Customer story · Black Cat Accounting
Black Cat Accounting stays a one-person firm by letting the software do the work.
Jacqui Trumper runs Black Cat Accounting on her own, and her plan is to let software do as much as it can so she can put off hiring. Recurring workflow, inter-entity reconciliations and equipment finance now handle the repetitive work she would once have hired a junior for.
“I do nothing. I just go in there every now and then, see the ticks are green, and then move on with life.”
- Who
- Jacqui Trumper, sole practitioner, 17 years in the industry
- Firm
- Four years old, run by one accountant
- Clients
- Small businesses
- Stack
- Xero, XPM, Ignition, OneDrive, AccountKit
The starting point
Two client groups kept drifting out of balance.
Two large client groups paid for things across entities without recording the loans correctly. Fixing that, back when Jacqui worked at other firms, meant comparing the loan accounts “line by line” in Excel, which took hours on a long list of transactions.
The firm’s week, before and after
Inter-entity reconciliations
BeforeHoursLoan accounts compared line by line in Excel.
Now1 button“You press a button, it just finds it all and makes them go away.”
Life of a finance loan
BeforePosting the entries herself, which she hasn’t had to do in years.
NowUp to 5 yearsSet up once with a bank rule, and the loan’s entries run automatically for up to five years.
First day of each quarter
BeforeA workflow tool so tied to XPM that every change waited on an overnight sync.
NowBAS jobs bulk-create across the relevant clients, with start and due dates preset.
Redacting TFNs
BeforeWorking through each one in Adobe Acrobat.
NowSmart redaction finds the TFNs in a document and redacts them in one go.
What they switched on
The tools Black Cat Accounting runs in AccountKit.
Alongside Xero, XPM, Ignition, OneDrive. Each tool links to how it works.
- ComplianceInter-entity loansThe reason she signed up. On its own, she says, the tool “paid for itself”.
- ComplianceEquipment financeSet it up once, add a bank rule, and check the balances are green.
- AdministrationWorkflowJobs independent of XPM, plus a to-do list that pops up each morning.
- AdministrationDocument managementOneDrive and her main document store in one place, with smart redaction for TFNs.
The result
What changed at Black Cat Accounting, in their numbers.
- person running the firm, with the first hire put off
- 1
- tools that cover the subscription on their own: workflow, inter-entity and equipment finance
- 3
- years of a finance loan’s entries, at most, run from one setup
- 5
She is now weighing up whether she still needs her Adobe Acrobat subscription at all.
Figures and quotes from the Black Cat Accounting case study, first published on the AccountKit blog.
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