New Wave Accountants consolidated their fragmented tech stack

New Wave Accountants is an award-winning, digital-first accounting firm. They’re unapologetically tech-led and pride themselves on not being a typical ‘dinosaur’ practice.

A 100% cloud-based business, technology is embedded in everything they do, and they leverage the best tech to run their practice well, so they can help their clients’ businesses grow.

“Our main market is e-commerce clients, that’s our niche,” explains Ana Lukac, Chief Operating Officer. “We understand e-commerce businesses, how they work, and we guide them through everything that needs to be done to grow their business.”

E-commerce is a rapidly growing market, and the team at New Wave understand the need to be proactive and agile.

“A lot of accountants aren’t very familiar with the e-commerce space. We ended up getting a new client a $20,000 tax refund after noticing their prior accountants made errors on overseas sales, meaning they had originally overpaid.”

The New Wave team is inspired by big challenges, and works hard to create innovative accounting strategies that grow their clients’ businesses.

A new wave of accountants

Ana and the team at New Wave believe clients are looking for more than just tax advice—they’re looking for reliable business advisors they can trust, and who genuinely buy into their business goals and dreams.

« We want to help our clients’ businesses grow. We don’t just want them to come to us to churn out their tax work. We actually want to be a part of their business and help them grow and really see their business do well. »

During the 2022 financial year tax planning alone, New Wave saved $3 million in tax across 132 clients.

“We have a very forward-thinking approach to advisory services, and the proof is in the results we generate for our clients,” says Ana.

New Wave began as a way to break the mold of the ‘traditional’ accountant. They strive to be innovators, forward-thinkers and true business advisors.

And in order to do that, they need passion, expertise, and the right tools that enable them to do their jobs well.

Consolidating a fragmented tech stack

Technology plays an integral role in the value New Wave provides their clients.

“Without tech, we would be lost. Everything is online. We have a lot of different applications that we use, and a priority is that we utilize each program as much as possible so that the money that we’re spending isn’t going to waste,” explains Ana.

There was a time when their tech stack was fragmented. They had too many applications performing small parts of their day-to-day operations, meaning they were constantly flipping between programs just to get simple tasks complete, with too many clicks in between.

They knew quickly that in order to live their mission of being innovative, they needed to address this pain point. So, they went on the hunt for a tool to consolidate their important and frequent functions that were core to their business.

And that’s when they found Karbon.

“We were using too many different pieces of software that were all doing similar things. But none of them could do the majority for us—until we found Karbon.”

With Karbon, they did away with manual workflows in spreadsheets and tedious email habits. As a result, their frustrations decreased and productivity was supercharged. Not only that, but since implementing Karbon, their client response time is down 50%. This means the team has more time to help their clients save money and grow their businesses.

« There wasn’t really any program that was comparable to Karbon in our eyes. We call it ‘The Beast’. »

Transparency like never before

A large part of what makes New Wave unique is their commitment to providing their clients with clarity.

“We always provide clarity to our clients—we never send them a surprise invoice or bill. And we provide clarity around their figures, with regular meetings, making sure we don’t just send them tax returns, for example, without a phone call explaining how we got to the final figure,” notes Ana.

But in order to give their clients as much clarity as possible, along with smooth and high quality customer service, New Wave need transparency across every function of their accounting firm.

“Transparency is the biggest pain point Karbon solved for us, for sure. Being able to see everything that’s been communicated to a client, including internal comments back and forth, saves us a lot of time and embarrassment.”

“Before Karbon, we would send client emails, then save that email to the client’s folder in GDrive and hope for the best.”

“But now with their timeline in Karbon, we’re able to see exactly what’s happened before calling our clients.”

Plus, the time saved on workflow management means Ana can immediately see exactly where and how client work is progressing, right within Karbon, without having to ask multiple people for spreadsheets every day.

« We’re really happy. Karbon’s given us the ability to really be able to grow our client base, automate work for our staff, and enable more transparency for both clients and staff. And we’ve been able to provide our clients with the best service by knowing them a little bit better. »

“Empower, excite and build confidence in small business”

New Wave Accountants aren’t your typical number-crunchers. In fact, they’re one of the fastest growing accounting firms in Australia.

They don’t get stuck reviewing historical figures and focusing on tax. They’re a passionate group of business advisors who cherish the partnerships forged with their clients, helping them to reach their full potential.

And it’s evident in everything they do: from their forward-thinking commitment to growth, to their digital-only mantra, to their finessed tech stack.

Key results

• Halved the time it takes for their clients to provide required information

• Tripled their team size in 3 years

• Saved $3 million in tax across 134 clients in 1 year

• Uncovered untapped transparency across internal and external processes