TenKey transforms clients’ books using A2X

Less stress for Krissy Justice and her monthly reconciliations

Krissy Justice has a wealth of knowledge and experience – between her time in the corporate world and running her own business venture, she has 25 years under her belt in accounting and finance.

TenKey Management & Bookkeeping Services started as an “add-on business”, something Krissy did on the side while working as a director of finance. But in 2018, things had kicked up a notch.

“I was getting a lot of new clients, making good connections, and it just got to the point where I couldn’t work two jobs anymore,” she says.

TenKey now keeps her busy full-time, with clients of all sizes from a variety of industries. Krissy says she likes it that way.

“There’s a big movement in the accounting and bookkeeping world to specialise or have a niche. But I like the challenges that come with different types of business.”

One of Krissy’s first e-commerce clients was a beauty products company that was having problems getting its books to balance every month. That was until she introduced A2X.

Month-end process taking too long

In 2019, Krissy attended QuickBooks Online Connect in San Jose, California, which is where she first discovered A2X. A colleague had also recently started using A2X and “had nothing but amazing things to say.”

To reconcile her clients’ Shopify payments with their bank accounts, Krissy had been running their deposits through a clearing account, followed by manual journal entries to get sales by revenue stream and type.

“It wasn’t great for anyone – it took a long time, and it was never spot-on,” Krissy explains. “It didn’t make me feel good as an accountant to say, ‘I think this is right’.”

Krissy needed a way to ensure she wasn’t “spreadsheeting like a madwoman” – and that’s when she made the switch to A2X.

“Once it was set up, I knew I should have done this a long time ago – it would have saved me so many headaches!” she laughs.

A2X a win-win for Krissy and clients

A2X works by categorising all sales transactions into tidy summaries and importing them directly into your accounting system – so they match the payments made to your bank account.

For Krissy, automating what was a long-winded and laborious process has transformed the way she works. It also means her clients have more confidence in their numbers.

“The fact that I can match my clients’ QuickBooks Online to their batches and know that it’s spot-on to the payment – that gives me peace of mind I’m delivering a solid, accurate product.”

That’s why, when A2X launched A2X for eBay, Krissy immediately signed up another client – an automotive retail company.

“I was excited to give them that option as a solution because they were using some other app, and it wasn’t working.

“I said, ‘A2X is going to fix that – it matches your bank activity so it’s not going to make a bunch of garbage entries you’ll have to reconcile at the end of the month’.”

Less stress, more accurate budgeting

It’s hard for Krissy to quantify how many hours she’s saved in manual reconciliation, but what’s sure is stress levels are lower – and she’s adding more value where it matters.

Using A2X, she can get granular with sales data, which she says is important for her clients when they’re deciding on which way to go with their businesses, especially if they have multiple revenue streams.

It also means she’s able to budget her time more accurately – a saving and value-add that gets passed directly to her clients.

“Knowing that I’m not going to be spending four to six hours during the month-end, just trying to reconcile sales data – that has saved a lot of stress and saved time, which I can put into other things for clients,” she says.

Digital tools eliminating unnecessary tasks

Digital tools and automation are changing the way accountants and bookkeepers work with their clients – for the better, Krissy says.

“I sing the praises of A2X all the time in my accounting network groups, because it solves this challenge we have working with small businesses on how to get data from one system into another that is accurate.”

She jokes that it’s a good sign when she doesn’t hear from her clients – “I love hearing from them, but if something’s going on, it’s typically when I hear from them” – but it’s a great example of how using the right digital tool can be invaluable.

Aside from A2X, Krissy also uses Receipt Bank – an app that allows business owners to electronically capture and store receipts.

“I don’t like to deal with paper if I don’t have to, so that has been a huge timesaver too – for one client the transformation has been like night and day.”

Customer service sets A2X apart

Krissy has used lots of different systems and apps during her time on the accounting tools, but she says none have ever reached A2X’s “top-notch” customer service standard.

“I haven’t experienced that with the other apps that I’ve used – there’s good customer service out there, but they’re very hands-on.”

Despite the difference in time zone, Krissy has only ever had to wait a few hours to get a response, and the team is always willing to “jump in and work through a problem with you.” For Krissy, that support was critical in the early stages.

For anyone sitting on the fence about A2X, here’s Krissy’s advice:

“My clients would probably pay more … just because of the time A2X saves – and the accuracy and efficiency. When you’re talking about hundreds and hundreds of orders, it’s not good to do them manually. You want to use A2X.”