 Okay, good afternoon everybody. I'm going to start. I'm sure people will join in the next few minutes, but I don't want to end up squeezing time at the other end and not having enough time for questions. So welcome to Recover and Rise, another Tuesday webinar. Today all about accounting systems and we're joined by Hayden Winters from Carpenter Box who's going to talk to us all about accounting systems. Before I do that or before Hayden does that, may I just take this opportunity to go through a few slides with you about our programme. My apologies greatly to anybody who has heard these before. A little reminder of what we're all about. So apologise if you've heard these before, but bear with me. Just Recover and Rise, this is what we're all about. We've got four webinar series going on. We're in series three already, which is all about systems and productivity. I can't believe we're quite that far ahead of ourselves already. Today, of course, we're all about digital accounting systems. And there's Hayden. This Thursday, we're also going to be talking about digital HR systems with Laura Walker. So if you haven't booked onto that one yet, please do. Laura is going to explore the benefits of HR software to help us be a little bit efficient. And likewise next week, we've got two really, really good webinars. Easy Stock is being delivered by Peter and that's next Tuesday. And that's all about online stock and inventories. So if you're a product related company, come along to that one. The benefits of costs, how to get started. And then Lisa Kerr, who's also one of our digital ambassadors, is running a webinar on Thursday next week about productivity. She's got some really good tips and tricks and hints to show you about how to improve yourself online. So that's what's happening next week. Everything's at midday and it's always Tuesdays and Thursdays. So please go to Eventbrite and have a book and have a look. I've come through these very, very quickly. If you haven't applied already or if you haven't seen these already, the business Hot House hosted by the University of Chichester is offering at the moment free support to start up and pre-start up businesses. So it does involve and can include grant funding and expert guidance. So do have a look at the Hot House. And then there's also low case and rise, low case again are offering funding for green orientated projects and rise are offering knowledge exchange really with the students. So do have a look at those. And last but not least, our digital champions for anyone who has attended any of our webinars again across the whole series, you can access some free support for up to a day with one of our digital champions. And as we talked about before, they cover everything from websites, CRM, e-commerce, marketing plans, strategy, systems, productivity, digital transformation. So all of the whole, the whole sort of range of subjects, and all you need to do is simply use a contact form, contact coaster capital to establish that initial contact. And then you will be entitled to a day's support, which I think is absolutely fabulous, actually, to get a whole day's support from one of our digital champions. So that is all our slides for today, but I'm just going to quickly go back to Hayden, who is the man of the moment today. So Hayden is going to be talking about our bookkeeping online, saving time, saving money, a little bit about HMRC. And Hayden is the Cloud and Digital Solutions Manager at Carpenter Box. So without any further ado, I'll stop my share and I'll pass over to Hayden. Hayden, are you with us? Indeed I am. Thanks very much, Cheryl. And thanks, everyone, for joining us today. I really appreciate you taking the time out. So hopefully you do get some valuable tips or valuable information from my sort of presentation today. So just to introduce myself a little bit, I've been with Carpenter Box for three years now. So I originally came over here from Australia, which you may not be able to pick up on. So I'll try and throw in a few catchphrases and see if you can pick them up. The reason why that's relevant, why I'm talking to you about that today, is Australia and New Zealand have been at the forefront of sort of cloud accounting technology for some time, mainly because quite a few of the key cloud accounting providers have actually come from that part of the world, which is a little strange. Probably expect everyone to come from maybe the States, alongside sort of the Ubers of the world. But Australia has only done some great depth, so I'm very proud of my country there. So I came over here to sort of look at how providing this advice and support to UK businesses is when I came over here, it was definitely evident that quite a lot of UK businesses are keeping manual records or keeping things a little bit more traditional and old school, which is great and does wonders, but there's certainly room for improvement in those areas. So what I'm going to talk to you about today is effectively a digital accounting system, what that looks like, why you'd want to keep a digital accounting system and some of the sort of key products that we would recommend when I work out. There we go. So I want to talk first about what an accounting system actually is, because a lot of people will assume then the system is effectively a way to keep your records, and that's it. So a lot of people will assume your cell documents and perhaps a shoe box, if you're that way inclined. So certainly there's a load of different sort of misunderstanding what the accounting system actually entails. So an accounting system is a collection of systems or software and processes that allow a business to record and manage their finances. So it's a pretty simple definition I like to sort of keep her keep around and sort of put everything back into context. So what that actually looks like is a bank account and mechanism for issuing your invoices, how you record for record and pay your bills and a method of submitting your bar returns, as well as being able to work with your accounts and to complete your tax returns and annual accounts. So why this is really important is that a lot of people just focus on one element and one part of that. So you'll have a bank account, you might sort of raise invoices word, you might collect payments using some credit card provider e-commerce platform. You will have one or some way to submit a bar return if you do one of those, as well as having some way of interacting with your accountant. So when we talk about digitizing an accounting process, what we need to do is we need to factor in all these different elements and understand how they work and collect together and become a system in total. So when we include all these together, we'd say that's your accounting system and refer to it as digital or a digitized accounting system when all of these are electronic. Now electronic in the sense that hopefully they're on software or systems, but more so they actually interact and engage with each other. As this is a real sticking point for a