In this guest video, practice owner and advisory board member Francesca Tricarico shares why she loves cloud accounting and why it’s such an opportunity for your clients.

Don’t want to watch the video? You can read the full transcript below…

“I’m Francesca from Future Cloud Accounting, me and my business partner, Charlotte, set up last April, 2019, so we’ve not even done a year yet. And our practice is solely cloud based. We predominantly use Xero. We love Xero. It’s our niche. We have got other clients, one on FreeAgent, one on QuickBooks, which is great. And maybe in the future that we’ll find a team member that can look into those systems.”

“What I love about the cloud is it’s very user friendly for our clients. I got into it probably four years ago in my previous role. It was a very traditional accountants and they touched upon it and when I used Xero, oh my God, I just thought this is the future. If you can use your phone to do your bookkeeping while you’re sat about at home and not necessarily in an office, it is amazing. That’s what did it for me.”

“I remember using Receipt Bank as well for the first time and I thought, well, hang on a minute, it’s not that much quicker. I did. I actually thought that. I thought, well, what’s, where’s this going with this? It’s not quicker. You can put it in manually and then reconcile it straight away, I get that. But because you’ve got in Receipt Bank, a storage place for all your receipts and invoices, it’s amazing that you can just throw away your receipt and it’s there and nothing gets lost.”

“And clients love it because all they’re doing is taking a photo of the invoices and obviously it’s done. They can throw it away and then it’s stored in the cloud, links to Xero, links to your QuickBooks. And there are more and more apps out there to help your clients.”

“So obviously there’s a Digital Accountancy Show coming in March. It’s free to attend. So you know your account techs, people travel to London to go to that, ask questions, find out what apps are available and embrace the change because it’s coming, it’s the future. Digital is the future.”

“And it’s going to be hard because you learn anything new you think for the first few goes, this is … what the hell is this? Or somebody calls it clunky. That word clunky means you don’t know it inside and out.”

“Now, we’ve had a client on an app that we didn’t necessarily understand, but we’re either willing to work with the client to understand it or you just don’t use it and say, no, we’re not specialists in the area and find someone that is. So if you’re in a very traditional accountants and you haven’t got … you’ve touched upon the cloud but you’re like, oh no, I’ll just bury my head. Don’t do that. Either hire someone that knows. Get a separate online cloud department. Keep it all separate if you want for all your small medium sized businesses because clients will love it. Honestly, real time information, not waiting for bank statements.”

“So, example, obviously I worked at a traditional accountants and did all the manual work. And a lot of us are lazy, so if there’s an easier, quicker solution out there and automation, do it because it’s so much easier and better.”

“And also we had a client that joined us probably June time, come from a traditional firm, printing off bank statements they were, writing stuff down. He spent hours finding invoices, putting things in A to Z order, that can take hours, just putting it in a file. And we’ve put a full system in. So your Xero, Receipt Bank and then we’re looking at payroll because he’s got subcontractors, employees that are out and about, how many hours have they done. So we’re going to look at Deputy, that’s another app. So if you can find a full system for these clients you’re winning because it’s about help.”

“Anyway, I’m looking forward to the Digital Accountancy Show in March. I’m on a panel, so please, it’s free to attend, it’s a day out, if you can’t necessarily go find a team member that is willing to go, ask questions. We’re all here to help, like minded people as well, so we’re all on the same page. We all struggle. Anyway, I thought I’d do a video rather than a blog, written blog. Hope to meet you all soon. “

Francesca is co-founder of Future Cloud Accountancy, a cloud-only accountancy firm based in Newark in Nottinghamshire. Having worked for a top 20 firm of accountants for 6 years, Francesca and her business partner Charlotte finally decided to take the plunge and started their own cloud practice.