to reduce bottle knocks within firms, really. That’s that’s probably the biggest problem that we’re trying to solve.

Tyler Caskey

I saw one like this, really interesting, John, and my old practice as one partner never used the client Xero file. It was a Xero business, right? So they’re using Xero for financials and tax returns, and they, they never used the client Xero file, they had their own ledger, even if the client was on Xero, and then the rest of the business was using the Xero, the client Xero file, right, which I think is easily the right approach. You’ve got no downloading, uploading of data, you’ve got no year-end journals, you know, it’s a much more transact, transparent kind of way to live. And then when people started working, and I won’t name him, because he’s a lovely bloke, but that when people started working for his team, like their eyes were twitching, they’re like, why, why are we doing this manual work when we don’t want to, and I think that consistency amongst the practice it creates reliability, right, and it creates a better speed for everyone, you know, like making sure that each, and I do say, partners, like each partner needs to buy into the firm process, is usually a really good play.

John Munden

Well, the tools are typically built to work in a certain way, but if you then try and like re-engineer the product to work in a way that you used to work, then often that’s where things can definitely fall down, really. You know, classic when, when firms move from MYOB onto Xero, for that, that it, you saw it time and time again, everybody wanted Xero to be like MYOB, but just faster, more efficient, and it just wasn’t, it wasn’t the same product.

Tyler Caskey

Yeah, you’ve got it. I always say this, and even in our non-accounting stuff, you’ve got to work with the tool you’ve chosen, right. Every tool has pros and cons. You’ve got to use it to its best ability, and you’ve actually got to know these things. If you’re stuck in how things used to be, or how I want it to be, excellent, right? But that’s going to hinder you when, when using it, and like you’ve got, you’ve got to think, how, how can I make this most efficient for my team, knowing that this is the tool I’ve got, also maybe if that tool has limitations, then grab a different tool, you know that, and practice management, you’ve got to be careful on, but like you can swap out tools left, right, and centre, centre in accounting firms quite easily now with very low cost.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely. So I’m popping a question into the chat, which is,

How many apps do you think you use daily? What does clarity actually look like for a firm’s workflow?

So I do encourage, if you have access to the chat, which you should do, pop in and respond to that. And I’m keen to know,

And I do think that you are sort of talking, talking to that somewhat,

What if you’re going into a firm, what would you say that the clarity should be looking like for their workflow?

Tyler Caskey

I love this question. For me, it should be reportable number one, so like we should be able to pull it up really easily about where’s Tyler up to in his jobs that he’s working on. How far through has he got like 50 in draft? And when are those deadlines happening? Like, when’s the due date? Like, and we’re not talking fake due dates, we’re talking real lots of hard tax return kind of due date. Back it off by a week or two, because the client needs to sign, that’s the number one for me, and then the next one I’m really looking at is how, how can I get a process that is simple and reliable that works across the board, so for some businesses I’ve seen like jobs with 20 tasks that people need to tick on. Off, and I’ve found when people are rushed, they, they stop turn, turning all those, doing all those tasks, and they just get the job out. So we always try to set up accounting firms with a small amount of tasks, and then per job, you know, which is like draft partner review, tax sign off, etc. And then, if you’ve got special stuff, you add more as well, so I think that’s a, it’s an important place. Simplicity and reliability.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely.

John Munden

Clarity for me looks like everyone knowing where the work starts, where the documents live, where the standard is, who owns the next step. You know what’s been reviewed, what still needs attention. That clear workflow, the firm, you’re not relying on like a one person with a good memory, it’s like you know, no heroics, no single points of failure. Process is super visible enough for that everybody can see it, and they can trust it. Basically.

Tyler Caskey

Do you know how hard that is for a grad? Like, I remember when I came into, like, my first business, my manager was named Marie, and she managed about 80 projects at any one time, she was an absolute weapon, and she just had the process in her head. I had to come in and, like, figure out how do I fit into that process, and there was no, like, documentation on it. Like, she gave me a blank piece of paper, was right, right out the budget for this job, and I was like, I don’t even know what a job is, you know? Like, they don’t teach you in university an accounting job, like I had to key in the transactions, I had to create the financials, do the tax return, get it to review, run the depreciation, etc. So the ability to view that, John, is something I’ve seen happen so nice in the market lately. You know, I know Cloudoffis does it. There’s some really good task management systems that tell you where you are in the job, and we, I just don’t take for granted that when you get a new hire in, that they weren’t on a no task or no workflow management system, that you know, I’ve seen businesses use Microsoft lists for half of their practice, and then can work right, and then the other half of their practice, you know, they’re using paper or whiteboards and that type of stuff, so you know that the if it’s easily visible about the process, I think it’s awesome, and also as a partner it stops my overwhelm if I can know I’ve only got 1515 things that I need to review for financials and tax returns, half of them, BAS returns, so it’s going to take me 10 minutes, right? The other half are like large groups with consolidated and group reporting group tax returns. Okay? Right, I need to get into a larger process there, and that’s going to take me a couple hours.