lot of businesses, trying to find the time and the effort to sort of interact and get all those pieces pulled together as one. So why an accounting system is so important? So you can say, well, yes, I understand I have an annual tax return and yes, I understand that I have my quarterly that return to do. But really why would I, what's the benefit of having a sort of digitized or an automatic and efficient accounting system? So I like to refer to them as the clockwork of the business. So the part that you don't necessarily see so your customers or clients aren't going to see your accounting system. But they're actually going to engage with them in a very loose or disconnected way. And that's really important because it will allow you to run your business better, but also give you a better customer experience as you're able to give them maybe more relevant information quickly. You're able to issue invoices and make that customer experience better. Now, whilst sort of generating revenue is what will be concerned about as business people and it's crucial to the spiral, right? You knock it. There's no point having an accounting system to record a business, you know, finances and business without actually generating that revenue. But we also need to understand that there's an element of back of house part that's very, very important to running a business. So where we run the sort of back of house businesses effectively, what we're able to do is scale and grow the business and also effectively plan. So you probably all heard, especially if you've done sort of other webinars or read up and sort of educated yourselves, you will hear phrases such as sort of cash is king. And if you can't measure it, you can't improve it. And they're great. And they're great sort of throw away, you know, catchphrases, I guess you could say, but what they're actually implying is you need to have and maintain visibility over your finances. And that's the key thing here. It's the visibility. It's the ability to easily see and access and interpret your financial data. And that can be really hard when you don't have a system that sort of facilitates and manages that process for you. So when we think about how an accounting system is developed, and I imagine that every single person here has done this to some extent, they will have an understanding of, OK, well, I need to do this now. So I'm going to do it in this way. I also need to then go and do that for this customer or my bank is asking me this or my accountant is asking me that, or I need to understand how much this costs me. So we end up kind of piece milling together an assistant that combines of people, processes and software that will generate an accounting system. Now, where we have an issue with this is that often because it's so piecemeal and it's designed to meet a specific need, it tends to have been done to generate a result rather than encompass a whole part of a system. So we end up in a situation where we've got a very manual driven process where duplicating things, and it's not really sort of a cohesive. And as a result of that, we sometimes end up having to, we need to find something, we take a little bit of data out of here, we take a little bit of data somewhere else, then we end up combining it together. And I suppose, you know, when we think about workload, and you know, it's just something that we want to be doing. Yes, it's important to the business. You know, if you're looking at, for example, raising finance, you need to be able to have quick and easy access to your financial information. You know, we'll consider emails, emails are great as well to factor in. So do we have sort of, you know, emails saved in a folder or do we have invoices saved here and what happens when, you know, you accidentally delete an email or what happens when, you know, your Excel corrupts and you can't save what you've been doing for your financial services lost. So they're all elements of the business to say, well, you know, these are risks, but also they're quite manual, and they're very, very old school sort of fast in the ways of kind of dealing with your finances. So what we tend to do is we take a bit of a step back usually. Well, what are all the different processes and parts of my business? And what are those different parts and processes doing? So are they working together? Am I really generating something that's cohesive and relevant? And then if not, and the answer is no, well, I need to pull this bit of data together and add it onto this one, then we need to start understanding why that is. And whilst you might say, well, okay, great, I understand it. So that's all that really matters. And if I need something, you know, I've got to make sure I'm running the business, got to make sure I'm generating the leads, got to make sure I'm, you know, not managing my costs or managing my costs even. We need to understand that. Yes, that's important. We also need to have the back end parcel. So we need to make sure that's nice and easy to understand and interpret. So whilst it may work right now and whilst it may be really important for you right now, it's important to understand that we have a couple problems with that and the real life intrinsic problems. And these aren't sort of designed to intimidate you into moving into online. And they're factors you need to consider. Do you have a contingency plan for? So when you're ill or unable to work, your back of house system should run pretty smoothly or allow someone else to step in and make sure the business keeps taking over, not necessarily revenue generating, but to a point where your suppliers are being met, you know, you're not letting people extend their payment terms. You're still able to make sure the whole process follows on, even though you might need to have a little bit of input, but someone else can pick it up and make sure you're not losing any sort of key data. So often, you know, someone may have an injury, be able to do something, need to look after a family member, and you usually end up giving this either to a bookkeeper, to an accountant, maybe, to a friend, to a colleague, you know, who runs the business as well. And what you need to be able to do is make sure that you can hand that over with very minimal impact. So I'm not necessarily talking about training on a system, but more so that it's a very logical and thought out process that will result in the same or very similar result each time. We have mentioned financing before, so if we consider the need of financing and obviously as we're sort of on the tail end of the pandemic, we look at what our business is going to look like going forward. We need to be able to make sure that not only can we raise finance if we need to, but we're also able to look at, you know, what do our banks want, what do our, you know, do we run the business effectively, what this is going to look like in a few months time. And being able to spend hours and hours pulling an Excel spreadsheet together that tells you that isn't really that effective. Yes, it's