As you head into 2025, “business as usual” isn’t enough for finance teams.

If you’re still relying on entry-level software, manual spreadsheets and slow, error-prone processes, it’s harder than ever to deliver the timely, accurate insight your organisation expects.

This webinar, hosted by Taylor Andrew, Senior Account Executive at AccountsIQ, is all about aiming for better—practically, not theoretically.

Taylor walks through:

• Who AccountsIQ is and where it fits in the financial management software landscape
• Why so many teams outgrow tools like Xero, Sage 50, QuickBooks
• How AccountsIQ bridges the gap between those tools and full-blown ERPs like NetSuite and SAP
• What a 4–6 week implementation actually looks like in real life
• How built-in automation helps you flip your finance function from manual processing to insight and decision support

You’ll also see a live product demo, covering:

• Multi-entity and consolidation structure
• Chart of accounts and dimensional analysis
• AP automation (AP inbox, OCR, workflow approvals, bulk payments)
• Bank feeds and automated reconciliations
• Intercompany posting and eliminations
• Reporting, dashboards and Excel/Power BI live links

If your goal for 2025 is to elevate the quality and impact of your financial management without signing up for a painful 12–18 month ERP project, this session will show you what’s possible.

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What this webinar covers

1. Who is AccountsIQ and where does it sit in the market?

Taylor starts by setting the scene:

• Cloud from day one – AccountsIQ launched in 2008 as a cloud-only financial management system (no legacy desktop to cloud migration).
• Now supports 20,000+ users in 60+ countries, across multiple industries and jurisdictions.
• Hosted on Microsoft Azure, enabling secure, scalable cloud infrastructure plus live links to Excel and Power BI for reporting.

AccountsIQ sits in the mid-market:

• Below: entry-level solutions such as Xero, Sage 50, QuickBooks
• Above: complex, expensive ERPs such as NetSuite, SAP, Oracle, Workday

The goal: bridge the gap by offering:

• Much more functionality than entry-level tools
• Without the cost, complexity and long implementations of traditional ERP

2. Why customers choose AccountsIQ

Taylor highlights some of the reasons finance teams move to—and stay with—AccountsIQ:

• Everything in-house
  • Implementation, support, integrations and customer success are all run by AccountsIQ staff.
• Fast human support
  • Average 27-minute response time to tickets
  • Real people on phone, email and web chat – not just bots
• Customer satisfaction
  • Lifetime CSAT of 98%+
  • Onboarding team hit 100% CSAT in 2024
• Implementation speed
  • Typical go-live in 4–6 weeks, from single-entity businesses up to groups with hundreds of entities
• Low churn, long life
  • Customers often stay 8–10 years
  • Churn rate under 3%

And crucially:

• ISO certified for security and compliance
• Hosted on Azure with live connectivity into Excel and Power BI

3. Moving from “old” to “new” finance function

Taylor compares two common realities:

Old finance function (typical on entry-level systems)

• 80–90% of time spent on:
  • Manual data entry
  • Transaction processing
  • Exporting to Excel to fix reporting gaps
• Little time left for:
  • Analysis
  • Forecasting
  • Strategic decision support

New finance function (what AccountsIQ aims for)

• Heavy use of automation:
  • AP inbox + OCR
  • Prepayment/accrual journals
  • Bank feeds & rules
  • Intercompany posting
• More time freed for:
  • Key reporting and analysis
  • Business partnering
  • Scenario modelling and planning

You’ll see how the product supports that shift throughout the live demo.

4. Onboarding and implementation: what actually happens in 4–6 weeks?

Taylor addresses a common blocker: fear of change.

He outlines the AccountsIQ onboarding journey:

1. Contract signed → implementer assigned
   • Within 24–48 hours, you’re assigned a Senior Implementer.
2. Kick-off & discovery
   • Deep dive into:
     • Current systems and pain points
     • Reporting and consolidation needs
     • Integrations and future plans
   • Leads to a personalised project plan across the 4–6 weeks.
3. Build & design
   • Chart of accounts and dimensional analysis designed around your business
   • Entities configured, including multi-entity and consolidation where needed
4. Training & AIQ Academy
   • Hands-on sessions with your implementer
   • Access to AIQ Academy:
     • ~10 hours of content
     • 140+ short videos (2–11 mins)
     • CPD-certified, with quizzes
     • Project leads can assign modules by role
5. Go-live & first month-end support
   • Go-live is not the end: your implementer stays with you through your first month-end in AccountsIQ.
6. Hand-over to Support & Customer Success
   • Ongoing product support (tickets, queries)
   • Named Account Manager / Customer Success Manager you can book time with directly from the system.

Throughout, the goal is to keep your day-to-day finance operations running while the system goes in, with minimum disruption.

