A Vision to Transform Financial Services
Rosie founded Accountability Edinburgh to provide hands-on financial services for clients, such as bookkeeping, VAT, payroll, and the day-to-day needs of a growing business. Traditional accounting firms often deliver year-round accounts and personal tax, but don’t typically engage in the daily operations of managing a business, “that’s where we come in. A lot of our referrals come from accounting firms. We work with clients on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. Increasingly we’re putting in place finance systems and advising how finance workflows could function more smoothly.”
Grappling with Manual Payments and Inefficiencies
Prior to working with Accountability, many of their clients struggled with manual payments. Spanning a broad range of industries from retail, design companies and charities, to building contractors and arts organisations, they saw the need for an automated and digital alternative to manual processes. "It's amazing how many organisations are still reliant on one person making payments manually. With Modulr’s one-step payment approvals, it's great to be able to now provide a simple solution to clients.”
With Modulr, the team at Accountability Edinburgh can alleviate the administrative overhead associated with processing payments provide and peace of mind to their clients.
“For one client, the weekly payment run was a huge administrative burden: 3 – 4 hours every week. With Modulr, we do it once a fortnight and it takes 20 minutes.”
Eliminating Administrative Overheads
Rosie detailed the administrative challenges of managing supplier and payroll payments, which previously required the operations manager at an arts organisation to isolate themselves and dedicate serious time to processing payments. By integrating Modulr into the payment process, the organisation has been able to reallocate this time to other important priorities and build stronger trust with their suppliers.
“They know they’re going to get paid the right amount, and that trust has meant we’ve been able to widen the payment runs to fortnightly, instead of weekly. It’s chalk and cheese compared to the experience they had before.”
“Modulr picks up the right figures from payroll and saves the data entry errors.”
“People hate making payments. I know Modulr is going to provide immediate respite from having to make all those payments manually.”
“Do you know what value that has for our relationships with our clients? That we can deliver something that has massively changed their world.”
Reducing Human Error
For busy business owners, delegating responsibilities is often the only way to ensure things are done on time. For one client of Accountability, the director delegated responsibility of the payroll payments, but the chosen employee paid the gross pay instead of the net pay by mistake. Implementing Modulr as part of their payroll workflow means the likelihood of human error is greatly reduced.“With Modulr, you’re not relying on somebody to know the difference between gross pay, net pay, take home pay, taxable pay. It’s not difficult to sell to customers, it’s a real added benefit.”
Simple and Reliable Payments
For small to medium business owners, paying suppliers can be highly stressful. With issues around cashflow, payment errors can be devastating – deliveries cancelled, supplier relationships damaged, etc. Additionally, many business owners find themselves writing off small sums caused by data errors, rather than taking the time to track down and remedy them.
“If a client’s suppliers know that they’re writing off payment errors, or paying late or incorrectly, it’s not a great message to send. But if it's bill payments from Xero, we can use Modulr to take on the responsibility of that. For the client, it’s literally the click of a button, and it’s done.”
Accountability Edinburgh has found a niche in their market, providing outsourced financial team services for small to medium businesses. The workflows they have helped to put in place for clients save time, save money, and propel efficiencies. Congratulations to the firm for being named Bookkeeping Partner of the Year at the Xero Awards! Modulr is incredibly proud to partner with such a forward-thinking firm in their mission to transform financial services for businesses.
Learn how Modulr’s services can transform your customers’ payroll and supplier payments experience, contact our sales team here.
Modulr is integrated with all major UK accounting and payroll software providers including BrightPay, Xero, Sage and IRIS. Learn more here.