Heather Smith

I remember walking into one office that had 300 colourful post-it notes, and I like the colour, but I was like, oh, this is just gonna fall over.

Heather Smith

So, what I’m keen to do is talk to the talk to talk about how to audit a tech stack, so you don’t need the perfect tool to map your tech stack. You just really need a way to clearly to see it clearly enough to be able to improve it.

Could you both jump in and talk about how to actually audit a tech stack?

And I know, Tyler, you, you wanted to talk about visualisation in this regard.

Tyler Caskey

Yeah, I remember my first accounting firm discussion. My two managing partners, or owning partners, were in their 60s. They didn’t really read the emails I sent them, so I actually got them into the boardroom, and I put on pieces of paper like the types of products we had, we had 1212 products in the business, right from we were on handy soft practice management, we’re on BGL for self-managed super funds, we had now Infinity for corporate compliance, like it was quite an interesting stack, and what I, what I said to them is I showed them the things that automatically connected, and we were in a very low level, because we also had a couple of the partners who were running a small zero practice, where they were using zero for the work, and then at the end of the process, uploading the handy soft, so I started by like visualising to these partners about what integrated and what didn’t, obviously now with like a bit more experience and like I work remote with our clients, I’m a big fan of going looking at the process, you know, I throw logos on a PowerPoint and I just do dotted lines for things that are manually human integrated and I do direct lines with arrows like either two way or one way for products and processes that are automatically integrated. A good example is like FYI docs and Xero Practice Manager, two way integration live, right. So for me, what that says is what are the areas where my team are manually moving data a. Risk be like engagement risk, because like no one likes spending their time manually moving data, and be why are they doing it? You know, are there other products that can do it? So, so for me, I start with a high level visualisation, and I don’t go more than a page, I just keep it as simple and as clean as I can.

Heather Smith

How big is the page?

Tyler Caskey

It’s PowerPoint, so the logos can go. I can see every now and then, like I’ve worked with a couple firms that they’re, they’ve got 15 client-facing apps, you know, from client portals to document management to they were using like content snare for their collecting of data, you know, really good, good product, but it was, it was, yeah, it can get really large really quick.

John Munden

I would, the only I would add to that by basically saying I think the way you then you want to define how the work should flow, so if you, if you’re looking at what you’ve already bought, and then try and map that process out. It’s almost like take yourself back a state and go, what, how would you want it to, if you were starting a fresh, clean piece of paper? What should the workflow look like? And then map that process to what you’ve already got, because if you know, and then if the tools you’ve bought don’t work in that process, then they’re the wrong tools, it’s right tools that will simplify your work in it, because if you can simplify your workflow first, then you know that will definitely reduce noise for people.

Tyler Caskey

John, I’ve seen that it’s a really interesting one. So, when I did the system stack of the whole thing, one of the other partners, really smart guy named Gefer, he mapped our entire accounting process in video. It was here. There was an A one sheet of paper, and it was tiny, and no one, no one absorbed it. Like, I’m pretty good at detail, but I was reading it, and I was like, “Mate, this is too big. Like, I, no one can kind of understand it. So, what we did together is we kind of dumbed it down into places like, and I got rid of, you know, like manager review and partner review. We knew they were there, but what we got to the things was, where with our workflow starting to struggle on there, and it was, you know, like some of the biggest issues were people doing bad returns, they were doing for monthly bad returns, downloading and uploading of transaction data, and I was like, well, or trial balance data, and that was an easy one that we saw, John, when we’re mapping the workflow, is like clearly a risk there.

Heather Smith

What you’ve mentioned a couple of times, which is quite interesting, Tyler, is initially people weren’t reading the emails, and on that workflow people struggle to absorb the information, so one of the important things about doing it is framing it in a way that people, the audience, the people in the team can understand it, and so I will go back and say Post-it notes can be used in this regard too. This is a nice place for posting.

