Sports Accounting Australia

Sports Accounting Australia (SAA) is all about sports. They’ve been assisting national and state sporting bodies across Australia with their finance and business planning for over a decade.

Already a huge proponent of Xero and other cloud-based accounting solutions, being a paperless firm has allowed SAA to leverage their employees to a level that allows them to support their clients’ goals effectively and efficiently.

We had a great conversation with Nataleigh Gleeson, their accounts manager, to talk about common accounting firm challenges, and to learn how CreditorWatch Collect has helped them to overcome some of these challenges.

Life before CreditorWatch Collect: Struggling to call up debtors

As an accounting firm, SAA juggled tools such as emails and spreadsheets to keep track of their clients’ debtors. It ended up being a pain when coordinating who was calling who and managing debtors overall. They were becoming reluctant to pick up the phone to call debtors and it was challenging to keep their AR service at the level they wanted it to be.

“The biggest area that the business needed to improve on was our debt collection,” says Nataleigh. “It’s not something that anyone wants to do as a business. We’re bookkeepers and accountants, not debt collectors so it was always left at the bottom of our priority list and we just didn’t have the time to invest into the area.”

“When some of our clients started asking us why we hadn’t called some of their outstanding debts, we knew we had to do something.”

SAA went on a hunt for an AR solution that would both match their price-point and give them end-to-end debtor management service so that no phone needed to be picked up again.

Finding their fit with CreditorWatch Collect

Nataleigh decided to give CreditorWatch Collect a try. Nataleigh appreciated the time Lora (one of our Receivables Specialists) and Matt (our CEO) spent with her to make sure everything worked smoothly. “My first liaison with Lora and Matt was really easy and straight-forward. They were both really great.”

One of the things that sold Nataleigh was how CreditorWatch Collect could be tailored in a way that would best suit their practice. Prior to SAA, CreditorWatch Collect would onboard customers on an individual basis, but as an accounting firm with multiple clients, SAA needed to be able to add any client to CreditorWatch Collect quickly and easily…

“The way we set-up CreditorWatch Collect wasn’t the way you guys had set it up before, but it was a path that Matt wanted to go down, so I think we might have been one of his first clients he did this with. It works really, really well this way.”

Initially, SAA tested the waters. “We did a trial at first, Jade [CreditorWatch Collect Receivables Specialist] managed a couple of clients for me at the start, so I could look at what the feedback was like and it was really positive.”

After receiving positive feedback, Nataleigh discussed the idea of CreditorWatch Collect with more clients and they were all receptive to the idea. “We just started with one or two clients to see how it would unfold and that there were no trust issues. Everything went smoothly. So naturally, we on-boarded all of the other clients we do AR for and it’s been great.”

Life with CreditorWatch Collect

According to Nataleigh, CreditorWatch Collect has had a great impact on the firm. “A small outlay in cost has come back ten-fold. Our clients are happier than ever with their outstanding debtors the lowest they have ever been and we’ve been given back valuable time to be able to grow the business and focus on what we do best.”

SAA’s advice to other accountants

“We need to specialise in the things we’re good at – accounting, bookkeeping and assisting our clients to have a better understanding of their financials.” says Nataleigh.

“By outsourcing the tasks we don’t specialise in, we’ve been able to spend more time on the tasks we excel in.”