Coates and Partners cuts software recharging to under 15 minutes a month

Coates and Partners is a chartered accountancy firm in Derbyshire with four directors and between 1,000 and 1,200 clients. For years it recharged client software from Excel spreadsheets, reconciling Xero, QuickBooks and Dext and invoicing yearly. Price rises went unbilled for months, new clients slipped through, and subscriptions the firm kept paying were sometimes never recovered.

After moving to Rechargly, costs import and recharge automatically, new clients are flagged as they are added, and payments are collected by direct debit. The monthly admin that used to take hours now takes only 15-30 minutes.

At-a-glance stats

• Firm size: four directors, 1,000 to 1,200 clients
• Location: Derbyshire, United Kingdom
• Key outcome: recharging moved from a once-a-year spreadsheet job to an automated monthly process, with no missed subscriptions
• Efficiency gain: monthly recharging admin down to 15 to 30 minutes, and the multi-day annual invoicing job gone

Before: What life looked like pre-change

Context

The firm is based in Derbyshire, in the Midlands, and its four directors serve clients ranging from individual tax returns and sole traders up to limited companies turning over as much as £2 million, many of them local farms. Alongside the compliance work sit the subscriptions it recharges to clients: Xero, QuickBooks and Dext.

Old workflow

The firm had recharged from spreadsheets since it first moved to Xero around 2015. Each month the team downloaded the CSV invoices from all three tools and updated a master spreadsheet client by client. Matthew set the process up and later handed it to Steven. Because the year end fell on 31 March, the whole year was invoiced in one go around June or July, with only three months based on real charges and the other nine estimated.

Where the process broke down

Estimating nine months of the year left gaps everywhere. A Xero price rise in September would not reach a client's invoice until the following June or July, and clients who changed subscriptions or joined partway through were easy to miss until the annual review caught up. Meanwhile the firm kept paying every subscription month after month, so when a client turned out not to have been billed, or not to have paid, the cost was simply absorbed.

"It took a long time, and it was always a job that got pushed right to the very end. It was always the last thing that we'd do." - Steven McDowell, Coates and Partners

The trigger

There was no single trigger, more a build-up of the same frustrations: the time it took, the subscriptions that slipped through, and the timing that was always out. The prompt came when the firm's Xero partner visited to discuss Making Tax Digital and mentioned Rechargly. Steven sat down with Alex for a demo, and the automation was the draw.

During: How the firm made the change

Implementation

The firm went live around July. Setup took a little longer than expected, with one or two teething issues early on, from clients unsure what the Rechargly emails were to a short-lived invoicing fix. Both were resolved quickly, and the team praised the support as responsive and easy to deal with, stepping in on reconciliation queries when needed.

The new playbook

Recharging now runs to a fixed monthly rhythm. Most of it is automatic, and the manual part is small:

• Instead of an annual pricing review reconciled manually, recharging now runs automatically
• QuickBooks invoices are downloaded and uploaded
• Dext costs are added through a manual CSV upload
• New clients are flagged by email as soon as they appear, ready to map

Across all three tools, Steven now spends between 15 and 30 minutes a month, after which invoices are issued and payments collected automatically.

After: Results + proof

What changed (Before → After)

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Day-to-day impact

Recharging is no longer the job left until last. With invoices going out on a set day it has a deadline, and the bulk of it runs without Steven touching it.

"It's always a priority now. With Rechargly your invoices go out on a set day, so it's no longer a task I can push to the side. I've got a deadline to meet." - Steven McDowell, Coates and Partners

Business impact

Price rises and new clients are now picked up as they happen, so the firm no longer misses subscriptions or absorbs costs it should have recharged. Payments collect automatically by direct debit, taking the chasing away from Juliet, the office manager, with any failed collection flagged by email. Automating the process has also removed the human error that came with the spreadsheets.

"The thought of having to go back to Excel spreadsheets would fill me with dread. The fact that it's more streamlined and automated using Rechargly is fantastic." - Matthew Hackett, Chartered Accountant, Coates and Partners

The year-end burden has gone, Matthew's involvement has been minimal since go-live, and for Steven it simply feels less of a burden.

Bottom line

Coates and Partners replaced a once-a-year spreadsheet reconciliation, built on nine months of estimates, with a monthly process that runs mostly on its own. Subscriptions are recharged accurately as they change, payments collect themselves, and the work that used to swallow days now takes minutes. The last job on the list is now just part of the month.