John Munden

It’s an exercise to do it at the start, and you know, clean wall post-it notes. How do you want the work to flow?

Heather Smith

Yeah.

Tyler Caskey

Yeah. And I also, at that stage, when I’m doing an audit, I look at my contract terms, so what am I annually, what am I monthly, and what are my costs? You know, like, and then I’ve just got like a loose competitor analysis, as well, you know, like John, like the work paper market, you know, like Cloudoffis is top-notch product, but there are competitors in the market as well, and it’s like we’ve got to kind of know pros, cons, pricing, right? Why did we choose this at the start, and it’s really good for firms, like, if you’re looking for an integrated model, like, look at your systems that are locked, you’ve got three years worth of contracts in it, or, and the ones that you can kind of swap out easily, you know, and I think to me, like, also look at the ones that are manual, like, if you’re doing Excel work papers, pick a work paper system, like, grab Cloudoffis, if you’re doing the worst one that drives me bonkers. And sorry, I’ll sidetrack this one. Is digital signing the amount of accounting firms that are not using digital signing, still like they’re sending out PDFs and saying, please sign it, scan it, and send it back. I’m like, the 90s have happened, like pick one, pick amateur, pick it, don’t pick Adobe, don’t pick Docusign, pick amateur, and like, go down that path.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely. I received the 17 page documents assigned the other day, and I’m like, do you want all 17 pages back, because that’s like 20 minutes of my time. Yeah, so someone, so many people who commented are sitting at between five and 10 apps, which can very easily fit on the sort of the a size pages you were talking about, so hopefully that should work for the workflow for them.

When firms are moving from overwhelm to clarity, what patterns do you see from the ones who are successful at that versus the ones who perhaps aren’t so successful?

Tyler Caskey

You go, John, this one’s this one’s right in your niche.

John Munden

It’s, it’s definitely having a strong leadership presence within the firm to sort of as an exec sponsor who’s decided that the firm is going to move, and then having clear champion structure internally, so you’ve got clear product expertise within those groups, mapped out workflows very simply, and then executed incredibly well on the decisions that they’ve made with regards to software, not not tried to move too much too soon as well, because you see a lot of firms, if they’re moving off of like a legacy desktop product into into new cloud, they’ll then decide, well, we’re going to move to six new softwares today, and that can be a real problem for a lot of firms, because again, that’s that classic we’ve talked about, overwhelm is the title of this, this webinar, doing trying to do too much too soon is definitely a bigger issue, but I say the simplicity in which you approach it, but also that clear leadership change management structure, because the software is always designed to do what it’s supposed to do, and it’s often the people that just struggle to implement, because you know they haven’t been informed properly during the process, so you know communication is also a critical element within the practice, as to the why are we doing this as well.

Tyler Caskey

Yeah, the why is key. Heather, can I touch on that one as well? It’s my favourite topic. Leadership is yes, that’s your, that’s your foundation one, and that can be leadership from the bottom or top, but you need champions in the business that are going to go through it, the key success factor after that for me is expectations. So, accounting accountants, we have some of the highest expectations of perfection, because, like, in our whole work, where we’re trying to get, we know there’s an answer, the balance sheet balances, the profit needs to be that right, and really, there’s probably one profit number that’s materially correct, and what happens when we’re doing system changes, or we’re implementing something, is our expectations are through the roof, and it has to do everything that our last system did, plus it has to do more and better, and it’s just not the case. It’s about choosing the best system that suits your business, that you can afford, and that is easy to use for your product. Like, there is a whole bunch of, like, I think there’s, like, 30 American practice management systems that are not going to help Australian businesses because they’re not integrated to the ATO at this stage. So, like, yeah, you could choose that, but it’s not going to help. So, expectation management, and I always try to say, hey, it’s going to be a bumpy road, right? Like, nothing’s going to be perfect. There’s, there’s a lot of data to go, but, like, you get through the first kind of year, then year two, that’s when you start absolutely humming. But after expectations, the next one is staggering, as you said, John. Like, one of the key things we try to deliver when we work with an accounting firm is what to do when, because accounting firms have a surprisingly large amount of data that needs to move. You’ve got client names, jobs, tasks, work in progress, time disbursements, all these types of things. And what are those foundational apps that you need to have in place? Like we always try to say finance first, get your payroll out of the way of that, the system you’re going to choose. Good example, if you’re moving from I moved from Handy Soft to XPM, you know, I would very much break away my zero blue system and my payroll system out first, so I had like a nice system to integrate to, and then what are the easy ones that don’t create issues? So, John, if I’m, if I’ve got Cloudoffis in my system stack, I can tag that on to, you know, what do you integrate to, John? What’s all your…?