possible. And there's no denying that. And certainly not for a minute I'm saying that there's no way that's ever going to be an acceptable result. We just consider the time that it takes you and how relevant, accurate that information is and how up to date it is. If you're looking at doing this monthly, you have to every single month spend time pulling something together. And we talk about the clockwork and what we're doing by doing everything manually is moving these cogs individually to tell the time and we need to make sure that the time is right and we need to keep adjusting and adjusting and adjusting to make sure that our clock is working effectively. One other thing which I've loosely touched on considering the entire element is the manual intervention side and the time. And we see a lot of businesses and I've certainly got quite a few clients who traditionally have gone into business, left their jobs, you know, both for a work-life balance arrangement, but also to pursue their own adventure, you know, spend more time with their family be more in control of their work hours. And what ends up happening is during the day, you're flat out running the business trying to make sure you can keep the lights on, so to speak, you know, trying to generate that revenue grow, deliver the results, deliver what you need to. But then also in the evenings, they're then making sure that, you know, the bank accounts all nice and sorted and they're paying people and it ends up in a situation where you do lots of the admin of the business, the finances, the business in the evenings and that attracts from, you know, can you go on holiday? No, because you've got to pay these invoices and pay these bills. You know, are you able to spend time with your families? Are you able to spend time with your friends? Whatever your goals are usually going into business. They tend to be lost because you are doing these things manually and because they are safely still. And maybe you are very lucky and you've managed to get everything in order and work effectively. But where I've mentioned the bottom of this slide, when we talk about scaling and growing our business, we need to understand that at some point, you know, maybe you don't want to scale and grow your business. And that's fine. But if you do want to do that, we need to have a system by which it's able to work without you working in the evenings. And this has an impact on your lifestyle, it has an impact on the business, it has an impact on the value of the business, it has an impact on your own sanity. So there are loads of different avenues and reasons as to why we look at automating something like this. So I mentioned cloud-based accounting systems or at least I think digital accounting systems at least. So we often refer to digital systems our most cloud-based and effectively when I say cloud-based, the data is stored on a server that is not on-premises with you. On-premises means in your office, on your laptop, desktop, on a hard drive, so it's stored remotely. And cloud-based services and products all around us, so Netflix, online e-commerce platforms, eBay, Amazon, for example, your internet banking, social media, all of these tools and ways that you interact with the world are all cloud-based. And it's important to understand that by being cloud-based, you have the flexibility and the freedom to access them and use them where you want. So I've included some key features, our sort of key elements as to why we want to use or why cloud-based accounting systems are really valuable. So first of all, the cost. So yes, there is a cost to using systems, but they tend to be a low monthly cost. So cloud-based accounting systems tend to work on what's called a SaaS model, which is software as a service. So like your Netflix subscription, you pay each month, you effectively pay for cloud accounting software in the same way. So you opt in, you should have a trial period, sign up after that, you pay a monthly fee for the use of the software, and there's generally no lock-in contracts, no service periods or terms. So you can, if you want to, start, turn them off, reconnect with them in whatever way you need to, and it's a little bit more fluid. And it's really important to understand that historically, when we look at accounting systems and software, so quite a well-known name in the UK is Sage50, or Sage50 is the product of Sage, obviously the company. Now they have a, historically, you'd pay a lot of money for the software, because once they're sold it to you, you could have it sitting on your desktop for 50 years, and it would still work in principle. So there's no real, you buy the software, you're buying a physical item, albeit intangible. But the problem with that is, if you wanted to upgrade it, so a new feature came along, you'd have to pay extra to upgrade it. Usually it spends a thousand to fifteen hundred pounds training yourself on how to use it, so they'd offer training and setup packages, so they're quite costly. So in order to get a accounting system, it was a big investment, it was really, really, really tough. And for a lot of small businesses, you know, spending fifteen hundred quid and then seven hundred quid on top of that in the accounting system seems a bit overkill relative to actually what you need to run the business. So we're moving away from the idea that you need this huge implementation cost. Certainly the more complicated the system, the more detailed it is, generally you'd probably want someone alongside with you. The training or the change management for sure. But for a lot of businesses, you're able to look and implement something relatively cost-effectively and introduce very, very many efficiencies straight away. Something I decided to touch on there under the cost category is free support. So most software, cloud software providers understand that in order to generate customers and to work with them directly, they need to offer some variety of support. And this varies across different software providers and certainly some do it much better than others. But we do need to kind of appreciate that actually, you know, that that is their free, usually or very, very cheaply to the cheap to access. So flexibility and security and often, you know, there's a bit of hesitance when it comes to cloud platforms around security. But I just like to talk about a little bit of that in context in this section here. So we're able to access our data and this is important for I use this example a lot. I used to use a slightly different example. I'll give you both, but they mean the same thing. So one of them is where you spill coffee or drop coffee or tea or water on your laptop and it fizzles out. You may drop it at a high someone, you know, a child may come and pick it up and drop it somewhere or spill something on it. And all of your data is gone or all unless you're really getting back at that, which is great if you do that, but I know a lot of people don't. All that data is gone. What I'm able to do if I use cloud based accounting