About Virtually Sorted
Virtually Sorted Business Services (Virtually Sorted) is a bookkeeping service company that works alongside a breadth of clients, from manufacturing and construction to beauty services and retail. In a typical week, the business helps time-pressed workforces keep their books in tip-top shape, wade through tides of receipts and transactions and ensure returns are accurate and timely.
Virtually Sorted was founded in 2016 by Nicole Vaughan, a financial wizard capable of wearing multiple hats simultaneously. As someone who has leapt careers from a large corporate business into establishing and growing her bookkeeping company, Nicole deeply empathises with the everyday challenges small businesses face. We talked with her about how she utilises Dext Prepare to provide her clients with the best possible work.
The Opportunity
In the early years as she was building her client base, it was clear to Nicole that there were piles of paperwork everywhere — and all of it needed to be picked up, organised and put into an accounting software for storage. This manual process meant she was only able to deliver updated records based on her availability and the frequency of data entry that clients were willing to pay for.
She spent hours regularly driving to her clients to pick up stacks of papers or tortuously downloading online files of documents, getting stuck in the weeds of renaming files and handling manual problems.
Nicole realised she wanted smart technology that could reduce the effort for her clients and free up her chargeable time to be used more profitably and productively.
The Solution
As the business name suggests, Virtually Sorted needed to be cloud-based to deliver the level of quality Nicole desired for her clients — but this technology was still a groundbreaking concept at the time. She selected Xero as her hero accounting system and went to work finding a sidekick that could work alongside it.
This journey led her to Dext Prepare, which neatly integrates with Xero for more streamlined processes and added value for her clients. It was the obvious next step for her and her business because of its ease of use and efficiency.
“I trust Dext to do the work without me having to double-check everything, I can rely on it.”
The implementation process was smooth, especially since Nicole was already familiar with Xero. Once she was signed up and ready to go, the software got to work bringing all the paperwork together into one standardised, digital format for her to access as needed.
The Impact
Dext Prepare transformed the way Virtually Sorted serves its clients, simplifying how paperwork is managed and reducing time spent driving and painstakingly pouring over files.
“Dext Prepare helped me save around 15 hours per week on just one client.”
Now, Nicole can grab her smartphone, snap a shot of a receipt or document and send it to her Dext email address. After that, she can throw away that receipt and get back to work. While she focuses on important tasks, Dext Prepare takes over, automatically extracting data, applying any allocation rules and putting the data accurately into her Xero account.
After about a year into its journey using Dext Prepare, Virtually Sorted swapped to a competing product. This decision was made for financial reasons as this service was free and appeared to offer the same functionality.
Right after implementing this new solution, things started to go awry. It was not only fiddlier to use for her clients but also extremely unreliable in managing data capture accurately. In a business where trust sits at the heart of the service, her confidence in the data being gathered evaporated.
It was at that point when Nicole was seriously considering recruiting someone full-time to help her handle the increasing admin load that she took a step back and thought again. Free isn’t always best — and Nicole ultimately decided to go back to Dext Prepare.
Now that Nicole strictly uses Dext, she doesn’t have to stress about minute details or incorrect data. She can help her clients with her bookkeeping expertise knowing her accounts are up to date and ready to go.
The improvements made since using Dext Prepare really add up, enabling Nicole to spend her time on work that’s more valuable to her clients and more satisfying for her.
“Dext Prepare takes away the work I didn’t want to do and only charges a low rate for it. It allowed me to move on to higher value tasks and work.”
Moving Forward
As Virtually Sorted continues growing and gaining more clients, Dext Prepare will scale with it, providing streamlined accounting services no matter its workload size or number of customers.
Want to improve your practice to be more productive and efficient? Check out Dext Prepare and see why this is a must-have for any business.
Give it a try by starting a free trial today.