John Munden

Oh, Xero. FYI docs, ATO, MYOB, and QuickBooks is coming online on Friday, so…Yeah.

Tyler Caskey

I can tag that to my Xero blue files within seconds, without… I don’t have to do it across the board. I could grab two or three clients, and I could start doing that. So I’m staggering the flow, and if I can do it over a couple months, so people don’t get overwhelmed, it’s a win, you know. And you kind of people, as soon as they’ve done a week of bank recs and Xero, or they’ve done a payroll and employment hero, everything relaxes, and they’re open to taking on the next stage.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely. So, we’ve had a great comment from the audience. The challenge is getting the tools to connect to each other and having APIs that are open to be able to obtain the information that you require to streamline the process and automate as much as you can, which I think very much aligns with what you were saying there, Tyler, and we kind of just want more, more, more as possible, though I think sometimes as we go along it changes. Once the access changes, like bank feeds stop feeding things like that, just, you know, cards just go, no, we don’t like that anymore, we’re changing, and etc. along the way.

Tyler Caskey

There’s so much in that, Heather, around APIs. Like, you know, I’ve got a Macquarie savings account in our business that is, there’s no bank feed for it, right? Like, and it’s, it’s painful, right? Like, Macquarie just says, “Sorry, we don’t do bank feeds for this, so I’m manually doing any training. Yeah, it’s.. I love Macquarie, but come on, like, like, you know, those things need to step up. The integration piece is amazing, and I know Sarah Madden wrote that. Like, this is one of the reasons I love Cloudoffis. Cloudoffis integrates to the ATO, John. I think you guys pull GST data directly into your work paper system, so Sarah went over. I’m looking at those, I’m looking at how many things they integrate to, because so many products in the accounting market integrate to multiple things, right? So, like Annature integrates to FYI docs for saving Zero Blue, I use it for my, my contracts, and it also integrates to XPM for client names, you know, and I think it does a couple other integrations as well. Uh, Stripe and no pinch payments now too, and so a lot of things are not just a single integration, like they’re working with a lot, so your spider web becomes a true spider web, so I always try to choose systems where the APIs are owned not by me, right? Like I want Cloudoffis to own its integration with Xero, so if that breaks before I wake up at 9o’clock their dev team in wherever you know they are has got that sorted and is everything rolling.

John Munden

Well, again, imagine a world, though, where if you had integrated Xero into our platform when you were working on it, and it did go down. That data already sits inside of our platform, so you could have just carried on working, like you know, again, that was, you know, so some of the smart things that we’re trying to do, where you’ve got dynamic data, where you’ve obviously got live data that you want to be able to refresh if you need to, but it also to be able to work offline when, if it has gone offline, but you’ve already poured the data in, you can still do your work papers, so…

Tyler Caskey

I fully agree.

Heather Smith

Yeah, absolutely. So, I’ve got another question I’m going to pop in for the audience to answer, which is,

How do you announce change? What’s one conversation that businesses need to have if they suspect their workflow isn’t working?

So probably it’s going to you, Tyler, that one really.

Tyler Caskey

Yeah. I love, I love this. I asked, I don’t ask my grad accountants. I ask my seniors, and I ask my managers, and I’m like, tell, tell me what’s what goes really well, and tell me what’s painful, and I listen, like properly listen to both. I always think, what systems do they love? What do they find intuitive? What’s working? What’s working well? And I remember one of my practices I worked on 2021 was one of our first clients. Their task managements were, I think, there were nine tasks, and I remember talking to one of the managers after we’d rolled the system out, and they’re like, it’s too many tasks, like I’m doing 50 jobs a month, I don’t like, and also I don’t need nine tasks, and every single process, so I look at, I look at the people and the processes that are doing the highest volume, and I’m asking them what’s good, what’s bad, and then I’m really trying to delve into those ones that make their eye twitch, you know, and it, the one that’s always gets me, is like downloading, uploading trial balances, like there’s no, there’s no greater way for me to feel like I’m losing my time in life, but then by doing that, so I’m looking at, you know, how can I help automate and streamline that workflow, because A, it’s risky, but B, it’s, it’s just not fun work.

