Challenge

This fast-growing firm needed a quick, reliable and flexible forecasting and reporting tool to use in each of their sites. Providing a consistent service across each of their franchised offices was a struggle but very important. There was a disparity between the sites when working with spreadsheets as everything was offline, so it was difficult to compare and share data and ways of operating. EzyAccounts wanted to deliver more value to their clients to reduce their customer churn rate, while also saving money monthly.

Solution

Futrli has been critical in the firm’s move to cloud working. Each site can log into their Futrli account and see how their peers have been working and what they’ve been offering clients. Clients across the country are reaping the benefit of this. The firm has a much firmer grip on customers figures from using Futrli. It means there’s a lot more value being delivered to clients, so to reduce churn.

Results

The entire operation is smoother and services have become far more consistent. This is key for upping revenue. The level of communication has increased positively, which has helped customer retention. Another benefit of using Futrli has been an uptick in hiring great advisors. Clients are becoming more successful thanks to clearer monthly reports and being able to manage their companies with real-time data. Clients are sticking with EzyAccounts because they see the value the staff are providing with Futrli.

Interview in full

Tell us a bit about EzyAccounts

We provide a bookkeeping and financial management service via a franchise model. But, at our core, we are an advisory company. We conduct analysis and interpretations on behalf of our customers, so we can work with them to grow their company and make it more profitable and efficient. Our franchisees are all accountants who have worked with large enterprises using complex sales forecasting software for budgeting and forecasting. They’ve been amazed at Futrli’s flexibility and functionality.

Futrli helped improve client loyalty. Our customer churn rate has decreased from 20% to 13%. Across a big group like ours, that’s really noticeable. It’s a simple formula – Futrli allows us to deliver more value.

What’s the commercial impact?

Aside from churn, which means Futrli has more than paid for itself, we’ve increased the average fee income per client. Now, we track both of these as KPIs and that’s why we said yes to this case study – we love it!

Are you tracking referrals # as a KPI as well?

Yes! Word-of-mouth referrals back to franchisees has also increased. We can make such a difference to our clients’ bottom line, and that’s always been our core mission: deliver a service where we make our customers more profitable. We have clients that might pay us 0k a year but we might be making them 00-200k because of the knowledge we can get to them which allows them to make solid decisions confidently.

What issues has Futrli as a business forecasting software helped you overcome?

One of the issues we had before we started working with Futrli was there was quite a big disparity between franchisees, as we didn’t have a cloud solution that they could easily set up and use – everyone was using spreadsheets. Some people were confident with them but some weren’t. So the quality of service our customers would get was dramatically different, it all relied on the franchisee, which wasn’t good for our reputation. It was also quite difficult for us to jump in and check and see what people were doing – if we needed to enhance services for customers.

With Futrli we have quality control and we know exactly where each client is at. We’ve got it all set up so we can review by industry and be confident that all of our clients are getting a high-quality, consistent service.

Has Futrli helped you recruit franchisees?

Virtually all of our franchisees were either partner-level in public firms, or they were Financial Controllers/CFO accountants in commercial organisations. We’ve always recruited at this level so they’re confident in what they’re doing. We used to leave introducing Futrli until after they’d signed up with us, but now we’ve realised it’s a benefit to show it off during the commercial process. Once we showed them Futrli, they’re amazed and even told us we’d undersold what we’re delivering by not sharing it before. Trust us, we don’t do that anymore – now every potential franchise gets an introduction!

How do you manage clients across the group?

We have two tiers of clients: our first level is actually our franchisees – the thing that’s really important to us is to give them the best tools available. And that’s what we’ve done by signing up to Futrli.

It’s been heartwarming that the Futrli team really listen to our feedback and that of other people. The team there has done such great things to keep the product world-class and leading in this space. We’re typically recruiting people who come out of medium to large corporates and when I show them Futrli they are blown away.

They remark that it’s been far better than the very expensive ERP systems they’ve used in the past. What Futrli has done to make this affordable for small business is incredible. Seeing the look on their faces when you take them through it makes us know we’re on the right track. They’re Management Accountants and they’ve spent their careers putting the monthly board packs together and the fact we can do this so quickly and easily for small business stuns them. As churn tells us, we know our second tier is very happy too!

Here’s what some of EzyAccounts’ franchisees had to say about Futrli…

Philip Hawkins – Bookkeeper, Brisbane

“During my time doing bookkeeping in Brisbane, I have had a lot of exposure to the education sector. This industry typically runs on specialist vertical accounting software, that in all honesty has very poor reporting functions. Futrli allows me to provide this clientele with critical information, to help enhance their efficiency and output. Plus it allows me to spend more of my time focused on much more rewarding and enjoyable services.”

Anja Childs – Bookkeeper, Melbourne

“I’ve recently joined EzyAccounts and am already rolling this platform out to all of my clients that I do bookkeeping in Melbourne for. This is a really fun and exciting tool and I can’t wait to see all the improvements to my clients’ businesses that will come as a result of using it.”

Hilary Okolie – Bookkeeper, Perth

“Futrli allows me to create reports much more efficiently. This allows me to deliver very valuable business advice to my clients that I do bookkeeping in Perth for. Because producing reports is so efficient, the cost investment to the client is rarely a barrier. This, in turn, has allowed me to ensure virtually all of my clients are benefiting.”

Karthik Praveen – Bookkeeper, Adelaide

“Futrli helps me to expand my services beyond much more than just bookkeeping in Adelaide. The additional information and advice my clients receive mean my services are seen as being much more valuable than the other bookkeepers in my city.”

Tim Yendell – Bookkeeper, Sydney

“Before joining EzyAccounts to provide bookkeeping in Sydney, I worked in several senior accounting roles within major organisations. I can honestly say that I’ve been blown away by the power of reporting in Futrli. To be honest, it’s capabilities are head and shoulders above that of the reporting suites in many of the very expensive ERP systems I had used in the past.”