Cloud accounting software for technology companies

Continuum Commerce Adopts AccountsIQ's Cloud Accounting Software for Real Time Management Information

Continuum Commerce CEO, Eamonn O’Shea, states,

I would have no hesitation in recommending AccountsIQ to anyone that conducts business in multiple locations. It can significantly simplify your management reporting process, while at the same time significantly improving its output. The Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pricing means we have a full accounting and business analysis system for a fraction of what I would have expected to pay to implement an on-premise solution.

The Challenge

Continuum Commerce was founded in 2000 (formerly known as GCX – Global Currency Exchange) as an independent online payments solution provider.  Based in Ireland, Continuum also has operations in mainland Europe, the UK and the Asia-pacific region and has a management team that spends much of its time abroad. Remote board meetings and management updates were previously handled by sending spreadsheets created by re-keying information from their previous accounting package to participants by fax or e-mail. This information was therefore often out of date before the meeting had begun and decisions were being made based on inaccurate information.

Gerard O’Brien, the CFO of Continuum Commerce says,

We evaluated many alternatives and found AccountsIQ offered the most compelling solution. While it provided all the functionality we needed and is available over the web at any time, its reporting capability and especially its Digital Dashboard has proven to be the ‘killer app’ for GCX. There is a wealth of standard reports, and I was able to customise a couple of key reports that I use on a daily basis. The senior team can log on at any time to review our performance metrics. It has really streamlined our business planning and measurement.

The Solution

Continuum Commerce adopted AccountsIQ for all its financial requirements consisting of:

• AccountsIQ online accounting platform
• Full multi-currency processing throughout
• Integration with Continuum’s billing engine
• Customised management information dashboards with specific KPIs

Results

Gerard O’Brien told us that benefits to Continuum include that AccountsIQ represents incredible value for money with no upfront capital cost. They find that reporting is a key strength – with them rarely needing to export to Excel or re-key anything. The digital dashboard capability significantly improves the management information available to them and a key benefit is that AccountsIQ has extensive functionality which can scale with them as they grow their business. With AccountsIQ’s open API, it was easy to integrate Continuum’s billing engine directly to AccountsIQ which has streamlined their processes and brought considerable efficiency advantages.

StitcherAds use AccountsIQ to support ambitious growth plans

StitcherAds is a Facebook and Instagram marketing partner, building technology to help advertisers scale their marketing campaigns and use data-fuelled automation to drive sales online and in-store. With offices in the U.S., Ireland and the UK, StitcherAds maintains three separate legal entities in each of these locations.

When Fiona McKenna joined the business in July 2019 to lead the finance team, she quickly realised that their Quickbooks accounting system had major shortfalls in terms of accurate reporting, with significant challenges around foreign currencies and consolidation.

Fiona explains “The key requirements were: a simple system navigable by non-accountants, capable of rapid deployment, and Cloud-based with multi-user capabilities, consolidation, and ability to scale as the business grows.”

StitcherAds has ambitious growth plans and we need to be able to slot in new entities. I compared three systems and AccountsIQ proved the best solution to meet our needs now and in the future.”

Quick to implement with responsive reports

Fiona managed the implementation of AccountsIQ within the StitcherAds finance team, with support from AccountsIQ who advised how to setup the accounting system from scratch. The whole process took about four weeks. “I found the AccountsIQ team incredibly flexible in terms of helping us with the implementation. We got great value from the service,” said Fiona.

Excellent consolidation functionality

Consolidation was critical for StitcherAds which previously used spreadsheets to manage the accounts across three legal entities. This was cumbersome to maintain and invariably led to inaccuracies in reporting. AccountsIQ made consolidation simple.

The consolidation functionality in AccountsIQ is excellent,” says Fiona. “It’s a very good solution for our stage of development and our budget.”

Find out how AccountsIQ can help you with your accounting, consolidation and reporting needs, call us on +44 (0)203 598 7350 or Contact us.

Quick to learn with better business insights

AccountsIQ has an easy-to use interface, navigation and smart query tools that are intuitive to use, even for non-accountants.