systems is go into a sharp carries by a laptop, come home, open it up, log straight in, everything's there. So this is really valuable because you get the ability to access your data without having to carry around or lug around some physical object. And this works in a couple ways. So people think that because it's on a physical laptop or on a hard drive that it's safe. But it's very easy. For example, your computer to be exposed to malware. Very easy to have data that's ransomed. We've had a couple of clients that have had their data ransomed. And it's not great, not friendly, awful things to do quite costly. And it's very easy to do that on a computer, on your local computer when it's cloud based. We have a load of a team of people effectively protecting that data constantly. Their main focus is around data protection. So if you think about it, yes, more people are going to target where cloud based accounting system cloud based software is stored. But they've also got a whole team dedicated to protecting it. So it's much more secure practically speaking than it is it to keep data on your on your desktop or laptop. So we have two factor authentication list that I'm not going through in order. So apologies about that. You have two factor authentication, which is another level of verification. So zero one of the cloud based accounting platforms we work with the most have made that mandatory. So it's mandatory for a zero user to use two factor authentication, which means a, and you probably come across this before, but a text message or a phone call or an app on your phone. I will help authenticate that login. Now what this effectively means is let's just say your data or your password is compromised. They will require a secondary level of access or authorization from you in order to gain access to data. So that's kept on a separate device away from where you're normally looking in. And the idea behind that is at that level extra layer of security there. We've also seen a sort of incentives like if, for example, they notice you're locking in from a different IP address will lock out your account until you're able to verify the data that it's you looking in. And that again, it's just another way of improving the level of security that surround your accounting system. So most cloud based appalling platforms tend to have unlimited users to able to invite in sort of a bookkeeper or an accountant or, you know, anyone who you work with to have access to that you can even provide bank access of the bank access to it if you'd like. And we've even seen now, especially in the last couple of years, a lot of if you have an HMRC inspection, we give them read only access to your data. So they're able to look at that information directly rather than printing it out on documents or finding paper copies of invoices and those sorts of things. So obviously you don't have to but it is just one of the benefits. We don't talk about any device anytime so that obviously works if you need to replace your laptop, but it also works for example if you go on holiday, you maybe want to maybe have a couple of different devices your mobile device for example. So there is loads of different ways to access and work with cloud based accounting software. So we have multiple backups so where the cloud data is stored, more often than not they have a copy that's second to second identical, and then they have a copy that's a few hours behind they're all stored at different locations. So you tend to have a very, very high level of security and sort of disaster planning, which is very, very important for cloud based accounting platforms. Now where we look at our user experience and this is something that again I think is really, really important. So they tend to refrain from using accounting based terminology. And this is important for yes it's great so I'm a child of kind of a qualified account in my background. I understand all the terminology of works in accounting practice for years. It's great and I understand all now, but when I started out I found it really complicated to understand exactly what was going on what integrated to what what what was working with what. And it's not great you know you go into business not to be an accountant but to do a business you would like to do, whether or not that's a service based business or a goods trading business, or in a situation where you need to make it simple and easy for you as possible. So that's one of the benefits they understand their audience, they're not selling a software to accountants they're selling a software to a business owner. So ours now as a user experience developments that's what UX is. So effectively user experience is fundamental to a lot of modern businesses. We think about how we engage with our banks how we engage with with our social network providers we consider how we gauge without our own, you know where we buy things from our own purchases I guess. And we think about how we want to engage with those things and how we want to engage those suppliers. And then that's the focus. So they're trying to make it as easy and effective as possible to deliver what you want. And that includes you know we we participate in the study writer to be recently. We were asked how many clicks we were tracked how many clicks it took to go from one screen to another, and they spent hours and hours and weeks covering off on what how to reduce that by one or two clicks. So there's an idea of the customer experience is the forefront. And that means that when you're engaging with that you're not having to kind of, you know, click a thousand times and dial between different screens and have an inefficient way of working. So we talk about features to sign to make it make your life easier. So when I think about that, what I'm looking at is I need to do a function and I'm trying to do it in the easiest and most cost effective way as possible. And cloud based systems, there's a lot of competition. So they need to make sure that what they're giving you is effective, easy and user friendly. So there are new features that are brought out all the time. So the rate of development, the rate of scale from, you know, 10 years ago, 20 years ago. Our technological developments are scaling up so quickly that we need to make sure that, you know, when we look at a system, is it going to have a strong development team? Are they going to be looking at things easier, adopting new technologies, adopting new processes? And it's very, very important to understand that and understand how that impacts on the business and your selection. So cloud based accounting systems, you know, or any cloud based account, cloud based business system, understand that in order to remain competitive, they need to make sure that what they're doing is relevant, effective and modern. Because we're going to be looking for that, you know, we want to emails on our phone, we want to be able to join a team's meeting, we want to be able to use, you know, Uber Eats or Deliveroo very, very quickly, we want to see everything