Cloud accounting software for financial services companies

Apera Asset Management Gets “Turbo-Charged” Accounting from AccountsIQ

Solving the accounting needs of a multi-entity, international business, Rob Shaw, CFO of Apera Asset Management chose to move from Xero to AccountsIQ when consolidation became too cumbersome and international jurisdiction requirements became too complex.  Rob explains, “I was looking for a Xero equivalent but more turbo-charged in its ability to do consolidation, meet the requirements of multiple jurisdictions, and handle foreign exchange.  AccountsIQ seems to tick more boxes than other systems designed for businesses like ours.”

Meeting multi-jurisdictional needs

The fast-growing financial services firm has seven legal entities located across Europe including businesses in London, Paris, Munich and Luxembourg.  Although the accounting processes are simple – the firm has a considerably low volume of accounting entries – the accounting processes have a greater level of complexity due to the structure of the business and its international locations.  Transactions accounted for in Munich must comply with German regulations, likewise for France, the UK and Luxembourg. Rob adds,

Xero worked really well for us for two years when we needed simple, single entity accounting, but it made international accounting difficult.  We didn’t have a need for an Oracle-like system but we had to address the multi-jurisdictional needs.”

Making consolidation simple

“Even though we are a small business, consolidating accounts across quite a few businesses was difficult and time-consuming and I could only see the problem getting worse,” says Rob.

Previously, Apera’s group consolidation was done in spreadsheets: data was exported from various systems and in different currencies, then brought together in Excel. Rob explains, “AccountsIQ’s consolidation software means there is no fiddling around in spreadsheets trying to get things to tie.  Working in Excel was not sustainable; before AccountsIQ, we had instances where we were struggling to get these reports right, sometimes until 2 a.m.”

Expense processing is automated with Expensify

AccountsIQ has been integrated with automated expense capture software Expensify which reduces paper, saves time, improves accuracy and ensures the VAT allocations are correct.  Also integrating with American Express, Expensify allows expenses to be digitally reallocated, and it automates VAT calculations.

Rob explains, “Everyone can photograph, upload and record their own expenses which feeds directly into the accounting system, everything is electronic and it is zero paper.  It is much easier for me to review from anywhere and, although I still want to manually review line-by-line, the admin-heavy part of the process is automated, making it easier for everyone.” Rob concludes,

Although it costs a bit more than Xero, it makes sense in the amount of time it saves us and I have a much more powerful system than Xero.  AccountsIQ meets all our expectations so far and there is still much more in the system for us to use.”

Apera also uses AccountsIQ’s Workflow Approval which automates and speeds up the approval process, also removing the need for paper filing as all documents are stored electronically in the system.  The firm also plans to explore the dashboard reporting and customisable reports further as the system continues to evolve and add further value to the team.

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Integra, switched to AccountsIQ to consolidate their 10 entities on one user-friendly Cloud accounting platform

Integra Technical Services is an insurance loss adjuster, resolving complex claims in sectors as diverse as mining, marine, energy and cyber security. They’re global players with local offices across the UK, US, Middle East, and Asia Pacific.

Before switching to AccountsIQ, Integra’s UK business was using two different accounting systems in EMEA and North America.   Finding one platform that would work well across the whole group was a big driver for change. 

“We have 10 active entities on our AccountsIQ platform,” explains Integra’s CFO, Mark Hunter. “That includes our risk management business, which we’ve added recently. We’ll be adding another entity soon.”

Integra also had other key criteria they felt could only be met by AccountsIQ, as Mark explains:

“The new finance system had to be Cloud-based. We also felt we needed more functionality than our existing systems were offering.”

“With AccountsIQ, we have the ability to consolidate on one platform. We’d been using Excel for consolidation, and we wanted something quicker and more reliable.”

As one of the main finance system users, Financial Controller, Sue Evans, was keen to ensure useability was included in the software evaluation process.  In fact, the whole team was impressed by AccountsIQ’s easy, logical layout.

The inter-company accounting and FX features are major time-savers

Sue finds that the inter-company accounting features in AccountsIQ make her life much easier.

“We have a lot of inter-company trading and resource transfer,” she says. “The process of re-charging costs and invoices across different entities is really smooth with AccountsIQ.  It’s a big improvement from what we were using previously because I no longer have to log in and out to look at different entities.” Sue Evans, Financial Controller, Integra.

