I’ve been working at Silverfin for a little over 6 months now, after my brief hiatus away from the world of UK SME accountancy, and it’s felt like I’ve never been away. For anybody that didn’t know, I spent roughly 4 years working for a little known blue branded cloud bookkeeping platform with strong NZ roots, so not a complete stranger.

It’s been great to catch up with firms, people and colleagues I’ve worked with before and equally as interesting to meet with plenty of new people, practices and products that I haven’t, learning a little bit about what has changed recently.

Despite the rapid evolution in accounting technology, Excel remains entrenched as the default tool for year-end preparation and client working papers. So I thought I’d have a stab at writing my first blog as to why this might be and some reasons why a structured working papers tool like Silverfin can make a real difference.

Why Excel No. 1 – We built out these working paper templates 12 years ago

I am sure you did a great job back then, I’m even more certain, it was an arduous task and it is hard to let go of anything that took a lot of effort. But times change, people change, clients change, staff change, everything changes and if your software and processes don’t change with it, you risk falling behind in a multitude of ways. Sticking with outdated tools like Excel for working papers is a surefire way to fall behind in efficiency, accuracy and ultimately reputation. Clients today have different requirements and expectations, the people that built your excel working papers may not even still be at your practice and those excel templates themselves may have been modified beyond recognition like a game of chinese whispers. This leaves you with a non standard way of working with multiple, inefficient, unregulated ways of working meaning that the output product can vary massively.

Switching to a cloud-based platform like Silverfin addresses these challenges by:

• Fed in real-time by live syncs to your clients system of record for example, Xero
• Pre-built workflows can be applied as the mandated process for client jobs
• Staff working from the same one platform environment, one set of records and client data
• Standardising clients transactional data by converting to a single CoA to create a uniform data set so that each client file follows the same format giving you all your data in the same ‘language’
• Out of the box templates are kept up to date of all legislation changes ahead of time

Let me remind you, Excel is 36 years old this year! Nothing wrong with being 36 years old (as I’m not far off myself) but I’m certainly doing things differently than I was 30+ years ago!

Why Excel No. 2 – We need the flexibility of Excel

I’ll be the first to agree that not every situation is the same and therefore some situations will demand a different approach. But if 90% or more of jobs can be completed the same way, does it not make sense to build a process that enforces a mandated but efficient and streamlined way of working?

And whilst Excel can undoubtedly offer unrivalled flexibility, I think you could easily add ‘manual’ or ‘time-consuming’ or ‘open to error’ as adjectives to describe adverse side effects of too much flexibility. 

Silverfin customers quote on average a 30% increase in capacity through using our platform. If something could offer me a 30% time saving against 90% of the jobs I had to complete, I’d certainly be interested in a conversation

Let me remind you, Excel is 36 years old!

Why Excel No. 3 – My staff are used to it

I have undoubtedly fallen foul of perhaps being a little insensitive to this and suggesting that to ‘pull rank’ is what is needed. On reflection, this is perhaps super hypocritical given that I would be the first to voice my concern of a project where I wasn’t being fully brought along for the ride!

A software implementation should involve a huge change management piece and it is not as simple as evaluating the technical software capabilities alone. Consideration needs to be given to –  

• Understanding your current process status quo and what you are trying to improve about it so you can effectively communicate why the change is happening – perhaps explain that Excel is 36 years old!
• ROI analysis
• Testing and training
• An appropriate forum for feedback
• How does a new solution fit in to your existing tech ecosystem

Streamlining Processes with Cloud-Based Digital Working Papers

That being said, it is a balancing act – you don’t have or weren’t given the responsibility to implement change without a degree of authority but considering the above bullet points will go some way to ensuring that your colleagues and team mates are brought along as part of the journey rather than kicking and/or screaming against it.

I am super proud and have seen first hand, the expertise with which our onboarding team set up a client project for success, execute that plan flawlessly and then continue to support customers on that transformation journey post implementation to build a long lasting software partnership. Silverfin’s belief that a client’s success is our success can’t be understated.