Thorne Widgery recovers  £3K per month in missed software revenue

Before Rechargly, Thorne Widgery had built a modern cloud practice with over 1,000 Xero clients. But the way software subscriptions were oncharged hadn’t kept pace.

Subscription billing lived across Ignition contracts, Xero repeating invoices, GoCardless collections and internal billing tools. There was no single view of what each client should be paying. As a result, subscriptions often stayed on legacy prices for years, pricing changes weren’t consistently applied, and no one had the time to reconcile everything.

Now, Thorne Widgery can see exactly what every client should be paying, subscription billing updates automatically as clients join, and the firm has recovered roughly £3,000 per month in missed revenue while saving hours of internal bookkeeping time.

At-a-glance stats

• Firm size: 1000+ clients using Xero
• Location: UK
• Key outcome: ~25–30% increase in Xero subscription revenue
• Efficiency gain: ~4 hours of admin time saved per week

Before: what life looked like pre-change

Context

Thorne Widgery is a UK-based accounting firm providing bookkeeping, accounts, payroll, VAT, compliance and advisory services. The firm manages more than 1,000 clients using Xero and has built its practice around cloud software.

Over time, the way subscriptions were billed to clients had become fragmented. Different systems handled different parts of the process, and no single platform showed the full picture.bunch.

Old workflow

Subscription billing involved several tools working in parallel:

• Ignition engagements that bundled software with services
• GoCardless collections for recurring payments
• Repeating invoices created directly in Xero
• Internal billing systems used by the firm
  
  

Each system contained part of the information required to manage subscriptions. None provided a complete view across the client base. To work out what each client should be paying required pulling data from multiple systems and reconciling it manually. In practice, this meant the work rarely happened.

“The thing is they weren’t doing it. Someone might set a client up when Xero was £25 a month and three or four years later they were still paying £25 even though the price had gone up.” — Sam King, Director, Thorne Widgery

Price increases made the issue worse. As Xero pricing changed, the firm’s billing often stayed the same because there was no consistent process to update charges across hundreds of clients.

The trigger

The problem became increasingly visible in the firm’s financial reporting. Looking at the P&L each month, the team could see that subscription costs and subscription revenue were drifting apart.

“We’d look at the Xero cost of sales and the revenue coming in and think we’re barely wiping our face on this.” — Sam King, Director, Thorne Widgery

The final push came when Xero introduced new pricing tiers and payroll pricing changes in the UK during late 2025. Updating hundreds of client subscriptions manually under the existing process would have been extremely difficult.

Rather than trying to patch the process again, the firm decided to fix the system.

During: How the firm made the change

What they looked for

Thorne Widgery needed a way to manage software subscriptions continuously rather than through occasional manual audits. The system needed to:

• Show exactly what each client should be paying
• Automatically reflect subscription changes
• Reduce manual reconciliation work
• Update billing automatically as new clients are added

The goal was to introduce visibility and consistency to subscription billing across the entire practice.

Implementation

The transition began with a detailed data review. Subscription information existed across Ignition agreements, multiple GoCardless accounts and manual billing records. Before anything could be migrated, the firm needed to clean and consolidate that data.

“We had a big data cleanse we had to do, merging GoCardless, Ignition and manual billing into one place.” — Sam King, Director, Thorne Widgery

Client agreements were mapped to the correct billing contacts and subscription pricing was aligned with current Xero pricing. Payment collections were then migrated. A portion of the client base was moved through a silent migration process that allowed existing direct debit arrangements to continue without requiring new authorisations.

“I think about 30 or 40 percent of our clients were migrated without us really doing much other than the comms piece.” — Sam King, Director, Thorne Widgery

The new playbook

The updated workflow now operates as follows:

• Xero subscriptions are tracked centrally
• When a new client begins using Xero, billing appears automatically the following month
• Client agreements can be accessed instantly if billing questions arise
• Clients can update their own payment details through agreement links

Previously, identifying what every client should be paying could take days of manual work. Now the information is available immediately.

After: results + proof

What changed (Before → After)

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Day-to-day impact

The team now spends far less time reconciling subscription invoices or correcting pricing mismatches.

The firm estimates it has removed roughly four hours per week of bookkeeping work that previously went into matching invoices and chasing discrepancies.

Business impact

Correcting subscription pricing produced an immediate financial improvement. The firm now generates approximately £3,000 more per month in Xero subscription revenue, representing an estimated 25–30% uplift compared with previous billing levels.

At the same time, the workload associated with managing subscriptions has fallen significantly. The firm also has clearer conversations with clients about software costs because subscriptions are now separated from service fees.

Bottom line

Thorne Widgery replaced a fragmented process spread across contracts, invoices and payment systems with a single workflow that keeps subscription pricing accurate.

The result is greater transparency for clients, stronger control over subscription revenue and a billing system that no longer requires manual reconciliation to stay accurate.