How Petrichor Consulting bought back its time with Fintura

Hi, I'm Danyca, head of partnerships and community at Fintura. Today I'm sitting with Louwrens from Petrichor, a small accounting firm in Stellenbosch, who's been on Fintura for just over a year. Hi Louwrens.

Hi Danyca. Thank you for having me here.

No problem. Tell me a bit about your firm, the kind of clients that you serve.

So, we're a small accounting firm, um, as you mentioned, uh, hoping to grow to one of the big four, which I think is any accounting firm's dream. Um, but yeah, we service mainly photographers, photographers and videographers, um, in the wedding industry.

That's cool.

Yeah, I I think I saw a gap in the market that no one really approached them and wanted to take the time to guide their clients, you know, in how to set up a business and how to run the business and make it successful. And that's actually where my passion lies is building businesses and making it successful. So I was like, well, why not just do it as an accountant in that way? I don't need to invest money into something, but I still get to do it.

Cool.

So yeah, that's that's what Petrichor does. It's what the idea behind Petrichor was and behind its name as well. The the name means the the smell of rain after a drought, you know. So really telling the ideas to pick put that picture in in the client's mind of like if I partner with Petrichor my my business is going to flourish and grow after a dry season.

That's very cool. I love the name. I really love the name. Paint me a picture of what a busy season look like for you.

Provisional tax season. August and February are the worst months because you have your normal clients whose stuff you have up to date, but for some reason um potential clients then realise SARS is on their case and they need to do something and they come to you not at the beginning of August, not two months before August, in the two uh final weeks and they want you to do six months worth of work in two weeks always. So obviously as a growing indust company we say yes but we do give this disclaimer that if we can't uh we can't promise that we will be able to do that we obviously give our attention first to our long-standing customers and um prioritise them. Um and I think that's just what makes it a busy season is you get this unpredictable influx of of people realising they need to pay something or that SARS might ask questions. Yeah. and they're like, "Well, hey, I need help." And who's going to say no to someone? You know, the idea is to partner with people and help them get to a place where they don't need to do that in the next year.

Take me back to before you joined Fintura um or implemented it into your practice. How were you keeping on top of your compliance, your deadlines, and your client's work?

So, um I was using Google calendar and setting reminders um for my deadlines and compliance honestly um just by ear you know what I've learned um and if I didn't know I'd have to find it out by myself and if I couldn't do that then I'd need to ask call um where I did my articles call them and say hey how do I do this because you know we as as as accountants our focus isn't really compliance although that's part of something and it's something that we should do and we know uh in terms of what the law is on how to do it. We don't necessarily always know how to do it because we're just not taught the systems because we had so much other more systems that we need to focus on and that is part of our daily routine that we don't always get to do that.

Um but since Fintura has come in and luckily like my company was a year old and then Fintura came along and I was like I'm putting that in now. So, it wasn't a big shift and it also meant that I don't need to go and study and figure out who I need to email and fill in forms and all of that. I just give it along to Fintura and they help me with it.

I'm curious, was there a moment where you kind of were like, okay, this this is not working anymore. I need something to help me.

I wouldn't pin it down to one moment in in and be able to say it's because I needed to do this or that. I think it builds up and I think that's what um pushes most um of your Fintura's customers to say you know what let's change is up and you get to a point where like I've got so much that I need to do I have no idea how to do it or where to start I don't have the time let's just implement the system so that we can handle that as quickly as possible so it I can't put it down to one moment of saying I needed to file this return or do that it was a an accumulation of moments that build out to one point where I said I need I need help.

What was the process that you had previously taking out of you?

Well, I would definitely say it's time you know um time fur paying Fintura buys me time. It allows me to spend more time and doing things that I want to do for my clients rather than having to sit down, fill out forms, whether manually or electronically, send it to them, then get it back, then send to um CIPC, hopefully they respond, otherwise keep following up.

So, Fintura has gone and bought me time so that I can service my clients in a way that's better than just telling them when their deadlines are due and when their money is due.

M um did you have any doubts before you signed up to Fintura?

I mean I think anyone has doubts when trying a new software or trying something new. Um I think it just really depends on your appetite of risk when it comes to to trying something new and also whether you can understand the concept that they are selling to you. And luckily for me, I'm in a younger generation where, you know, technology doesn't scare me. Um, I am a big advocate of implementing technology to help you service your clients as quickly and as best as possible. So when I heard about Fintura reached out to Reece and yeah I think and Bernice was there but Bernice was like behind the the scenes but I was just speaking with Reece and I understood the concept and what it could do for me and that made the switch and the implementation of it a much much easier.

Tell me about the first few months you were on Fintura. Did you what did you feel was different?

So the first few months I had Fintura and I paid it but I don't think I used it much. Um, and I think the reason was it's just like you're still we we're as accountants we're creatures creatures of habit. So we still did the same thing over and over. But then I'm like okay now I have free time.

Oo I see I uh this person's annual return is due. Let's submit it and see how it goes. And I did it and it literally took a couple of days. Um, and I got uh the forms back from CIPC through Fintura and I was like, "Okay, now I'm going to do everything through here." Because it took me a couple of day or it took a couple of days to get a response. Um, and it took maybe a few minutes to submit something where if I had to do it myself, it would probably take a couple of days before I submit it.

Um, if you had to put a number on it now that you've been on a bit longer, what can you say that number would be? Would it be hours? Would it be more clients? sort of be getting stuff done faster. Like

time time is uh the most valuable currency that you have in life and that's what Fintura allows me to buy. Um

you can't make more of it. You have this much portion.

Yeah.

And every day and every second you spend doing it something else means you're not going to get that back. I can make more money. Yeah.

I can build up a new business, but I can never have enough time or more time.

So you got your weekends back?

Oh, I got my weekends back to do other things. Yes,

I mean that works. That works. Um, was there something that you can do now that wasn't possible before Fintura?

Yeah. Like um before Fintura, I probably wouldn't have had an idea of how to do foreign assurance. um I wouldn't have known how to um necessarily have the right steps of um sub pulling um reports from other C uh clients like their disclosure documents. So one thing it's one of my biggest thing is like I go to Fintura and I pull the company documents or request to pull the documents and you guys give me the CoR 14.3 the 14.1 the 15 all of that I only know how to do that when I'm the director of the company.

Um how has implementing Fintura in your practice changed um things for your clients?

Um well I would say it the clients probably know don't necessarily see the direct value in it because they don't directly have an involvement when it comes to Fintura. what they do experience is the indirect value and that's again ties into me having the time to sit with them and spend time structuring your taxes um giving you advice instead of saying hey can I have a meeting with you in two weeks time because I need to first figure out spending time with all this admin stuff I can say okay I can see you this week let's do it

if we took one feature away tomorrow which one would you fight me for

the compliance I can submit my own taxes if I have to. It's a little bit of a manual work and I ran ran my practice without the practice management, but don't take away my compliance.

If a firm came to you that was on the fence about moving to Fintura, what would you tell them?

Move as quickly as possible. It would be the best decision you've made. You're going to make yourself a better practice. You're going to be able to support your clients a lot faster and a lot better. And you're going to change their narrative of my accountant only speaks to me when I need to do something to my accountant is proactive.

Love that. Last one. How would you describe Fintura in one sentence?

It's difficult to put it in one sentence because the idea is that it's a company whose ceiling is higher than what most companies are, but who cares about those whose ceilings are low.

That is actually beautiful. I think we should put that on the wall. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Awesome.