Build your financial security with OBT Financial Group – Lockyer Valley’s Business of the Year 2015 and specialist financial advisers to individuals, business owners and farming families on accounting, tax, business advice and wealth planning for over 30 years.Peter’s Airconditioning and Mechanical Services, operating in the Lockyer Valley, started in 2004 and naturally did what a lot of start-ups do by managing their bookkeeping on spreadsheets.
Owners Peter and Suzanne Phillips spent long hours doing paperwork, invoicing by hand and tediously entering data in Excel.
As Peter moved amongst his customers and other businesses, he started to realise that there could be easier and quicker methods of creating and delivering invoices.
Around that time, Suzanne had read an ad for OBT “Does your business need more advice? We offer a complete range of services including business consulting and advice”.
“The light bulb went on! This is what we needed!” says Suzanne. “We were bogged down in paperwork that didn’t tell us much about our income and expenditure, plus we had recently taken on an apprentice.”
By then Peter was offering a full range of mechanical and air conditioning services. He was totally mobile and covering commercial and general public customers throughout the Lockyer Valley.
“Peter wanted to focus on being the best mechanic he could be, but my head for business had me thinking we needed help and someone more in the mix.”
As well as that, the Phillips have four children so Suzanne would spend precious evenings catching up on bookwork. In 2015 they made the switch to OBT and started working with Sue and Damon.
The first thing they did was upgrade from spreadsheets to a modern accounting system.
“In our first meeting we talked about bookkeeping the old-fashioned way by spreadsheet,” says Suzanne. “OBT explained how to use MYOB and how it would benefit us enormously.”
“It was as if we’d come off the ark and stepped into the cloud!”
“I thought using MYOB would be tricky so I was initially apprehensive but Damon said we’d be fine and shouldn’t be afraid to try it. He was 100% reassuring whilst we got to know MYOB – I never felt overwhelmed and could soon see how it would simplify things for us.”
“When we first started using MYOB, Peter would still manually write invoices and then I would enter each one into the computer. With time lags for one reason or another it was easy to fall behind, so Peter got a tablet and has been e-invoicing ever since. Now I don’t handle his invoices at all.”
“Peter now invoices on the job using MYOB on his tablet. He creates the invoice, then he can use his MYOB pay-on-the-go card reader to swipe a customer’s credit card and receive on the spot payment. Alternately, he can email invoices straight from MYOB and customers can make an online payment from a link in the email. “We receive a much higher proportion of e-payments and handle 50% less cash / cheques without having to chase it,” says Suzanne.
From disconnected to connected
“Before MYOB, if someone paid a bill I’d trawl back through my paperwork to try and reconcile it,” says Suzanne. “Now everything is connected and I can see who has paid and who hasn’t. MYOB opens up conversations if any follow-up is needed; the biggest benefit is that everything is right there and I can see it all – invoices, payments, debtors, bank transactions.”
Suzanne also uses MYOB Payroll to process wages for Peter and their apprentice.
“If I phone OBT, nine times out of ten I can get to talk to Damon straight away or I can email him and get a reply the same day! We receive brilliant support from OBT – Sue oversees all our tax, and I leave our BAS to Damon, who efficiently processes our information and has results back to us in no time. ”
“Working with OBT and MYOB has reduced my bookwork time by nearly half!”
OBT even made it easy for Suzanne and Peter to change accountants.
“I knew there had to be something better but I was nervous about changing,” says Suzanne. “I thought I didn’t want to learn an accounting program because I didn’t want to learn accounting, but OBT does all that.”
“OBT treat us like friends,” says Suzanne. “I wish we had started with them years ago, but the good thing is that we’re on the right track now.”
Suzanne and Peter have re-cast their business processes, enhanced by up-to-date accounting technology – the cloud – with OBT to keep them organised. They took a huge leap of faith and have come out all the better for it.
Copyright 2017. OBT Financial Group Gatton Lockyer Valley QLD #BuildingYourFinancialSecurity