Heather Smith

And maybe you could talk to this, John. I would encourage people, if you are listening in and you’ve gone through and you have twitchy eye issues over integrations feed that back to one side of the salute, one side of the app, and see if they can build out an integration there, but maybe you could talk to that, John, and how you’re helping, how Cloudoffis is helping clients tighten their workflows.

John Munden

Yeah, we we, we try and approach the way we build product very specifically around obviously the problems it’s trying to solve, but also the key part of our integrations is data should flow. Okay, so that’s there’s there’s if we can’t build an integration where we can actually pull in live data, then it’s not an integration we really want to have, so the important thing is for us is that we consistently look and map out workflows internally that we believe are going to be the best solutions for firms, and we are constantly looking and refining about how we approach that conversation, so we also are looking at, you know, much. More broadly, as well, what more can we do with an integration? If it’s, you know, how much deeper can we go? We’re definitely looking at that with the ATO right now. How much, how much more, you know, information can we pull out and actually put into workflow within our platform? So, for example, like, you know, we workflow modules coming out pretty soon, and we want to be able to map out like an ATO workflow within your work papers workflow as well, so you can see the status of a job, but also the lodgement deadlines in the same place at the same time, without it being manually added in, it’s pulled directly in, so you know we try all the time, we’re thinking about, you know, what’s the next stage of this improvement we want to make in our platform, and how much faster can you know, more seamless can we make this?

Tyler Caskey

Yeah. I love hearing that, John, because, like, there’s no harder error for most accountants to reconcile than, like, GST, POIG, super income tax, you know, and it’s it’s the one that I always find people take a bit of time to, to understand, but it’s also hard to get access, like I was helping a client clean up their books, there was like a multi entity that before it went to their tax agent, kind of maybe end of last year, and yeah, the inter company was pretty messy, so we use Mayday and clean that up, but like they had late paid some GST, and also the previous bookkeeper put some GST to POI G, some POI G to GST, and we’ve all seen that type of stuff, where it was really hard for me was trying to get, trying to get information to tell me what the split was, because no one uploaded documents on what the last bad return was, and there was no split between interest that was charged, all these types of things. So, until we had that visibility, and that’s what I like, what Cloudoffis does is like you guys actually pull real, real data down from the ATO, and John, I think you pull ATO integrated account data as well, right, like, yeah, like that. As soon as I can get that, I can pretty much solve anything, even if I’ve got to go back two, three years. That’s the magic sequence for me, because it’s really hard data to get. Plus, it’s so prone to error, like the amount of times I’ve seen negative POIG in people’s books, and I’m like, I’m pretty sure the ATO doesn’t owe you POIG, but let’s, let’s have a look and see where we can fix it.

Heather Smith

And to those points, I would encourage people, if they are listening in, to contact the apps through their support lines, find the product developers, contact them, and you’re, you’re in a really strong position to shape the ecosystem and the flow that you want, because the apps, as they build out, they want to listen to the clients, but they’re not going to know unless you tell them. So I really do encourage you to reach out and tell people.

Tyler Caskey

How do you talk to apps, Heather?

Sorry to jump in. How do you, like, you’re really good at talking to apps, right? Like, I, I’m reasonably silent if something breaks, I just wait and hope someone else does it. Like, are you just support tickets, are you phone calls, or okay?

Heather Smith

So, my secret way of doing this was, I found that the support channels don’t necessarily work, but that would be my first port of call. Then the second thing was I would work out who is the product developer who owns that area that I need to speak to, and I might go on a deep dive on LinkedIn to figure that out, and I will just ask that sort of, you know, who owns that specific area, and then when I have cordial conversation happening with that person, I will pitch the case. It’s not a matter of saying I want this, it’s pitching what it will do for me, what it will do for the business, and how much time it will save me. So I’m kind of telling the story of the full issue there. I turn up to every conference with a notepad and a list of any issues that my clients may have, and I will go and speak to the vendors, but frequently the vendors have a front-facing sales person rather than a person who’s deep in product, but I’ll tell, I’ll be there, like, tell me the product person, tell me the product person, and I’ve been to conferences, told them the issue, and they have built it out before I’ve got home, so, so, so, but it’s very about the pitch, it’s making it valuable for them, and it can be something that they didn’t even realise people wanted.

Tyler Caskey

You’re a business as well, right? Like, they need to make sure it’s not just a solution, just for Tyler and his special niche need.

