Success stories:
SW Accountants & Advisors

SW is an Australian-owned accounting and advisory firm. With a history spanning more than 85 years, the team has a clear understanding that relationships make all the difference in delivering great outcomes. SW operates as one national firm across offices in Brisbane, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney, and delivers global solutions as a member of the SW International Network and Praxity Network Alliance.

Pulling data from multiple cloud accounting solutions

SW is a renowned accounting and advisory firm that works across a wealth of sectors and has a wide variety of client types – from small family-run businesses and start-ups, right up to large organisations and high-net-worth operators. Their offices span the continent and also make up a global network, so it’s no wonder clients look to SW to deliver the specialist knowledge and experience they desire.

But having significant expertise across industries – while good for business – can cause bottlenecks for accountants and client services providers. After all, if a dozen organisations are using a dozen different accounting software packages, that means their accountants need to know the inner workings of each of those systems in order to pull the necessary client data. Extrapolate that to a practice the size of SW, and it’s easy to see where hurdles can arise.

Heather Dyke, Associate Director at SW, and her team understood that technology would be the only way they could avoid the time and training-intensive requirements of pulling client data from disparate cloud accounting solutions. So, they looked for a product that could simplify data collection into one easy-to-integrate app. That’s when they came across SyncDirect, a solution that promised to make data collection easier, speed up compliance work, and give clients a more efficient experience with their accountants.

SyncDirect for greater productivity and security

As soon as they started using SyncDirect in their daily operations, Heather says it just clicked for the whole team.

“It provides consistent reporting presentation across our family of clients, even when they are using disparate cloud accounting solutions,” she says.

Paperless was also a driver for SW, and Heather says it’s extremely helpful that the bank of data feeds available allows a wide variety of client’s accounting products to be brought into one standard SW system via SyncDirect electronically.

“We have a number of clients using it, most of whom are trusts and companies.”

Heather’s division is in business and private clients advisory. Her team oversees private clients and high-net-worth individuals, providing a broad range of services. With such important client data to manage, SyncDirect was the ideal solution for robust security.

“SyncDirect has been a great choice from a security point of view, as the data is encrypted,” she says. “That makes everything easier, and it saves time, as there is no rekeying and therefore no mistakes.”

“The big advantage is that it brings all the transactions together, so it is much easier for a reviewer to see all the underlying transactions and you can then link in all of your workpapers. The first year we were onboarding, but the time savings from the second year onwards have been significant.”

Integral to SW’s operations

SyncDirect has been a key part of SW’s practice for years. The fact that it has remained a staple in their day-to-day operations speaks to the productivity and time-saving benefits, not to mention freeing up their staff to focus on more important things than learning how to acquire client data from various accounting software.

Heather says it’s an incredibly intuitive app that was easy to integrate into their systems. There are various other benefits as well – from its low cost of entry and user-friendly interface, to being more about process training than software training, which is integral to getting buy-in from a large practice.

“SyncDirect is a very low-maintenance product,” she says. “We rarely get any questions about it from the team, and it’s really become a background app because it is constantly being used to pull client data.”

SyncDirect’s accuracy has far and away been its most impressive outcome. With the solution offering 100% accuracy as opposed to the 80% accuracy you usually achieve when processing client data manually, SyncDirect can maintain your practice’s reputation and keep clients happy.

If you would like to know more about how SyncDirect and other solutions for accountants can streamline your practice’s daily operations, speak to the experts at Access today.