AC Out of the Box CFO – Chaim Korik

A2X invaluable for Chaim Korik and his clients

Simple tool efficient, accurate – and saves time

Chaim Korik’s career has taken him all over the world. He was born in Brazil, got a degree and his master’s in accounting in the US, then moved down under after marrying his Australian wife.

During that time, he’s studied and travelled the globe, working his way up from a small business bookkeeper to managing corporate accounts for large, more complex organisations.

When Chaim first moved to Australia, he immediately got his CPA qualification and started working at a local accounting firm. After a year-and-a-half, he decided to branch out on his own.

His business, Out-of-the-Box CFO, works primarily with small to medium-size businesses, collecting, analysing and reporting on their data.

After being privy to many big corporate meetings where accurate financial data was critical to business decision-making, Chaim wanted to give the small business community access to the same expertise.

“I’ve found a lot of small businesses pay a lot of money for consultants, and while they’re great at providing information on how to use data, they don’t really understand the input side of things.”

In the eCommerce world, that means being able to extract data from your various sales platforms, then use it to make informed decisions. Problem is, many eCommerce platforms like Amazon, Shopify and eBay are notorious for their complex sales data – which Chaim found out the hard way.

Amazon reports an ‘absolute nightmare’

Back when Chaim was in the US, he helped several people report on their Amazon businesses. That’s when he first realised the problem eCommerce sellers were facing.

“It was an absolute nightmare going through those reports. Lots of people were creating these complicated spreadsheets just to try and figure out what was going on in their business,” he explains.

While he doesn’t work with as many Amazon clients now, he does have Shopify and eBay clients – and found many of them were dealing with the same problem.

“It was becoming difficult with Shopify to do a lot of the reporting that I wanted to do. Then I signed on my first eBay client – and the same thing happened.”

Chaim is a problem-solver. With every new client he takes on, the first conversation he has with all of them involves identifying business problems – then finding solutions that work.

When he came across A2X, it fit perfectly.

“A2X does exactly what I do with my clients – it collects the data, analyses it then reports on it – without missing out any of the detail.”

A2X a game-changer for small business

What used to involve a lot of time and complex spreadsheets, Chaim can now do with A2X – and the press of a button.

Whether his clients use Shopify, eBay or Amazon, A2X categorises their sales transactions into tidy summaries and imports them directly into their accounting system – so they match the payments made to their bank accounts.

That automation has saved Chaim a significant amount of time, which ultimately means he’s able to service even more clients.

“Honestly, I don’t know if I would even take on some of my clients now if I didn’t have A2X. The way it’s able to extract and manipulate the data – it’s invaluable!”

Accurate data, good business decisions

While A2X has saved Chaim a lot of time on the tools, it helps his clients even more. For starters, it speeds up and automates their data processing. But the key benefit is having access to accurate and detailed sales, discount and returns data, which they can use to grow their businesses.

“Previously, they were trying to look for some sort of pattern that could tell them what was going on, but there was no pattern because everything was all over the place.”

In Australia, the GST on exports is huge, Chaim explains. He found many clients were losing a significant amount of profit because they’d either made a calculation error – or simply didn’t know how much they owed. That’s not an issue anymore.

The cherry on top is how easy A2X is to use. “It’s not too complicated, it just works in the way you need it to.” For Chaim, that’s a critical factor when he’s choosing digital tools for his clients.

Use digital tools that enhance your business

After many years in the trade, Chaim says it’s easy to become overwhelmed by the sheer number of eCommerce apps and platforms. So, what’s his trick?

The first step is to figure out what the problem is. Using A2X as an example, the problem was collecting accurate sales data. Then, it’s simply a matter of research. Ask around, and see what has worked for other people in similar situations.

Whatever you do, don’t use something just for the sake of it – it’ll only end up costing you in the long run, Chaim says.

“I don’t have a list of software that I pull out when a new client comes to see me. That way has never worked. What does work is sitting down with the client, identifying the problems and looking for a system that will help fix that.

“The alternative is you end up with 50 different trials for 50 different apps – none of which actually do what you need them to do.”

It’s the process Chaim followed to find A2X, and based on what it’s done for him and his clients, looks like it’s a pretty fool-proof method.