Services: Xero implementation · Cloud accounting · Dext · Futrli · Team training
The problem: growing fast with accounting stuck in the past
Business was growing, and fast in both turnover and transaction volume. But its accounting hadn’t kept pace. Manual ledger work for bank reconciliations, paper-heavy reporting, and a reliance on SAGE that couldn’t handle the increasing load meant the accounts team was permanently behind.
The only time the directors knew their true profitability was at the annual accountant meeting. Management accounts didn’t exist. Decision-making was based on guesswork.
What Ascentis did
We recommended moving to Xero, integrating with bank feeds for automated reconciliation, using Dext Prepare for automated data extraction from purchase invoices and receipts, and using Futrli for advanced financial forecasting and reporting. A bespoke training programme was built for the team. A bookkeeping checklist was created to track repeating tasks and ensure nothing was missed in the new process.
What changed
- Management accounts produced within a week of the month-end, compared to never
- Increased profitability, with timely data surfacing new opportunities
- Significant time savings for the accounts team — freed from manual processing
- Reduced stress for directors, who now had real visibility into the business
The result
A business that used to find out how it was doing once a year now knows within days of the month-end. The transition to cloud accounting changed how the directors run the business.