By Jessica Sier

“Tech fatigue” is a real condition. With thousands of off-the-shelf solutions for every conceivable accounting issue, it’s no wonder many practices baulk at the idea of yet another IT tool. “Which is why it’s really important to let potential clients know that your solution comes from your own internal frustrations,” says Melissa Voss CA, co-founder and associate director of client and partner relations at FuseWorks.

“The fact we are accountants ourselves has given us a great voice in the community and means we speak the same language and understand the same frustrations as our clients.”

Voss began her career as an accounting administrator before moving into accounting practice management. But she found more administration waiting for her. Hours and hours of creating and formatting documents for huge family groups meant she and her colleagues couldn’t spend time on the fun stuff: interacting with clients and planning their strategies.

“So we decided to fix it ourselves,” she says. “We had some great IT smarts in our practice and figured we could do some really clever things by asking smarter questions.”

Leveraging data that already exists within firms, Voss and her team – led by Scott Barber on the tech front – stripped out the manual part of collating documents and built a suite of templates that allows firms to consistently create and brand reports.

Hugh O'Connell and Melissa Voss CA.

The result, FuseDocs, automates hours of accounting administration time. “Stuff that took hours now takes about five minutes,” says Voss. “But we’d never have been able to build it if we hadn’t been struggling with the inefficiencies ourselves.”

“We’d never have been able to build it if we hadn’t been struggling with the inefficiencies ourselves.”

The team used the FuseDocs system internally for about five years before it entered the broader market. “When it was just us using it, it was pretty simple Excel add-ins that did some process automation,” says Voss.

Since FuseDocs launched, a constant stream of client feedback has improved FuseWorks’ offering and added a second product, FuseCharts.

“It’s changed a lot,” Voss says, adding that understanding the ins and outs of accounting practices means the team can transform client feedback into product results within a relatively short period. 

“That accounting knowledge and experience has meant we can build products customised for clients,” she says. “And it makes telling the story
to clients much easier.”

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