Another important time-saver for Sue is AccountsIQ’s foreign exchange functionality.

“It’s easy to map through and check you’re using the right FX,” she says. “Previously, it was complicated, and we spent a lot of time working out variances.

“With AccountsIQ, you just know it aligns. In fact, we only need to do our FX updates monthly rather than daily. It’s so much better.”

What’s next for Integra and AccountsIQ?

One year on from implementing AccountsIQ, Mark and Sue have big plans for making the system work even harder for them.

“We’re a relatively small finance team,” says Mark. “The plan with this project was always to get the system bedded down and make sure everyone is comfortable with it and using it efficiently. Now, we’re looking at what more it can do.”

One of Integra’s projects for the year ahead, is to look at how they can work with AccountsIQ, and our software integration partners, to improve their budgeting, reporting and forecasting capabilities.

“The reporting available in the system is good,” says Mark. “Our consolidated management reports now take around 25% less time than they did in Excel, for example.”

These time savings are so encouraging, Integra is now thinking how they can further refine their reports and make best use of the multi-dimensional financial Business Intelligence coding structure to really delve into the data.

“There’s a lot more we can do with the system,” concludes Mark. “What I really like about AccountsIQ is they have a good understanding of the needs of SMEs. We get great technical support from AccountsIQ. This collaborative approach is very different to some of the larger providers.”

Freight Investor Services uses AccountsIQ to meet its complex global accounting needs

Freight Investor Services (FIS) is a leading global brokerage specialising in freight and commodities. As an innovator in the commodity derivatives markets, FIS has built an international network of offices and has 10 entities across the US, UK, UAE, India, Singapore and China. As a rapidly growing, international financial services business, they have some complex accounting requirements.  

In 2019 the Group was using different accounting software in different locations including Sun Systems in the UK and UAE. Freight Investor’s Head of Finance, Man Li explains “we needed to standardise our accounting software to make it easier to do group level reporting.”

Man Li compared many different software packages and concluded that AccountsIQ ticked all the boxes.

“Our accounting needs are quite complex and we particularly liked AccountsIQ’s multi-dimension and extensive BI coding structure”.   

Detailed analysis across multi locations, departments, brokers and customers

As a broker, FIS is extremely customer focused and it’s essential they can monitor and track commission, costs and profits by each individual broker and customer.  They currently use a five-dimension accounting structure to get detailed analysis by: employee, broker, office, department and customer (the AccountsIQ platform offers up to six dimensions).

“We can quickly and easily compare the cost of running our back office in each of our locations or how much we spend on each customer,” explains Man Li. “This gives us valuable insight across the business.”

AccountsIQ has been integrated with FIS’ in-house sales system.

“We have lots of trading data and inter-company transactions, so this took some time,” says Man Li, “but it’s working perfectly now, and our sales information is brought straight into AccountsIQ. We’re also in the process of integrating AccountsIQ with the Zoho expenses module, so we can capture and split our customer gifting and entertainment costs very precisely to comply with regulatory requirements.”

The flexibility to ‘slice and dice’ analysis and reporting

The complex nature of their business means FIS currently has over 4,000 BI codes in AccountsIQ.

“The great thing about AccountsIQ is that we have the flexibility to re-think the way we structure the dimension and BI coding over time,” says Man Li. “We can start one way and flex as we go. Right now, we’re working with AccountsIQ’s support team to consolidate and standardise some of the BI codes; it’s a work in progress as we get more familiar with the system.”

AccountsIQ is easy to use with useful features

The FIS finance team is spread across multiple locations around the world but they’re all enjoying using AccountsIQ and finding it easy to collaborate.

“I particularly like the prepayment and accrual functions; you can simply click repeat or auto reverse for recurring journal entries, it’s a great feature.”

A continuous learning and professional development process

FIS have yet to fully use some of the functions available in AccountsIQ such as the new AP Inbox Invoice Automation feature which Man Li is looking forward to using to save lots of processing time.

“We currently have 10 entities on the system and we’re always learning,” she says. “We’re using AIQ Academy with new starters and we get excellent support from our Account Manager, Victoria.  I’ve already recommended AccountsIQ to several people.”

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Find out more about AccountsIQ’s multi company accounting software, and our Business Intelligence capability: accounting, consolidation and management reporting all in one platform.