much more effectively and faster than we've ever done before. And that's important to understand that as well. So where we have, where we have our apps and the web optimization, so often they'll have a mobile app for you to do particular functions, maybe it's to look at information, interpret information, but ultimately what we're doing is we're creating this easy to use experience. Whether or not you're on an iPad, or on a, on a, you know, on a mobile phone, on a web browser, on a Mac, PC, Google Chrome, it doesn't matter, the experience is the same. And it allows you to, you know, let's just say you're a plumber or electrician, you're able to go outside, you know, go on site rather, do the work and then issue an invoice straight away. So you're not having to go home, have it written down, you know, write it down, copy it into some other system, create a Word document for it, you're able to raise an invoice straight away and issue that. And a common example is where we've seen a lot of businesses go and raise invoices, send them to the customer, and there's a pay now link in there so they can pay via credit card, via direct debit if they're a regular customer. And so it improves not only cash collection, but efficiency, you don't have to enter things twice to have to worry about lost bits of paper. So the idea is that you're facilitating and making a whole system much more effective, effectively completing a job, which is exactly what you're expecting it to do. So I've got a couple of case studies here that I'm going to talk about. I've got two examples, one on the very large and one on the smaller end. So ABC Limited was one of our clients effectively used, they came to us specifically to look at their systems. So they used desktop based software with Sage50, which I know it's recorded, which has defeated the purpose of that just a little bit, but it was Sage50. So it was desktop based software, the parents were handing the business over to their children wanting to retire, they were done, they'd finished the business, they were giving it on to that next generation. And they wanted to implement this cloud based software. It happened just before the pandemic, which is perfect timing. So what we effectively were able to do is implement a cloud based accounting system for them. We were able to transition with their historical data into the cloud, they would seal that information, we're able to refine and improve some of their processes. So cut out the manual work, introduce some software that helped manage that. When the pandemic hit, naturally transitioning a business at that point was quite problematic for them. Because they were using zero, what we're able to do is assist and provide assistance to them remotely. They were able to work together remotely to try and fix and to manage the business. So it was really, really useful that historically they would have had to have gone to the opposite separate occasions in principle to sort of access the desktop of the software is on. It would have meant that we would have had to have got backups from them all the time. We would have had to remote desktop din, which meant someone was there as the access and the facilitation between each other was not there or not possible on a desktop based system. But because we use the cloud, because we're using zero, we're able to access that, make sure we were relevant, understood the impacts that the COVID was having on the business. And then we're able to help facilitate them getting loans and pay the CJRS grants. On the flip side, we have XYZ Limited here. So it's a business 250,000 turnover. So they'd started up and had left a corporate job, are effectively doing, doing sort of consultancy work. What they were doing is they want a large contract unexpectedly. And that involves sort of contract reporting and involved, you know, invoicing for expenses, making sure that they all had receipts, they had purchased sort of numbers. There was a whole whole effort into that. They're a sole trader, so it was simply running the business on their own. Obviously they didn't expect the level of work that was coming in and they needed financing. And the financing was to hire contractors. The financing was to provide, you know, equipment for those contractors. It was to be able to introduce a, to effectively fund the business of paying for expenses before the customer paid. Their contract was relatively large corporate who own a tourist seat or corporate paying. So they needed a bit of working capital to sort of help keep the business afloat and running. So they were able to move on to zero. We set them up on zero, got a few of their months data in there. They're able to start running the business, keep everything up to date, report that information to their, before that information to their contractors. Sorry, their contract to the customer. They're able to provide the finances reports to the bank for financing. They're able to understand much more effectively and quicker how they're able to get what where they were, how profitable they were, what their projected cash position was in a few weeks time. You know, are they able to pay these, you know, if that customer doesn't pay that invoice on time, what's that going to look like from a financing and a working capital perspective. So there are loads of different elements and reasons as to why having very, very quick relevant access, sorry, quick access to relevant information is super important. When running a business and both of these, you know, if you consider they have one thing in common, they were growing or wanted to grow. More importantly, they found areas in the business they weren't running effectively. So whether or not they were a large corporate that wasn't doing things, you know, a larger business that wasn't doing things effectively and they wanted to help make that transition across. Or whether or not they started something up and they were scaling the business quicker than they anticipated and they needed to implement a system relatively quickly. So on the case study for XYZ Limited, more often than not, what we'd see is a piecemeal system pulled together that would be fine to win the big contract. They'd probably get it over the line, but then if they want another one or continue to otherwise they'd keep running at that pace, keep running these inefficient systems for a very, very long time. And that has a very, very strong wear on business owner. You know, are they actually enjoying running the business or is it just becoming a bit of an administrative nightmare? And that those are the things to consider when we look at, you know, are we actually, are we actually what, what is the cost versus the benefit analysis being an accountant? That's what I think of. You know, are we actually doing things effectively and is it valuable for us to do that? You know, we often look at it like you're charging someone £200 an hour and it takes you four hours to do something manually, keying something into an Excel. The cost of the business is £800. Even