You don’t need to be an accountant to use AccountsIQ. It’s quite intuitive, the reports are very good and very reliable,” says Fiona. “It’s nice and simple to use; I don’t have to do lots of tidy ups. This is quite unusual for a platform of this kind. No manual intervention is required.”

Fiona and her team also benefit from better insights and improved visibility into the organisation assisted by AccountsIQ’s Cloud-based business analysis features and pre-configured reports. “I can log in remotely and only have to look in two places to know exactly where we’re at. In terms of business information, it’s been an absolute godsend,” says Fiona.

Time-saving benefits

The move to AccountsIQ radically streamlined and simplified the accounting process across all of StitcherAds’ entities. This not only enabled more accurate reporting, but also saved a significant amount of time.

We have a much faster month-end close, shaving 15 days off typically. We’re now closing on day 10, when we used to close the books around the 25th. Previously this was unheard of in the business. Now that we have a simpler system to use, we now have more time to dedicate to more strategic work.”

A high standard of product for fast-growing startups and medium-sized businesses

StitcherAds demonstrates AccountsIQ’s suitability for smaller businesses with big growth plans. In particular, AccountsIQ is an affordable accounting solution that can grow with the business.

AccountsIQ is a high standard of product at the right budget for a medium-sized company. As a smaller business it’s tempting to go with a simpler solution such as QuickBooks or Xero, but these platforms don’t scale as well as AccountsIQ. With excellent tools for consolidation and custom reporting, AccountsIQ offers a more robust accounting solution that can quickly adapt to the changing needs of a fast growing business like ours, while still remaining very affordable.”

Asavie Adopts AccountsIQ to Support Growth

As the Internet of Things (IoT) booms, the requirement for Irish-based connectivity provider Asavie gained demand. The Internet of Things is the next wave of internet evolution; IoT systems facilitate the remote control of electronic devices across a secure exchange. Asavie provides highly-secure middleware which enables the growing numbers of IoD devices in use to connect with the Cloud. At this time, the opportunity in the telecoms sector alone fuelled a year-on-year growth rate which, at its peak, consistently topped 100%. As the business developed further revenue streams and began working in multiple currencies, its accounting needs became more complex.

Outgrown Sage

Having outgrown an early iteration of Sage, Asavie’s accounts team led the way in finding a new business system which would tick boxes on consolidation; currency handling; Fixed Assets and workflow. Financial Controller Emma Whelan began the search which included more recent versions of Sage and FinancialForce. Describing her reaction to proposals from both vendors Emma said,

Neither product was comparable to AccountsIQ from a performance or price perspective.  We didn’t need the likes of SAP or Oracle but we have some fairly complex accounting needs.  AccountsIQ fits us perfectly.”

A “Successful and Collaborative” Relationship

In 2016, Emma began to work with the support team at AccountsIQ to plan the implementation which addressed needs in the short, medium and longer term. This plan still evolves today and is proactively evaluated by AccountsIQ’s Customer Success team on a two-weekly basis as the software is continuously tuned to meet changing needs. She says,

The best thing about AccountsIQ is the successful and collaborative relationship we have with the support team; we have completed a number of projects with them and they never seem to tire of listening to us and working with us to adapt the software for our own and for every other user’s benefit.  It almost feels like we are all part of the same development team.”

She adds, “Having qualified accountants at the end of AccountsIQ’s support line is priceless; they instantly understand the accounting problems we are trying to solve and this allows us to arrive at a technical solution quickly.”

Improving functionality across the business

Other projects on which Emma has worked closely with the support team have included an integration with Concur’s automated expense management and processing system; and the introduction of AccountsIQ’s Purchase Order Approval which uses workflow technology to enable more efficient processes, engaging budget holders across the business. Future plans include integrating AccountsIQ with the business’s preferred BI reporting app which will create a seamless data exchange between the accounts and the management reporting pack in a format which is already familiar to the business. Summing up, Emma says,

AccountsIQ solves so many problems for businesses like ours; it can be configured to tackle quite complex accounting issues but without the overheads and ongoing costs associated with some of the vendors at the higher end of the market.”