The Firms Pulling Ahead Aren't the Ones With the Most Software

Every week, another tool lands, promising to make accounting firms faster, leaner, calmer. And every week, I watch firms pile more of them on and feel none of it.

I talked all this through with Bianca Basilio from WeFlow on The Operator's Playbook. You can watch the full conversation here.

After nearly 14 years in this industry, I'm more sure than ever that the real work was always the people and the process, not the software. Let me start where it started for me.

I fell into this industry and never left

To be honest, I fell into accounting. Back in 2012, I joined a tech company in Canberra called eWay. They were an online payments business and one of the first integrated payment partners to Xero. That was my way in.

From there, I went to QuickBooks in Sydney, then Practice Ignition. After that, there was no getting rid of me. I was running as hard as I could in this industry. Travelling the world, standing on stages, writing.

Thirteen years later, I run Journey, our marketing agency, alongside Vinyl and The Firm. And the longer I do this, the more sure I am of one thing. The tech was never what held anyone back.

Outsiders think accounting can be automated. The people inside know differently

The people who think accounting can be fully automated and that AI will take everyone's jobs are usually the ones who've never worked inside a firm.

Anyone who's done this for a while knows why it's so hard. Compliance changes so often that tech companies can't keep up. And Australia is the most complex country in the world for payroll. It's a wild thing to build software for.

I say all this as someone who loves it. Software is the enabler. It gets things done faster, and it clears out the jobs nobody wanted anyway. If you were once hand-coding bank statements with a ruler, working out what each line was, that job's long gone. I'm happy to get rid of the jobs I don't want to do.

A thousand apps, and choice became the problem

There are more than a thousand apps on the Xero App Store. You don't need a thousand. But I know firms sitting on 30, 40, 50 of them.

When every brand is beating the drum for attention, it just becomes noise. Firms don't know which ones to pick or where to start.

We'll probably see things consolidate into all-in-one practice management systems. Even those have trade-offs, though, because most still run an ecosystem alongside them. The hard part is keeping up with all of it. That's why there's now a whole marketplace of implementation partners, people who spend all day looking at this stuff, so a firm doesn't have to.

Three things slow firms down, but only one is in your control

When things fall over, it's usually one of three things. The tools, the people, or the work itself.

Some of it you can't touch. I still can't digitally sign some forms when I'm dealing with a bank. That's policy and legislation, and no tech fixes it until the rules catch up. Some of it's the tools, because plenty of software gets applied to accounting without being built for accounting. So you get something that's 80% good and never quite closes the last 20%.

But the part that really decides how a firm runs, and the part you actually control, is the people. That's where the real work is.

The best firms get the right work to the right people

The messiest part is the people, and it usually comes down to structure and roles. You've got accountants on $150 an hour chasing clients for information that admin, on a lower rate, should be handling. Get that structure right, and the payoff is huge.

AI helps here too. Offshore teams using it are sharper and more efficient. With the right processes in place, a team member can produce work at a junior or mid-level.

The best firms pull all this together. They run like commercially driven businesses. They've got KPIs their people understand, and they treat client satisfaction as one of them. They line up their people, processes and tech behind clear goals, so everyone knows why they're there and where they're headed.

Lean in, then break it down

My strategy has always been to lean in. I'd rather work through the messy middle we're all figuring out than wait for it to go mainstream. Stay close to what's changing, and you stay in control of your own destiny. You can see all the cards in front of you and choose how to play them.

Part of staying in control is leaving yourself room. We talk about capacity like 100% is the goal, but you actually want to sit at 80%, with a 20% buffer. That buffer is how you grow. Firms that stay reactive are usually reactive because they're disorganised and have left themselves no room to respond.

And if it all feels like too much, break it down. Start with the one problem you need to solve first. Get clear on where you're trying to go, then work backwards from there. That's the strategy work that most people could spend more time on.

The tech will keep coming. It always does. The firms that stay calm and in control will be the ones that got their people and their process sorted first. Head down, strap in.

This piece is drawn from Trent McLaren's conversation with Bianca on The Operator's Playbook. Watch the full episode here.