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Watch: GoCardless customer story - FD Works

21st Sep 2018
Brought to you by
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GoCardless helps businesses accept Direct Debit payments.

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Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

In 2013, Jonathan Gaunt decided he’d had enough of being an in-house corporate management accountant. He wanted to start his own practice for small businesses in Bristol and the South West. That’s when FD Works was born.

“We’d seen so many accountants who only delivered the absolute basics: doing the statutory accounts and tax returns. As a management accountant, I knew how much value a business owner can get from having the right numbers and reporting at their fingertips,” said Jonathan.

The close relationships that Jonathan, Barbara and the team build with their clients have got many Bristol-based creative agencies coming back for more.

“Our tagline is ‘Your best friend in finance’ and that’s really what we’re about – being the trusted friend clients can come to when they’ve got a problem, or a question. It’s all about personal service, getting under the skin of the business and knowing what makes every client tick,” says Barbara.

A more efficient way to get paid

Many accountants struggle to get clients to pay their fees on time. This was certainly a challenge for FD Works at first.

Unpaid invoices can leave a cash-flow hole, along with all the hassle of chasing up late payers. That’s how FD Works came to GoCardless – as a simple solution to this problem.

As Barbara points out, it made all their client invoicing and credit control processes far less labour-intensive too.

“We’ve been using GoCardless pretty much from the start of the business in 2013. It was Jonathan’s idea in the first instance – he’s always looking at new ways to streamline our processes and software tools that can improve our efficiency. I run most of the back-office finance work, so when we heard about how easy GoCardless for Xero made the Direct Debit process we knew it was a no-brainer to start using it.

Barbara says the whole FD Works payment process has been transformed by the move to a simple Direct Debit approach.

“The biggest benefit of GoCardless has been the time saved having to chase customers who’ve not paid. I was spending several hours a week on the phone, or sending out polite chaser emails to clients – and that time tends to stop you being efficient.”

But once FD Works had GoCardless set up alongside their internal Xero online accounting software, it really cut back on that chasing time. Once a client has filled out the online e-mandate, they could just collect their payment at the same time every month.

Read the full story on the GoCardless website.

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