The journey so far
All of us are from the founding team of Xavier Analytics. Xavier is a data quality toolkit for accounting and bookkeeping firms that was acquired by Receipt Bank in 2020 and is now known as Dext Precision. After departing Dext at the end of 2022, we've been speaking to a lot of people in the industry and spending a lot of time with the team at accountancy firm FD Works, to dive deep into understanding how to streamline practice operations.
...and we came to a realisation
The proposal should define the scope of all the services an accountancy or bookkeeping firm agrees to perform on behalf of a client. This might sound like common sense, except that right now, from what we have observed, there are several things that are preventing this from reflecting reality:
- Only a small number of people in the firm are involved in managing proposals - part of a process that is often underinvested in
- The journey from prospect through to onboarded client involves lots of manual steps
- Vendor price increases and inflation are eating at profits as proposals are not kept up to date
- The client and the wider team have little visibility on what work is in scope and what isn’t
- Managers are unable to tell which client services are profitable and which ones need attention
After really getting to grips with the challenges in this space, it seemed like an area where we could have a really positive impact - so we've set out on a mission to address these challenges!