Heather Smith

Yes.

Tyler Caskey

Is this going to make our product more valuable as well?

John Munden

We definitely, we’d really encourage those conversations internally with our clients, but we also want to make sure, like exactly as you said, it’s not just a unicorn feature from one person. Let’s, let’s, we’ll share that information across multiple clients. Is this something you think is going to be useful? And then, if it’s, you know, providing enough people want to do it, then we’ll definitely build stuff.

Tyler Caskey

John, just put your mobile in the chat, so everyone can call you if they’ve got Cloudoffis. It’s 04…or what?

John Munden

I am very happy to do that.

Tyler Caskey

Thank you, dear.

Heather Smith

So.

Tyler Caskey

Put that on LinkedIn, if you want to talk.

Heather Smith

So someone from the audience has sort of highlighted that one of the year. Oh, he has put his number…

Heather Smith

So someone from the audience has highlighted that one of their pain points is that clients are not very responsive, the tools are there, they just don’t use them, and they still have to use emails and phone calls. So, so that look, the tools are there, so I guess, I guess you’re referring to things like contents now, which a lot of people have been raving about, but yes.

Heather Smith

Frequently seen.

Tyler Caskey

Sorry, Heather, yeah, there are some cool things happening there, right? Like with automatic reminders, you know, like we can do that for debtors now as well, right? So, if we’ve got to pay, like you can use pay knife, you can use zero for the automations, but yeah, like content snare does automatic follow-ups. I think FYI, you can do automatic follow-ups as well, but I really like ContentSnare and Seamless about how they’re chasing that data. Like, that’s such a beautiful way we can now. Yes, clients sometimes don’t answer those things, Halimah or Hailma, but yeah, I always take those chances as a phone call to be like, hey, let’s have a chat, you know, how’s business going, kind of things as well. So, there’s a bit of a bit of a win there too.

John Munden

Yeah, I guess it depends on the size and scale of the number of customer conversations you want to have, but you know, I feel like there’s going to be some very sophisticated, agentic workflow work happening on this space, because you know the software and the accounting firms typically are becoming more and more sophisticated, but their clients are not, and so it’s that it’s closing that gap about how do we actually ensure that efficiency does exist.

Tyler Caskey

Maybe the clients are, but like they, they like I’ve even got a friend that I helped for free with his books, and he ignores me sometimes because I’m an admin task to him, and I’m like, “Mate, I’m free, you damn answer this text message, you know? And like, it’s true, like clients see accountants as admin kind of tasks, and you know what, that’s okay. Those ones that don’t see the value use automation, the ones that do you know, like absolutely call them to have a chat.

Heather Smith

And to what people are saying, I would also say on the on in the onboarding stage, perhaps ask them how they like to receive their information and how they like to be queried, because it may be text messaging, it may be WhatsApp, it may be the mobile phone, and it may be email people. It really, really astonishes me that that people receive information and want information and connect in different ways. So, so that is also worth thinking about.

Tyler Caskey

And hear that, if you’re not using Content Smear or Seamless, give those a look. Some of those have got amazing chase-up questioning apps, you know, questioning documents that can help help get data into the system. It’s awesome.

Heather Smith

Yeah, so let us know how you get on with that, but we do hear people saying saving hours solutions that implement quick, quick, quick to implement and save them hours.

John Munden

My top tip for this is, send a calendar invite to your clients. Don’t expect, don’t just send them an email asking for information. Send them a calendar invite. If they accept it, you know that they’re not busy at that time. You can have a direct conversation with them at the time. It’s at your convenience, because you chose when the time is going to happen. They can send you back another time, if that’s time is not convenient, but all of a sudden you’ve created a direct dialogue conversation with them, where you can specifically ask for the information you need, and it’s like, you know, in it you can get that work cleared much quicker.

Tyler Caskey

Yeah, agreed. And you can send it in the meeting. I do that as well, John, with our projects. Yeah, I’m like, just send it to me now, I’ll wait, I’ll do something else, and then they send me the document.

Heather Smith

Cool, great, that’s great, great suggestions there. So, thank you so much. So, as we’re coming to the end of the session, I would like the audience – I’m going to put the question in here – to pop into the chat area.

What is one thing that you’re going to take away from today, Tyler? Tell us one thing that you would like the audience to take away from this session,

and then I’ll sort of shift over to and ask John.

