For Australian bookkeeping practices
You're the one holding it together. That's the problem.
Nineteen years running my own practice taught me where the margin actually goes: work that reaches review before it's ready, and gets done twice. I build the checks and work papers that stop that, on the stack you already have.
What eats the week
You already know the list.
- The chasing. 10-20% of the week, gone hunting documents and answers that should have turned up on their own.
- Back in the weeds. You get pulled into the data entry, because accuracy isn't negotiable and you're the one carrying it.
- The plan changes you absorb. Xero puts its prices up. Dext changes what's included in a tier. You're the one explaining it to fixed-fee clients, on your own time.
- Onboarding that never takes ten minutes. Getting a new client to accept you as their agent, then setting up the jobs, the task list, the billing, the engagement letter, and chasing the final signature.
- The admin nobody bills for. Pricing, proposals, re-scoping, and all the small setup that has to happen before any real work starts.
- And now the compliance wave. Payday Super, AML/CTF Tranche 2, and working out where your practice stands on the TPB's guidance for using AI.
And underneath all of it, the same thought every quarter: I just need to get through this BAS cycle.
And then there's the review
Work reaches review before it's ready.
Something's missing. The clearing account doesn't clear. The GST rec is just plain wrong. So it goes back, gets fixed, and comes up again, and you look at the same job twice.
The person doing that second look is the most expensive one in the practice. They're carrying the registration and the liability, and they're the constraint on everything that leaves the building.
That's where the margin goes. Not just the chasing, the doing it twice.
The squeeze
Hire, and margin drops. Stay lean, and capacity chokes.
That's the trap, and every obvious fix just picks a side of it. I suppose that's why so many principals end up at the same ledge: sell now while the multiples are good, or stay and work out how to adapt.
I think there's a third option, and it isn't another app. Take the grind out of the operational processes themselves, and the margin and the capacity look after themselves.
What I'm building
The step between bank rec and review.
Payroll, GST, clearing and suspense reconciliations, run as checks, with the work papers produced at the end of it.
So when a job lands on the reviewer's desk it's actually ready. They check the documents, tick it off, lodge. Nothing goes back.
It works with the tools you already have. Xero, XPM, Karbon, FYI, Dext, Hubdoc, ClickUp, whatever combination you've ended up with. Nothing new to buy, and nothing for your team to learn beyond where the work papers turn up.
Enough of it runs today that I can show you. What's not settled is the detail, and that's what these conversations are for.
While we're here
You were never “just the bookkeeper”.
You know a client's business better than their tax accountant does. Most of the time you know the day to day better than the owner does. I'll defend that point plainly. I spent nineteen years on the wrong end of it.
So none of this is about replacing the judgement you've built. It's about getting the junior-level grind off your desk, so the judgement is what you actually spend the day on.
Where to start
Under the Bonnet.
An hour on your practice. Not a demo and not a discovery call. I do the homework first, and you leave with things you can go and fix yourself.
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01
Send me a message
Email or LinkedIn, whichever suits. A few lines about your practice is plenty to start with. No call needed to work out whether this is worth your time.
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02
Then a short questionnaire
Five minutes, mostly tick boxes. Not compulsory, but the hour is worth a lot more if I know where you're at before we start.
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03
I do the homework
I go through your setup before we talk, so you're not spending the hour explaining your own stack to me. Mostly I'm looking for what's sitting in plain sight: things you already pay for that were never switched on, and work that falls between two tools because neither one owns it.
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04
We walk your month
A typical month, then out to the quarter. Who does what, what's repetitive, and what you find yourself doing over and over. Then tool by tool through the stack.
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05
You leave with a list, not a proposal
Two or three things worth doing that you can go and do yourself, and a written summary the next morning you can forward to whoever wasn't in the room.
How it ends
Everything we find goes in one of three buckets.
Sorted before we finish, so you can see what's worth your time and what isn't. It's all in the written summary as well.
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Bucket one
This week
Native, free, already sitting in something you pay for. No help needed.
Yours -
Bucket two
Worth a proper look
Needs a bit of configuration, or a decision made about how you want it to work.
Either of us -
Bucket three
Needs building
Cross-tool work that no single vendor's product does, because neither of them has a reason to.
Me
Why me
I've done the month-ends.
I ran a bookkeeping practice in Australia for nineteen years. Built it, grew it, sold it in 2025. Registered BAS agent the whole way, running a Xero-only cloud practice, so I've lived the ecosystem. The price-rise unselling, the Dext versus Hubdoc argument, the quarterly treadmill.
Before bookkeeping I spent years in automation and IT, doing Oracle DBA and SAP admin work. I built automations inside my own practice because I already knew how. Now I've put the two careers together.
I'm not a hype guy, and I won't tell you AI replaces bookkeepers. I've done too many month-ends to believe that.
“People came to me stressed, sometimes in tears, not knowing what to do. And we'd get them to books sorted, better cash flow, more profitable, and most importantly of all - the stress gone. That's the part of the job that mattered most, and it's why I'm building this with practices, not at them.” Why I build it this way
Right now
It's free.
I'm running these while I build. I'm mapping the stack combinations Australian practices actually run and where the time really goes. I want to have real practices in the data.
Who it's for
A cloud practice with 50 or more clients, running a ledger plus some practice management or workflow layer. Owner or practice manager in the room.
What it costs you
A message, five minutes on the questionnaire, then the hour. That's it. There's nothing to buy at the end of it.
If it's useful
I'd like to write up what we found, named or anonymous, your call. And if you think another practice would get something out of it, an introduction would be appreciated.