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accountants and bookkeepers

Oyster Hub embraces powerful integration to manage their practice

By QuickBooks Australia

Published on June 10, 2022

Operating with a ‘the world is your oyster’ philosophy, Oyster Hub is a new age accounting practice aiming to help business owners find their magic. Born out of a need to provide small business owners with more than just tax services, Oyster Hub guides people at every step of their personal and professional journey.

Having worked in traditional accounting firms for many years, when Oyster Hub came to fruition in 2018, the firm adopted a cloud-based tech stack including QuickBooks Online Accountant (QBOA), Karbon and Ignition to manage its key practice management functions seamlessly

"The integration between this suite of products has improved our workflow by 30%. Everything is in one place, allowing the team to spend their time on business growth rather than mundane tasks of chasing clients, printing, signing, and posting contracts."

The digital journey: Leverage industry knowledge

The ability to operate efficiently and scale their business was top of mind for Adarsh. He explains that the team carefully studied what other firms were doing and learned from successful firms in the industry.

“We met with like-minded firms who generously shared how they manage their practice and they suggested we look at QBOA. We took their advice and began building a tech stack with QBOA at the core of our operations,” he says.

Adarsh quickly learned it’s not just about the software. “When you’re starting up, having that human connection is important, and when we approached the QuickBooks team they were responsive, helpful and supportive. They provided guidance and support throughout our entire implementation process,” Adarsh adds.

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Practice management toolset: Delivering productivity through integration and automation

At its core, Intuit’s practice management tool, QBOA, delivers functionality such as client collaboration, workflow management, time tracking and client billing. However, QBOA’s ability to integrate with other digital tools including Karbon, Ignition and QuickBooks Time, was another factor in choosing the software - and has delivered a greater level of functionality and automation. “In an online world, you can’t be the best by relying on one supplier. You need to bring in multiple tools to help you be efficient,” Adarsh says.

When bringing on new clients, the Oyster Hub team has a thorough onboarding process to help them develop a gap analysis of the client’s needs. They then work with the client to align on the engagement - inputting all the information into Ignition - before the engagement proposal is sent to the client for approval. Once signed electronically, the proposal is saved and the direct debit payment agreement is actioned.

With the engagement and direct debit approved, this triggers the required tasks for the team to action in Karbon including sending automated requests for the client to complete. “Until they sign the engagement or complete the required tasks, we don’t start the work,” Adarsh says. “We always try to make sure the ball is in their court.”

The workflow loop is closed by an automated invoice being sent from QuickBooks Online Accountant to the client, which is in turn matched to the direct debit payment once it’s received.

When it comes to time tracking, Oyster Hub has implemented QuickBooks Time which integrates seamlessly to Karbon, allowing the team to measure the profitability of each job with great transparency.

“Even though we are a fixed fees client firm, we use QuickBooks Time to track the time spent on jobs in case any work is queried in the future,” explains Adarsh. “If a client queries something, we can show proof of the time spent on their job. It also lets us decide if the client’s work is profitable or not.”

“The integration between this suite of products has improved our workflow by 30%,” Adarsh notes. “Everything is in one place, allowing the team to spend their time on business growth rather than mundane tasks of chasing clients, printing, signing, and posting contracts. That’s where we save time, which now gets invested in client onboarding.”

The future of accounting in a digital age

Scaling is a significant focus for the firm. Adarsh believes that accounting firms need to research which digital solutions can help improve their operations so they can continue to service their clients when the unexpected - like a pandemic - happens. “If you’re unable to scale to support your clients, you’ll lose clients,” he says.

With the business now 90% cloud-based, Oyster Hub can continue its growth while using integration and automation to free up valuable time to fulfil its mission: to help business owners find their magic. “We believe the world is full of opportunity, but not every oyster will give you a pearl. Our job is to help more and more small business owners find their purpose - and their pearl,” Adarsh concludes.

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