What do you think of when someone says the word bookkeeping? You probably imagine stuffy ledgers, double-entry accounting and a middle-aged bookkeeper with a very loose grip on what’s fashionable in the 21st century.
But you’d be wrong: very wrong, in fact. In 2016, modern bookkeeping is as far from that stereotype as it’s possible to be.
There are no physical ledgers, as we work in the cloud now, with all the software tools we need at our fingertips. And bookkeeping is no longer just about ticking the compliance boxes – it’s about helping you get the most efficient and productive financial systems working for your business.
Here at Fresh Financials, we’ve been at the forefront of reinventing the whole concept of bookkeeping and what it can offer to your business.
And the best way to show you how a modern bookkeeper can add value for your business is to tell you how we’ve evolved from traditional bookkeeper to cloud-based finance specialists.
A love for numbers
I’m Emma, the founder, managing director and chief bookkeeper here at Fresh Financials. And I knew from a young age that numbers were my calling.
I’ve always liked numbers and I get real enjoyment and satisfaction from organising things. In the old days, that meant sorting out a business’s receipts and invoices into date order and turning them into something useful that the business owner would understand. In a nutshell, it meant telling them a story using their numbers.
So bookkeeping was something I had an aptitude for. But, once we had all the advantages of cloud accounting software, it’s also something that had the flexibility to allow me to work from home – important when you have young children and need to plan your work around parental duties. So that’s where our business started: with me working from the kitchen table and occasionally working from clients’ offices, doing their books and getting the paperwork done and dusted.
But I knew that the system could be better – easier to use, more efficient and with the capability to let me do more than just completing the books.
Finding Xero: the idea modern bookkeeping solution
I knew that I could offer more financial advice to my clients. But, as of yet, I’d still not found the software system that could deliver on this aspiration.
I spent six months looking around for the right online solution. And, finally, I stumbled on Xero online accounting software. That was the real start of the transformation from supplying traditional bookkeeping services to adding a whole lot more value for my business clients.
Xero is cloud-based accounting software that makes managing your books, expenses, bills and invoices an absolute joy. It’s simple and incredibly easy to use, but also extremely powerful when you need to dig down into the numbers.
This combination of simplicity and power made Xero the obvious choice as the foundation for our bookkeeping. I started to set up new clients with Xero and moved clients on older systems across as soon as I could. And when I went along to Xerocon 2013 (Xero’s annual technology conference) and heard how Denis Breen had implemented cloud accounting and rebranded his firm as ProfitPal, that was the real turning point for me. Now I knew where Xero could take us, and how it could really help my business clients to streamline and improve their finances.
The birth of Fresh Financials
We rebranded as Fresh Financials three years ago, with a remit to deliver a different kind of bookkeeping and more advanced financial service for our clients.
So when you work with Fresh Financials you get a whole bundle of benefits on top of the basic bookkeeping:
- You get daily bank feeds straight into your Xero software to give you a totally up-to-date view of their business accounts.
- We help you cut down on your paperwork and data entry time by automating your bookkeeping using the amazing Receipt Bank Xero Add-on to smart-scan your expenses and paperwork.
- You have access to your key numbers at any time, wherever you are, through Xero’s cloud access and mobile app.
But most importantly, we have a real interest and involvement with your business. We believe that a great customer relationship is the bedrock for giving you a deeper insight into your finances.
Data divers: delving deep into your numbers
It’s giving you that detailed insight into your numbers that really sets us apart from the old-school bookkeepers.
We’re not data inputters, we’re more like data divers. We plummet headfirst into the depths of your numbers to find the issues, spot the pitfalls and help you get a better overview of the health of your business as a whole.
CrunchBoards was an integral part in this transformation from number crunchers to forensic number detectives. CrunchBoards is another of the amazing Xero Add-ons, with a focus on displaying your data not as dry numbers, but as colourful, beautifully designed charts, graphics and data visualisations. And that’s an approach that really resonates with most business owners.
CrunchBoards takes the real-time data from Xero and shows a totally current overview of your business’s key information. And having these graphical visualisations of the data means we’re able to give you the kind of structured advice and business guidance you need to move forward.
With Xero and the Xero Add-ons at your fingertips, the concept of old-fashioned bookkeeping is completely extinct in our mind. We’re empowered to go beyond the dry numbers and to deliver business advice that gives our clients the confidence and motivation they need to grow and expand.
Best of all, we love it!
Ultimately, we love what we do at Fresh Financials. We’re focused on what we enjoy and what we know we’re good at – diving into those numbers and finding the pearls of wisdom in the data ocean.
Bookkeeping can be just data sorting, but we know it’s so much more than that. We give our clients clarity around their business information and a real sense of the story behind it. And, as with any story, you can write new chapters and help businesses to achieve their true potential.
We’re here to help your business change and transform. And we believe the key to this is helping you to care about your numbers, your performance and your business direction. With that drive and motivation, you’re set to be come a more successful, and a more profitable, enterprise.
If you’re looking for a change in how you work and a new approach to your finances give us a call or drop us a message.
We’d love to dive into your data!