though, yes, it's not because would it have been lost revenue otherwise the actual reality is it is costing the business £800 to do something that a business or a system could have done much more effectively and quicker. So that's that angle that we need to consider as well. So I've put a list of a few sort of common accounting systems or just business systems in general. So the ones on the left hand side, hopefully some of them will be, you'll be aware of some of them, hopefully some of the using them. So we've got zero QuickBooks, Sage and Pre-Agent. So zero and QuickBooks are probably the more common ones. The Sage and Pre-Agent depending on the business that you run could be better for you. So there's obviously an option to choose between all of them. Ultimately, they do the same thing. But using an analogy of the car, if we do exactly the same thing, they did exactly the same function, we would all drive the same car, right? So we kind of go in to a dealership. We have a list of requirements. It doesn't need seven seeds. It doesn't need to be efficient. It doesn't need to be fast. What color does it want to be? And what we do is we have those criteria and then we help set that when we look at choosing a system. Does this system do what I need it to do? Or am I going to just choose one for the sake of choosing one? So on the right hand side, we have more business focus systems. So I'm just going to take a supporter for going to this. Apologies. So on the right hand side, we have four systems that I'm going to briefly explain what they do because they're not normal accounting systems. So DEX is an OCR software. And what that is is optical character recognition. So effectively what it allows you to do is take a picture on your phone or have an email come through. You're able to forward that or send that across into DEX. And what it will do is extract that information for you. So things like the date, the amount, the supplier, how much VAT is on there. And it will present that information to you in a nice sort of easy, nicely format that you're able to review, make any adjustments if you need to, and then send it across into an accounting system. So it has two benefits. One, everything is digital, which is important for HMRC and we'll cover up on that a little bit towards the end. We'll stay on the screen probably. But it allows you to keep everything electronic in nice and in a succinct way. No more paper receipts, no more trying to sort of keep them for seven years. So it's very, very helpful. The flip side is that it frees time up. So as you're spending, as you're kind of, you know, getting purchased invoices in, you're able to just follow them across and it does a lot of the data entry for you. So it's really speeding up that process, really removing the need for you to go and sit down at the end of the day and type things into an Excel or into a system manually. We then look at Futurely, which is a cashflow and reporting tool. So the idea behind this is you're able to link it into one of these suckwares on the left hand side, which is your accounting system. And it's able to pull this data across and generate reports for you. So this report can look at, you know, how are we this month on budget relative to our revenue, to our costs. And obviously budgeting is one thing that, you know, a lot of smaller businesses need to get better at and do. So certainly this can help you with that. You're able to look at your sort of profitability. You're able to compare your month on month. You know, compared to last year, you're able to look at your year to date revenue and costs. And you're able to get a lot more data. And the idea behind this is that you're actually generating insights. And it's a very, very common word that people use and probably overuse if I'm honest. But what the idea behind it is, is the data is there. But in order to make an effective decision for the business, you need to be able to not only gather the data, not only see the data, but interpret that information as well. And often information is irrelevant without context. So we tend to look at sort of compared to prior years, we look at compared to a budget. And these systems allow us to gather that information much more quickly and effectively. So we can take corrective or necessary action. So we've used this for a lot of clients where, for example, they're thinking about taking on a new employee. So we're able to take their data, look at what they anticipate the revenue growth to be. As often, you know, they're taking an employee, it's to either reduce the time they're spending on administration or it's to increase the revenue of the business or support the revenue growth of the business. So we're able to project that, look at what their cash flow looks like, look at what the information is for their bottom line, their tax. And it helps provide an insight to the business that you wouldn't otherwise get very effectively or very quickly from just looking at an Excel spreadsheet or your bank statements. So we've got Plio down there. Plio is a card or an expense management tool. So effectively, you're able to preload one of these cards up. Give them to employees, give them to contractors. You're able to use your own spending. Are you able to categorize it, attach your receipts? So instead of your normal sort of debit card or credit card, this is a perfect replacement for that. You're able to pay invoices from it rather than looking to your online banking. And you're able to really start to analyze some of your spending in a different way. So you're able to set limits. So this is quite important where maybe you have a couple of employees. I think you might give them a corporate card. It's just sick and tired of having to run around and pay for everything yourself. This can be a good substitute for that. You can also allow employees or yourself to submit mileage claims. Record your own expenses need to be reimbursed by the business. So there's a whole lot of this expense management side, which is really, really important. The benefit is it integrates these systems on the left. So anything you do in any one of these systems either pulls information or pushes information back with the accounting system, which means that we're generating a whole collective information here. On that note, all four of these systems have bank feeds, which you may have heard of before you may be using. Effectively, what you're doing is connecting these systems up to your bank account. Don't worry, it doesn't make any payments. There's bank level encryption on there. So you're not going to be able to, you can opt in to make payments via zero. But for example, what we're able to do is connect your bank up. It takes scraping of your transactions and brings them into your accounting tool. So there's no doubt that some of you on here will be downloading your bank savings, typing them into an Excel, categorizing them into columns. And then that's how you're keeping the records. This flips that. So the bank transactions automatically