BKL streamlines accounts production for greater efficiencies

Streamlining Accounts Production for Greater Efficiencies

BKL harnesses the power of Silverfin to save time, enhance data flow, and achieve standardisation across teams.

Location: London, England
Employees: 400+
Product used: Silverfin (cloud accounting software for clients)

“For BKL, the three main advantages of using Silverfin are standardisation, systemisation, and time-saving.”

BKL partner Jason Appel found that adopting Silverfin’s cloud accounting compliance platform has yielded significant benefits for the firm.

As a single-office accounting practice based in North London with 230 staff, BKL sought to leverage technology to transform their accounts processing and tackle recurring challenges—namely, data entry duplication and a lack of standardisation across client files.

“We needed a new solution for our accounting compliance function… to free up time for our staff, enabling us to engage with clients more frequently and with better data. Silverfin came along at the perfect time for us!”

The primary goal at BKL was to bring together their different teams into one system, one set of processes, with a single source of truth—from bookkeeping to final accounts production. This approach would allow their team to input data just once and have it flow seamlessly throughout the entire system.

“One of the key benefits we’ve seen since implementing Silverfin over the last year is the systemisation of our processes, leading to high-quality files produced in a standardised format,” says Jason. “On accounts where we have management information, management accounts, and bookkeeping all flowing into the final year-end accounts, there are real time savings.”

Driving Efficiencies in Day-to-Day Operations

Silverfin empowers BKL to establish one way of working across all teams, ensuring consistency across different sectors and boosting overall efficiency. The platform has also resulted in tangible time savings during day-to-day tasks.

With many of their clients using Xero, bookkeeping data is pulled through automatically into Silverfin, pre-populating the different schedules needed to produce the year-end accounts.

“One particularly notable time-saving occurred with a set of accounts that previously took around 25 hours in 2021. However, in 2022, the same task only took 12 and a half hours! This substantial time-saving is solely attributable to the use of Silverfin schedules.”

Better Data, Faster Service

The benefits extend beyond time savings; BKL has also been able to provide improved services to its clients.

Hollie explains: “Previously, preparing a set of management accounts was a manual process that could take up to two weeks. With Silverfin, I can access the data instantly. The process is now significantly shorter, allowing clients to receive their management accounts by the 3rd or 4th of the month, rather than waiting until the 14th or 15th.”

Embracing the Cloud

BKL’s vision is to transition from legacy software to a fully cloud-based environment, and Silverfin plays a pivotal role in this journey.

“We operate a hybrid office, with most employees working from home a few days a week. Additionally, we have colleagues in India and South Africa who can access the files just as if they were in the office,” says Hollie.

Being cloud-based also reduces the burden on IT staff. Tom Li, Cloud Accounting Lead at BKL, explains: “Maintenance and software updates are installed automatically, so there’s nothing for the IT team to worry about.”