Sandra McMillan, an accountant with fifteen years of experience, has been doing her job manually for most of her career. The pandemic, however, brought uncompromising changes to her usual workflow. When her clients’ businesses faced cash flow challenges, so did she. Sandra not only managed to keep her head above water but ended up with bigger earnings. Let’s find out how.
In 2020, the impact of COVID-19 on small businesses was devastating, with thousands of companies shutting down or experiencing a shortage of income streams. Three out of five of McMillan’s clients fell under the negative impact of the lockdown, saying goodbye to their long-lived business partnership with Sandra. “It was a heartbreaking moment for everyone. We knew things were never going to be the same again,” remembers Sandra. One of her other clients responded to the challenges with the critical decision to transfer their business online, in order to stay afloat. It was a pivoting point, but Sandra admits she didn’t see it at that moment.
One of my clients moved her sales online all over the marketplaces: eBay, Etsy, Amazon. To improve money flows, she started accepting payments via Stripe, PayPal — everything. The amount of manual work and effort put into recording transactions increased several-fold. I needed to track every detail from every revenue source but the data network was too complex. Finally, I realized that managing data by hand just wasn’t a good solution for me anymore.
Sandra took the first step to finding the solution that would eliminate the workload and started browsing online: “I tried everything that I could get for free but it just didn’t work. Then I heard about Synder on an online accounting webinar I joined while searching for the right solutions. I got interested in this product because it promised automated multichannel data transfer — exactly what I was looking for. The company offered me a free demo where I was able to see how their software works and ask any questions that were bothering me. Their support team was superior, so I decided to go with Synder.”
A year later, Sandra is processing thousands of transactions from her first online selling client as well as 2 new ones. She admits that Synder became a unified solution for all clients regardless of what channels they use or may potentially add in the future (Amazon, Shopify, PayPal, eBay, Stripe, Etsy, Ecwid by Lightspeed, WooCommerce, etc.).
I saw the growth potential of businesses moving to online sales and decided to search for more clients in this field,” she reveals, “The way I did accounting before wouldn’t work for them. But Synder allows me to automate the complex data migrations from payment channels into accounting. What is extra useful here, is that I can see all transactions without accessing my clients’ real platform’s accounts. You do the setup once and then everything just gets automated. I still use Excel sometimes, but not for the hours of manual data entry as I did before. Synder allows me to welcome clients with any sales channel possible via direct Excel import.
When being asked, what features she finds most useful for her work, Sandra emphasizes the highly detailed transactions data import lies at the heart of everything. She is positive that the high level of detailing in the payments sync is everything, entailing fast and accurate reporting, multicurrency, smart rules, and filters for customization.
With the extra $60 000 brought by her e-commerce clients, McMillian acknowledges that implementing the right automation software is the win-win solution for both businesses and accountants:
I see why so many accountants are somewhat reluctant or suspicious about making automation a part of their daily work. I was one of them for so many years,” she smiles. “But what I see now is the new realm of the business, and all the potential it brings. After I started using Synder, my work became more automated, more predictable, and… simple. I became more flexible with what I can offer my clients and now I am seeing the payoff. With all that was already mentioned, I also can forward billing to my clients so that each of them has a separate subscription depending on their business needs. That’s what makes my own practice scalable too. I am happy with how Synder helped me and I would recommend Synder to anyone who wants to improve their business.
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