appear, then you match them either to a sales invoice, a purchasing voice, or you're typing in the details then and there. So there's a whole lot of different things to do in this space, a whole lot of features to make things not easier. We just need to look at what's important, what you need to do and whether or not the cost of the system is worthwhile. Integrating or many. When we look at Shopify, so you probably already have Shopify and you have an e-commerce platform or sell online, you probably are using Shopify or something similar. So that's really helpful for businesses who maybe have a brick and mortar store, or maybe we're trying to push different selling on different platforms. You'll have Etsy or Amazon or Shopify. You're able to integrate Shopify and things like Instagram and other social media platforms. So you're able to really start to get a whole lot of information together very quickly and start to introduce new revenue streams into the business. So as I mentioned about the cost and the car analogy, it's really important that not all of these systems are relevant. So you're not going to necessarily need to use Dex, Futurely, Plio and Shopify. All businesses should use zero Quick Book Sager free agent, but it's not necessarily that you've obviously any other system as well. These are just the ones that we tend to recommend, but they need an accounting system generally. These ones on the right-hand side are just ways of introducing or adding on additional processes or stages. I just talked about this a little bit more. So we're wrapping up relatively quickly. I've only got a couple of slides left after this. I'd just like to say that HMRC have introduced. It was a couple of years ago now, but it's now fully enforced. It's something called Making Tax Digital. So if you are registered for VAT in the UK, your accounting system need to contain digital links. Then when I say digital links, what this is, if you enter data into one system, it has to automatically shift into another via a digital link. So go to the software doing it itself in order to make the account MTB compliant. So MTB stands for Making Tax Digital. Why it came about was HMRC said, you know what, we've got far too many businesses making errors. So they'd submit a bar return, go and amend it later, end up having to pay HMRC or have it refunded. So by implementing MTB, HMRC have said, actually, do you know what we're wanting to do is to make sure that all businesses are doing this in an effective way. So they're submitting their bar return, there aren't as many errors. And in principle, this will extend income tax as well. So income tax, I think comes into effect in 2023 from the top of my head. So you'll need to submit quarterly returns to HMRC, which are kind of just some reason how things going. So sort of what your revenue and costs look like. So they can predict your tax the end of the year. So whilst it sounds a bit bad, it's good. It will mean that the tax burden to pay at the end of the year isn't as bad and you're able to pay it during the year as well as have an opportunity to make any clearing up process at the end. So all those sort of tricks of the trade that maybe went at the end of a period will still be able to be done. But it just looks for major or huge efficiencies between them. So where we look at these systems, why it's so helpful is we're able to generate a connected and intricate system that works for your business. So data is exchanged very effectively. Information is automatically transferred between different systems. And when it's submitted to HMRC, you're MTB compliant. And there's a whole load of variables and then potential outcomes and answers for that. So certainly, you know, we can talk about a little bit at the end. But if you've got specific examples or situations, it might be easy to contact me outside of the session. So what do I need to do to get started? So you're sat here and you're listening to this either currently in the session or as recording. What do I need to do to get started? It all sounds great, but I'm a bit lost and I don't know how to proceed. So where I would start personally is to look at what does your business accounting system or your business systems look like? What are we doing for accounting? What are we doing for our voicing? What are we doing for our sales? What are we doing for our purchasing? How are we managing our mileage claims? How are we banking? Are we doing any reporting? You know, we need to kind of look at and understand all the different variables that are going on. And then we can start to look at how to automate them and make them easier. So it'd be kind of like trying to solve a puzzle or do a puzzle without understanding what the image is at the end. So without trying to understand all the different components and pieces, we're never going to put together something that works for the business. So we're not only trying to find out, you know, if you think about practical examples. So I really wanted this, this one time that I couldn't find it without spending hours rummaging through filing cabinets or emails. Or, you know, someone asked me about this and I couldn't find it quick enough. And it meant that I lost a sale or, you know, ends up, you know, it has some detrimental effect to business. So what we're trying to do by this is forcing you to kind of think about, you know, where are the strengths in business? Where are the weaknesses? What am I using? And then we're able to go, well, how do we make that better? Are there any gaps? Are there any improvements? Do we do something really well? Do we do something really badly? So it's not about, you know, we're only trying to pick holes or pick issues and things. We're trying to understand what we do well and can we apply some of those tactics and some of those methods to these other areas? Because often, you know, we get a lot, especially with sort of sole traders or contractors, the exceptional what they do, really, really good at it, but can't do the other parts of the business very well. They can apply the same to the principles and logic, but it's just not something you're necessarily going to consider and think about without almost having a reason to and stop and think, actually, am I doing this in an efficient way or is it actually causing me a nightmare? And if you are sort of up at 11, 12 at night trying to fiddle something and organize something or, you know, raising invoices, then that's a clear indicator to me that you probably need to look at moving online or at least making things a bit more efficient. In conjunction with that, we need to contemplate what the goals are of the business. So are we wanting to grow? Are we wanting to free up time? Because they're too contradictory. You can do a bit of both, but you tend to say you wanted to get a little bit more time back. Are you wanting to grow the business? Are you wanting to diversify, you know, your income streams? Are you wanting to manage your costs a little bit better? And what you're able to do is take those