Cloud accounting software for financial services companies

AES International uses AccountsIQ to help manage growth

AES International is a UK-registered financial advisory company with a branch in Dubai which pioneered the use of emerging evidence-based technologies to provide better advice to clients. AES has seen rapid growth over the last decade and in 2012, they were the 4th fastest growing financial services firm in the UK.

Having built success on their ground-breaking use of technology, AES was aware that such an approach would also benefit their internal processes. When Wayne Copeland joined AES as Head of Finance in 2017, he knew immediately that there were big efficiencies to be made in the company’s accounting practices. At the time, the company had been using Quickbooks, a starter accounting package that couldn’t handle AES’s rapid growth and multi-national accounting requirements. It was clear that the company had outgrown this system and required an alternative solution that could handle their reporting and consolidation requirements more easily.

AES selected AccountsIQ as it could easily consolidate their multiple entities, multiple bank accounts and myriad of currency transactions, and because it is easy to produce bespoke management reporting packs.

Nothing else like AccountsIQ for consolidation

Wayne Copeland, Head of Finance, AES International

Consolidation was crucial for AES International, which has multiple entities and currencies to manage. Quickbooks only allowed consolidation in sterling, requiring the cumbersome use of spreadsheets and manual effort to consolidate the accounts. AccountsIQ does this automatically. Wayne’s team can easily run a consolidation of six companies and convert the data to any currency they need.

I don’t know of any other system that can do consolidation the way AccountsIQ can. It takes a lot of complexity out of everything and that saves us a lot of time. It used to take two weeks to do our accounts; with AccountsIQ and other improvements, we now get our accounts out in five working days,” says Wayne.

Quantifiable Management Information (MI) for more efficient decision-making

While AccountsIQ’s consolidation features take away the legwork, its bespoke reporting tools make it easier for AES’s management team to interpret and action the results. AES has built on AccountsIQ’s standard reports by using API connectors to create custom reports to suit their specific needs.

With AccountsIQ we get good, accurate data coming out of a well trusted system. We are confident we have chosen the right system for our current and future growth needs.”

A digital approach that saves time and money

The move to AccountsIQ marks a change to a totally digital approach to accounting that ultimately saves AES both time and money.

When I joined AES, I took the opportunity to make accounting cloud-based. Quickbooks was server-based – we once lost a week’s worth of work when the system went down. I knew that the new system had to be cloud-based, backed up, everything stored online.”

With AccountsIQ, AES now has a cloud-based solution that makes data loss a non-issue.

In addition to its consolidation capabilities, AccountsIQ has other features that offer substantial time savings for AES. For example, the Fixed Asset Register’s auto-depreciation feature helps automate processes that would otherwise be done manually. “The fixed asset register is a great addition,” says Wayne.

“For SMEs, it’s a perfect bit of software.”

Cloud-based, with financial consolidation software a key feature, AccountsIQ provides exceptional value for AES, saving valuable time for this growing business. “For SME’s, AccountsIQ is a perfect bit of software,” says Wayne.

AccountsIQ is ideal for our complex accounting requirements. We were delighted to find a solution that is intuitive to use and enables us to report on our group structure easily, all at an affordable price.”

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.”

Learn More

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

IFX Payments use AccountsIQ to manage complex multi-entity, multi-currency accounting and support their growth needs

IFX provides global cross-border payments solutions to SMEs and payments services providers. Their finance team of six people use AccountsIQ to manage the complex accounting needs of their four entities (in Dubai, Australia, UK and Poland). They also operate in three different base currencies (£, AUS$ and PLNzl).

IFX Group Finance Director, Steve Allen.

“We were using Sage 50,” says IFX Group Finance Director, Steve Allen. “But it wasn’t Cloud-based. Even before the pandemic, our finance team was split across three office locations, so we needed a system where we could work together seamlessly.”

Steve also wanted a more flexible finance system.

“With AccountsIQ, if I see something’s wrong in the P&L, I can drill down to the transaction level (even to view an actual invoice) and change it there and then,” he says. “That makes my life so much easier.”

IFX were also keen to ensure they had effective PO workflows in place. The company was growing at a phenomenal rate. Maintaining visibility and keeping control of costs across the business were key priorities for the finance team.

“The year before last we experienced 110% growth,” Steve explains. “We could not have done that without AccountsIQ. If we were still on Sage 50, we would have collapsed or at the very least we would have needed a much bigger finance team.”

Management reporting for multiple stakeholders

The IFX finance team also needs to meet the demand for management reports from across the business, and from their external stakeholders.

“Different users require different information,” explains Steve. “But AccountsIQ has multi-dimensional reporting and analysis capabilities. That enables us to flip the data for different stakeholders using just one set of coding structures.”

That means IFX can produce the compliance data demanded by banks and the FCA quickly and easily. But they can also deliver granular, timely and accurate commercial reports for their own board.

“We can report by department, cost type and even by individual salesperson,” says Steve. “With AccountsIQ we can track the performance and contribution of every IFX salesperson. We treat them like another profit centre for reporting purposes.”

Easy for new team members to use

IFX have found that new team members can train themselves to use AccountsIQ simply by using the learning resources in AIQ Academy.

“One of the things I always rave about with AccountsIQ is the user experience,” says Steve. “It’s so easy to use; it’s fantastic.”

A finance system to support growth

“With AccountsIQ, we really feel like we’re on the right platform to support our future growth,” concludes Steve. “We can integrate other tech with it as and when we need to. For example, right now we’ve decided to use AutoEntry; that integrates seamlessly with AccountsIQ.”“Starter systems like Sage and Xero don’t really meet the needs of a complex business. AccountsIQ is a proper accounting package. It’s Cloud-based, user-friendly and meets all the accounting needs of an international business like IFX.”

Find out more about our SaaS Accounting Software for high-growth tech companies.

About IFX

Founded in 2005, IFX Payments has grown to become a leading global foreign exchange, payment and financial technology provider. Headquartered in London, with offices around the world, we’re positioned to be a significant participant in the new banking paradigm delivering advanced payment, treasury and financial management solutions. We replace operational inefficiency with streamlined processes and replace uncertainty with control.