Accounting·West Perth, WA·2024
Meridian Advisory
One client story before the next BAS week
Partners stopped arguing over whose spreadsheet was the client list
Client
Two partners, three accountants, one client manager (Asha). Mix of tradies, SMSFs, and a handful of companies. Xero for current files; history lived in two Excel workbooks that had drifted since 2019.
Engagement
Data workstream plus a thin client status surface. Asha owned definitions. Partners signed the ‘active client’ rule in a Tuesday meeting. We did not implement a new practice management suite.
Duration
11 weeks
A six-person accounting practice in West Perth had two Excel ledgers and a shared inbox for ‘where’s my BAS’. We cleaned the client list, agreed what ‘active’ means, and shipped a small status page clients can check before they email.
- Data
- Accounting
- Portal
Starting point
Pipeline and ‘who do we still act for’ never matched. The same company appeared as a trading name, a trustee, and a personal email. Clients emailed Asha for BAS status because the portal they paid for in 2021 had been abandoned. Partners used different definitions of active — one counted anyone billed in two years, the other anyone with a current Xero connection.
Challenge
No appetite for another practice platform. Write-freeze had to fit around BAS weeks. Historical notes could not be deleted. Partners needed a rollback story, not a Friday-night cutover.
Approach
Workshopped golden rules on a whiteboard: active, paused, exited. Deduped with a human queue for fuzzy matches — Asha reviewed the awkward ones. Migrated in batches with row counts she could sign. The ‘portal’ is deliberately small: lodgement status and outstanding items, not a document vault. Xero stayed the working file.
How it ran
Discovery through launch — emphasis changes by client; this is how this one actually went.
- 1
Audit & definitions
Field inventory, owner map, the argument about ‘active’ finally written down.
- 2
Clean & dedupe
Rules plus Asha’s review queue. Comms to staff with a real deadline.
- 3
Dry runs
Sandbox counts, timing, what happens if a partner is in Broome that week.
- 4
Status page
Magic links, outstanding-item list, no document dump.
- 5
Cutover support
Hypercare around one BAS cycle, then handover to Asha.
What we shipped
- Agreed definitions and exception log
- Deduped client list with review queue
- Batch migration packs with counts Asha signed
- Magic-link status page for outstanding items
Outcomes
- →One signed client list both partners use in the Monday meeting
- →Asha fields fewer ‘where’s my BAS’ emails in the fortnight after lodgement
- →A written rollback for the status page if a batch looks wrong
Stack
- Documented CSV transforms
- Airtable staging and review queues
- Soft client status page (magic link)
- Xero remained the working file
Constraints
- Append-only for historical notes
- No new practice-management product in this phase
- Status page shows process state, not tax advice
What actually worked
Batching with a human sign-off. Naming Asha as the only person who could change definitions ended circular partner emails.
From the room
“We still argue about fees. We do not argue about who is on the books.”
— Asha Rahman, client manager
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