Challenge

Phebys opened in 1999 and have always taken moving with the times very seriously. They wanted to offer clients insights they’d never had access to before and to be able to take full control over their businesses. They work with a number of leading franchises which means they needed to show the performance store to store, product to product and even region to region. There was nothing on the market that could help.

Solution

Signing up with Futrli has meant Phebys can crunch the numbers between stores, products and regions in just a few clicks. They add in non-financial data and can show a comprehensive report to their clients. Their clients are able to think outside the box when it comes to problem-solving thanks to Futrli’s scenario planning.

Results

Clients are happy and are able to collaborate. They’re closer than ever to their numbers now, which is helping client retention. The Phebys team have become an extension of their clients’ businesses thanks to Futrli, rather than an additional cost. Their clients are seeing success, and that’s helping them and the Phebys team to achieve more, together.

Interview in full

Phebys Chartered Certified Accountants, a Cambridgeshire-based firm, was founded in 1999. The team pride themselves on their proactive approach to ensuring those they work with have all the financial information and support they need to thrive. As soon as Futrli came on the market, Phebys started investigations and rolling it out to clients. Founder and Owner, Scott Pheby says:

“We like to go that step further with our clients and we are big advocates of using technology to achieve this. As with all accountancy practices, compliance is our bread and butter but we want to go a step beyond that and be involved with our clients as much as possible. When we give them extra advice, they can grow faster.”

How is Futrli helping?

Futrli has allowed us to get rid of our complicated, cumbersome spreadsheets that used to slow accounting advice down With Futrli, we’ve replaced them with a dynamic platform that gives us real-time insights. Now, as soon as the management accounts are done in Xero, we can instantly start playing with what this means for the business and analysing the figures. We have a level of flexibility and power that we’ve simply never had before.

Tell us about how you’re seeing franchise success?

We work with several major national franchises and Futrli makes it so easy to drill down into the numbers across a range of franchises and understand the impact at a group level. With just a few clicks we can compare performances from store to store, product to product and region to region. Allowing managers to benchmark with other branches and set common KPIs or compare and contrast performances.

If one location is performing better than others, it’s now much easier to examine the numbers and try and find out why and carry out product development in other stores. With Futrli we can even consider the non-financials business drivers too. This really helps us to tap into what matters to help our clients plan for the future and succeed. It eliminates the guesswork and brings a sense of certainty to our planning.

Are you collaborating more with clients and service providers?

We love the fact we can give our clients the freedom to directly use Futrli’s features. Not only does it enable them to think creatively and come up with new ideas or solutions, there is no danger they will accidentally change figures or formulas in the actual accounts – as would have been the case using Excel or other tools in the past. We encourage our clients to play with different scenarios. This always starts a conversation as the client will then get in touch to discuss what they’ve come up with and we’ll continue to plan collaboratively.

What results are you seeing?

Cloud computing and software like Futrli foster the spirit of collaboration within a business model between client and accountant. Traditionally accountants were seen as external service providers, divorced from day to day operations. With Futrli we are more embedded with clients than ever before and genuinely part of their team. It is no coincidence that the clients we engage with most often tend to be the most successful.