Ensuring domestic bliss in a husband-and-wife construction firm
CASE STUDY
Small Building Co
Sector: Construction
Size: Small
Location: Canberra
Service: Bookkeeping with Payroll
Husband-and-wife team Brad and Tamara* “This isn’t their real names, but this is a real business we work with” have owned their construction business for several years, with Brad on the tools and Tamara looking after the books and admin. While their setup was working well, they sometimes struggled to have visibility of cashflow and business performance – and that business-related pressures were leading to unnecessary friction in their relationship.
What they needed help with
Brad and Tamara primarily came to iKeep looking for better visibility of the business’s performance and cashflow. They came to us with a Reckon accounting file – which was popular 20 years ago, but certainly not the best solution nowadays.
iKeep’s solution
Our first move was to convert the Reckon file to Xero, allowing Brad and Tamara to make use of its cloud functionality, automation and dashboard-based financial reporting. This alone saved Tamara significant amounts of time, and made it much easier to understand how much the business was making. This then allowed the couple to make intelligent decisions, about how much the business could sustainably pay them.
As part of this process, we also discussed the possibility of one of our team managing back office tasks such as payroll, BAS submission and so on. The couple decided that this would be a fantastic investment due to the peace of mind it would bring them – and the accompanying reduction in relationship issues.
Several years later, Brad and Tamara’s business is going from strength to strength – and yes, they’re still together and are much happier nowadays!
Key benefits
- Timely, accurate financial performance information in an easy-to-understand format
- Less relationship friction – critical in a husband-and-wife team!
- Significant time savings due to automated processes
