Accounting firm achieves time efficiencies and cost savings with digital payments

Hemisphere Accounting is a highly successful accounting practice with offices in Sydney and London.

When Geraldene Dobson started the company 14 years ago, one element helped separate her accounting firm from the others: technology.

Hemisphere Accounting is focused on getting their 500+ clients the best results possible by combining the best of technology and the best of accounting practices.

“It’s important they find it easy to work with us,” she says. “No matter where they are in the world, or what they’re doing.”

But, over time, the growing pile of small but necessary banking processes for making payments – especially overseas payments – became bigger, and it began to slow things down for her and her team.

“We had a lot of frustration around payment functionality.”

“The whole process had become difficult. There was the matter of logging in to the bank, the time taken to set up payments, and then all of the manual steps after such as collecting the various receipts, which we then had to get to the client for their records… it became a big process stack.”

Geraldene’s systems-based approach provided some relief, but these painful steps kept eating a lot of time and effort – for both her team and some of her clients.

“We began making little document packs for clients,” she says. “That let them review the invoices to be paid and give approvals, but it didn’t fully solve matters.”

“There was the problem of payments expiring. If, for example, a payment wasn’t approved by 4:00 P.M., most of the payment process would have to begin again the next day.”

“And this was really difficult when a large client needed two approved signatures for their payments. It became a matter of chasing various people to secure approvals before the expiry time came around.”

“Overall, there was a lot of duplication.”

And it was made even worse by a clunky bank payments system used by one of her bigger clients.

It all became a flashpoint for change.

"I remember that client saying ‘I’m not using this anymore!’."

It had locked him out, and it was obvious how annoyed he was.

I needed to find a solution for these payment frustrations my clients kept experiencing, and I needed to reduce the time my staff were spending on this process.

I needed a more efficient way to make payments.

Geraldene and her team had battled for long enough. And relief came with an unexpected call.

“Ingrid from Paytron contacted me,” she says. “I’d seen Paytron sometime earlier and I could see that it just might be helpful for my team and some of my clients.”

She was optimistic, but also wanted to make sure that the system would work with their team’s processes.

For her, any new system or software must deliver these two outcomes:

“It needs to do things faster and more easily, and if it’s cheaper, that’s a bonus.”

Geraldene found it easy to set up Paytron. She and her team were up and running within a few hours, and her first client was operating just as quickly.

She was impressed.

“The way Paytron integrates with Xero makes a big difference,” she says. “You don’t need to keep logging back into Xero to see bills that need to be paid, and you don’t need to switch back and forth between two systems. It's very user friendly."

Paytron’s ease of use became the first domino in a series of gains for Geraldene and her team.

“Payments, especially overseas payments, became much simpler to set up,” she says. “And this made our lives easier."

“Paytron quickly began saving us a lot of time. And I knew by saving time we were reducing our costs – and saving money for our clients.”

Because she works on a fixed-fee basis with her clients, these time and cost reductions were critical. And they even sparked an idea.

“Because Paytron delivers so many impressive time and cost efficiencies we don’t pass on any fees when our clients use it,” she says. “We simply make it available to them free-of-charge – because it makes their lives easier, our lives easier, and we all save time and money.”

That decision was a breakthrough.

“My goal is to make the financial side of things easy, efficient and more streamlined for our clients. And Paytron ticked all of these boxes from the start.”

Geraldene uses Paytron with a number of her accounting clients, especially those making regular overseas payments. And the list keeps growing.

“We have a lot of international clients, including a very large company in the UK,” she says. “I’m excited to roll it out to them because I currently assign three of my staff to manage their needs.”

And when asked what advice she’d give someone who’s thinking about Paytron, Geraldene’s message is clear:

“Just use it,” she says, smiling. “It’s easy to set up, it’s easy to use, it integrates with key systems, and it’s very efficient.

Geraldene found that Payton makes digital payments simpler, faster and less expensive.

She leverages Paytron every day for efficiency gains in her accounting business. She even makes sure her clients can access its proven time – and money-saving power.

Get in touch to see how it can do the same for you.