Tyler Caskey

For me, is try to choose apps that are integrated to your practice management and your accounting flows that make it simple and hunt out where manual work is happening. I’m a big fan of like diagramming, understanding the connections, and I hunt like when I was a CFO, I used to look at the manual transactions my team did every single month, and we would, as a team, we would say, can we automate this, can we make it more reliable, or do we need to do like a system change, so you know you don’t have to do it all at once, just try to tick off each of those manual, manual processes, especially if they’re high volume, you know, like if I’ve got, if I’m a Xero practice and I’ve got 400 clients on my album or QuickBooks, consider, like, you know, can you help those people move? Does that, is that a benefit for them and you as well?

Heather Smith

I think we now need an AI-generated image of you as a hunter hunting out the manual work through.

Tyler Caskey

I put that on webs on presentations before it, but it got absolutely no, it got no success from the audience, but…

Heather Smith

Oh well, maybe, maybe you need to get some tips from Robert Irwin on how to look more hunter-like.

Heather Smith

Now, John, keen to hear from you,

John, what would you like the audience to take away from the session, and how can the audience find out more about what Cloudoffis does?

John Munden

Yeah, look, if you’ve listened to today’s conversation, it’s made you think that we probably got too many versions of the same workflow inside the firm. That is the problem that we are definitely trying to build to solve to really help you solve. So, if you want more information, you can have a look at our socials, look on LinkedIn, look on Instagram, you can look at our website, Cloudoffis.com.au There’s a tonne of information on there as well, but please reach out and get in touch. We’re more, you know, we’d love to be able to sit down with you and help you figure out and solve some problems here.

Heather Smith

Fantastic.

Tyler Caskey

And on my side, from touching and looking at Cloudoffis for a while, if you haven’t seen it, have a look, it’s got amazing integrations to Xero ATO, those types of things. The ATO integration, John, is still one of my favourites ever, like…

John Munden

You haven’t seen nothing yet, Tyler. There’s a lot coming on that space.

Tyler Caskey

Awesome.

Heather Smith

So, we had another question from the audience, which was,

How can we get our current systems and tech stack reviewed in light of making the most of the current system? Who should we talk to?

Tyler Caskey

I mean, I’ll happily put my hand up on there if you hit me up on LinkedIn, Tyler Caskey on there, but there’s also some other really great consultants in Australia that do tech stack reviews for accounting firms. Good example is Dan from FGS and Matthew Ping from Business Continuum, as well, really good operators, but yeah, more than happy to have a conversation anytime there.

Heather Smith

Excellent, excellent.

Heather Smith

So I’ll pop Tyler’s LinkedIn profile in the chat, so you can connect with him quickly. And we have another question. We found that no software programme will do everything you need. Yes, yes, we agree.

Sometimes you have to choose what gives you the most and build your own to fill in the gaps and allow the automation or process to do what is missing. What do you think of that?

John Munden

Yeah, I don’t disagree that you know there isn’t one app that solves everything. There’s absolutely no doubt. We definitely are looking upon this as a problem that we want to solve more broadly. There’s only so many features we can launch or updates we can launch at any one time, but, but we are over. I would say, you know, if we look back on a year’s time and we look at what Cloudoffis can do from an, from an accounting OS perspective, how many of the problems have we tried to solve in the over the next year? You’ll be astonished from where it is now to what it’s going to become, so…

Tyler Caskey

Yeah, I agree. Nothing’s perfect. Accounting will never be perfect. No client will ever give you every receipt. Things will be coded in the wrong place. GST will be overclaimed, underclaimed. Things will be wrong. Like, our job is to try to make the absolute best we can to the highest materiality with an efficient speed, that’s, you know, that gets the right outcome, be it a good set of financials or a good bad return, or you know, an accurate tax return, like we’ve just, as you said, Sarah, you’ve just got to choose the best one you’ve got.

Heather Smith

Absolutely. So I would like to thank our panellists, John and Tyler, and for joining me today, and our audience for attending and engaging with us. We really enjoyed the questions that you brought to the session.

Heather Smith

Thank you for attending today’s session, presented by Cloudoffis. Today’s topic was simplifying your firm’s tech and workflow, you hopefully you’re going to leave today with greater clarity on your current setup, insights on how others approach workflow design, and some practical actions to improve team adoption, unlock capacity, and take take something back to the office. So, I’m Heather Smith, and I’ve been your moderator for today’s session.

Heather Smith

Thank you.

Tyler Caskey

Thank you.

John Munden

Thanks, Tyler.