Bookkeeping work cut by 62% with a model that learns each client's coding rules.

Marcroft & Co looks after family and privately owned Waikato businesses, the kind of clients who value an accountant who actually knows their operation. Yet much of the team's week disappeared into repetitive bookkeeping, coding bank transactions to the right GL account, client by client, each with their own quirks about how a fuel stop, a tradie's hardware run or a mixed-use vehicle expense should be treated. The generic bank-feed rules in Xero only ever caught the obvious recurring lines, leaving staff to hand-code the long tail and re-answer the same GST-treatment questions month after month.

It was steady, low-value work that quietly crowded out the advisory conversations clients actually pay for and the firm most wants to have. The coding also drifted: different staff sometimes treated the same kind of transaction differently, and onboarding a new bookkeeper meant teaching them each client's unwritten conventions one correction at a time. As the client base grew, the firm could see the maths, more ledgers meant proportionally more manual coding, more month-end pressure and less room to grow without simply adding headcount. They wanted to take the grind out of the work while keeping the accuracy and the partner-level judgement that their reputation rests on.

"It actually learns how each client codes their books, GST quirks and all, so most transactions just fall into place with the right account and treatment. We're reviewing the handful of exceptions now instead of keying every line, and every correction we make makes the next month better. That time goes straight back into advising owners, which is the work we wanted to be doing all along."