5. Core product demo: day-to-day automation

Taylor then walks through the live demo, focusing on time-saving automation.

a) Multi-entity structure & sandbox

• Multiple entities in one tenant (e.g. London, New York, Dublin, Ireland)
• Separate consolidation entities for group reporting
• Included sandbox environment:
  • Used during implementation
  • Retained for training, process testing and changes before pushing into live

b) Chart of accounts & dimensional analysis

• Three-tier chart of accounts:
  • Category → Subcategory → GL code
  • Finer control than 2-tier structures in many entry-level tools
• Dimensional analysis (up to 6 dimensions):
  • e.g. Region, Department, Project, Employee, Revenue Stream
  • Unlimited elements under each dimension
• BI codes (Business Intelligence codes):
  • Single capture code that can represent multiple dimensions
  • Reduces coding time on each transaction
  • Powers “mini P&Ls” and detailed analysis in reports and dashboards

c) Journal automation (prepayments, accruals, deferred revenue)

• Journal importer via Excel template for bulk postings
• Copy/favourite functionality for recurring journals
• Automated schedules for:
  • Prepayments
  • Deferred revenue
  • Cost & revenue accruals
• “Set them and forget them”: journals spread over periods automatically in the background.

6. Accounts Payable: from invoice to payment

Taylor shows an end-to-end AP flow:

Supplier setup

• Store:
  • Currency
  • Default bank
  • Default GL / BI / VAT codes
  • Credit terms
  • Attach contracts, pricing, documents (no storage limits)

Workflow approvals (POs & PIs)

• Multi-step, multi-approver workflows
• Separate workflows for:
  • Purchase Orders (PO)
  • Purchase Invoices (PI), or both
• Features include:
  • Auto-approval thresholds for low-value documents
  • Tolerances between PO and PI values to avoid unnecessary re-approvals
  • Condition-based steps:
    • By department, project, revenue stream (dimensions)
    • By supplier
    • By GL codes
    • By value ranges
  • Choice of:
    • “All must approve”
    • “Any can approve”

Approvers can action documents:

• In-system, or
• Via email links that update AccountsIQ automatically

AP Inbox & OCR

• Dedicated AP Inbox email address
• Invoices sent/forwarded directly into AccountsIQ
• OCR reads and pre-populates fields:
  • Supplier
  • Amounts
  • Tax codes
  • PO number (for automatic match)
• Finance review and confirm rather than keying line by line
• Triggers the appropriate workflow automatically.

Invoice status & audit trail

• Clear approval statuses:
  • Pending
  • Awaiting approval
  • Approved
  • Rejected
• Each invoice contains:
  • Attached PDF
  • Full approval history
  • Notes from approvers
• Auditors can be given read-only access to self-serve what they need.

Bulk payments & remittances

• Bulk payment run screen allows:
  • Filtering by due date, supplier, reference etc.
  • Flags for:
    • Changed supplier bank details (with who/when)
    • Unallocated credits
    • On-hold accounts
• Bulk payment approval step
• Generate bank-specific BACS files (e.g. NatWest variant) for upload to your bank
• Automatic remittance advices emailed once payments are made.

No transaction or document storage limits, and no per-invoice AP charge.

7. Bank feeds and reconciliations

AccountsIQ connects to 12,500+ banks worldwide, including credit card providers.

• Bank feeds update up to 4 times per day
• Unlike some systems, this is same-day data, not “yesterday only”
• Traffic-light reconciliation:
  • Red – new/unknown transactions
  • Orange – suggested match based on past rules
  • Green – fully matched and auto-posted
• Finance users create posting rules (“Recognise for future match”), and machine learning improves matches over time.

Within a couple of weeks, most high-volume bank items are auto-allocated and ready to match with a single click.

8. Intercompany and consolidation

For multi-entity groups, Taylor covers:

Intercompany

• Link entities to enable intercompany transactions
• Raise in one entity:
  • Batch sales invoice
  • Credit/debit journal
• System auto-creates the counter-entry in the connected entity
• Intercompany control accounts are pointed to the same categories/subcategories to support auto-elimination on consolidation.

Consolidation Manager

• Create multiple consolidation groups:
  • e.g. full group; regional subgroups; sector-based groups
• One-click consolidation:
  • Typically completes in seconds
  • Verifies consistent CoA and analysis
  • Rolls up budgets automatically
• Group-wide control over exchange rates:
  • Use daily averages or override with group-defined rates

From the consolidation entity, you can:

• Run P&L, balance sheet, TB and working capital at group level
• Drill from consolidated GL codes down to:
  • Entity-level splits, and
  • Individual transactions
• Run dashboards and P&Ls by:
  • Entity
  • Any defined dimension (e.g. Project A across multiple entities)

9. Reporting & dashboards

Reports

• 250+ standard reports across GL, AP, AR, bank, etc.
• Highly configurable P&Ls:
  • Select periods, GL ranges, comparatives (up to 12 columns)
  • Compare:
    • Actual vs budget
    • Actual vs reforecast
    • Actual vs prior year
• Export to:
  • Excel, Word, CSV, PDF
• Email reports (with logo) to system and non-system users.

Live links to Excel & Power BI

• Hosted on Azure, using OData connectors
• Build or export reports, then set up live connections so:
  • Each refresh pulls current data from AccountsIQ
• Ideal for:
  • Finance-built reporting packs
  • Board or department reports for non-users

Dashboards

New dashboards (launched late last year) provide:

• Visuals for:
  • P&L, profit margins, working capital
  • AP/AR (top suppliers/customers, aging, exposure)
  • Purchase commitments vs budget
• Filters for:
  • Period
  • Comparison (last year, last month, budget, reforecast)
  • Dimensions (region, project, department, etc.)
• Interactive widgets and mini-dashboards for key stakeholders.

Coming shortly: import non-financial KPIs (e.g. headcount, transaction volumes, asset values) to overlay with financial metrics.

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