goals and look at your processes and make sure they're helping you achieve them. So a process should be about taking input, changing it or doing something with it in order to achieve a goal. If we're not doing that and we're doing something for the sake of doing it or we're doing something because that's the way we've done it, or we think it's the easiest way to do it, we're not really aligning our goals with our processes and our inputs. And it means you end up in this awful situation where you do things with no real purpose or need. So once you've got a bit of an understanding of both of those, what you then do is look at systems that will help solve these problems. So do I need an OCR tool like DEX? Do I need an accounting system like zero or free agent? Which one's going to be a little bit easier for me? What features do they have that could help me? And then you trial them. So you give it a go, you play around with their features. I know that we all wish we had spare time to do this, but it is one of those things that will make your life easier in the long run. You just have to have a bit of faith and a bit of, you know, this is the right thing to do. And hopefully even you being on this call today is really indicative of that. So we look at then introducing that into the business. So once you've picked a system, you know, this should work well. Introduce it, trial around a little bit more live case scenarios and really understand what's going on. So with anything, you're never going to get immediate results. You might get a few, but you'll start to see the reduction in time as you commit more and more to the system. So we often see people adopt a system at two or three weeks later. We'll stop using it because it was all too hard. They couldn't find something they wanted straight away, but bear in mind you're trying to do this to achieve an overall goal. So you need to make sure you're staying focused and diligent on that. So what the end result is to free up time to grow the business to make it scalable. So you can go on holiday and get someone to look after it for a few days without worrying and stressing everything's going to fall apart. Think about that goal and commit to it and making sure that, you know, we're actually implementing it into our business. And, you know, one thing is that change is never easy. I know that's a cliche in itself, but we all know that. But it's really important to understand that long term will have a much better impact on the business if we just factor in what we're trying to achieve. So lastly, just to highlight this, this will only be very quick, I promise you. So we deliver what's called a systems review service. So effectively what we do is take all your business, your processes, your goals and your system as we try and form together as one. And then we help you along that journey. So we take some of that stress away from trying to pick a system. Now you can do it yourself. That's exactly why we've gone through this session today. But certainly if you are getting a little bit stuck and you need kind of a little bit of guidance, there's certainly people that can help you do that. We also have discounts on licenses and those things. So we do just offer that for people who want to save a little bit of money on the subscriptions. So thank you for listening, everyone, and hopefully you've learned something today. And I think we've got maybe a couple of questions, but Cheryl, if you'd like to. Oh, I think I was on mute. That was brilliant. Thank you so much, Aidan. Yeah, I mean, I put some questions in there myself because as I was talking to you before, this is kind of like a whole area that I'm really interested at the moment. Does anybody is anybody else willing to pop in the chat what they use and whether they're, you know, that's been successful for everybody else to have a look at. But, you know, as a sole trader, do you necessarily need a carpenter box or an accountant or a bookkeeper? Or if you get yourself a really good system, can you pretty much run this yourself? What are your thoughts on that, Aidan? I don't want to sort of, you know, put anybody else coming to you, but. Yeah, so books like this, you can. It's like a personal trainer, right? So you can go to the gym yourself. You can understand how to use the equipment based on the diagrams. You can kind of sort yourself out in a pretty easy way. But what personal trainer does is apply that experience and their knowledge to help tailor something a bit more specific to you. And that's exactly what this sort of thing will do. So it's not a requirement, but certainly having someone alongside and their partner with you to help convey some of that experience helps it easier for it makes it easier for everyone to work. Sure. And I know just now I've mentioned about subscription payments. I'm assuming a lot of these systems you can pay monthly like you can with most things online. Is that the case? That's sort of mostly. Yeah, so usually direct debits will just sort of come out each month and there are varied plans and costs and sort of add-ons and things you'd sort of expect. So there's a range of different kind of different approaches. Brilliant. And lastly, Vicki's asked, does Dext, Futurely, Pliot, Shopify, do they all integrate and work well with zero QuickBooks, Sage and FreeAgent? So how's the sort of integration between them all? Yeah, so they work really well together. A couple of them don't work as well as others, but they all they all usually integrate pretty effectively. So they're quite common ones to implement across all. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. Thank you so much for your time, Hayden. And if you've got any questions or queries, I know Hayden's more than willing to follow up after this session and his email is on the screen at the moment. We will also be sending out Hayden's slides and there is a recording of this presentation if you're interested in that. So just let us know. Oh, sorry, just something else coming for Vicki. Which are the ones that don't work together as better as others? And no, Vicki, ask away. It's fine. Yeah, so for example, Futurely works best with QuickBooks and zero, not so well with FreeAgent and Sage. And Plier works really well with zero, but not so much with the others. Shopify works well with all of them with no issues, but not as good as FreeAgent as FreeAgent. It's not really that sort of business, not aimed at that sort of business. And then Dex works well with all of them. So, yeah. Okay, does that help Vicki? That's good. Okay, brilliant. As I said, you know, feel free to follow up with Hayden after this session. And we will send slides out and recordings. So thank you once again, Hayden. Thanks Vicki. Thank you to everybody for joining us today. And I look forward to seeing everybody on Thursday for our next session with Laura. If you haven't booked already, please do. And I look forward to seeing you then and have a great afternoon. Thank you again. Thank you so much. Bye bye now. Thanks Hayden. Bye bye.