Darren Hosiosky
Firm snapshot
Firm: Eintracht Bell Pty Ltd
Location: South Perth, WA
Founded: 1 November 2001 and
Team: Four, sometimes five. One accountant, two bookkeepers, one practice manager
Clients: Around 400 across companies, trusts, super funds, partnerships and individuals
Services: Accounting and tax advice
Systems: Xero and Xero Practice Manager
Previous process: Email, print-and-scan signatures, manual digital pack assembly
Challenge: A four-step print, sign, scan and return loop on every signature, plus manual pack building behind the scenes
Efficiency gain: Client signing steps reduced from four to two. Time savings yet to be quantified at around two months of use
About Eintracht Bell
Eintracht Bell is a four-person practice in South Perth, run by owner and director Graham Eintracht from the same office since it opened.
The firm looks after around 400 clients across companies, trusts, super funds, partnerships and individuals, with accounting and tax advice across all of them. Two bookkeepers, one practice manager and one accountant carry that book, with a second accountant working part-time and casually.
At that size, every hour the team spends assembling documents is an hour taken from client work. There is no separate admin department to absorb it.
The Before: Print, Sign, Scan, Send Back
Before Admiin, every signature involved four jobs on the client's side. Open the email. Print the pages that needed signing. Scan them. Send them back.
The firm then picked up its own list:
Save the returned signed pages
Rebuild the return as a digital pack in the firm's folders
File it where it could be found later, for finance applications and client requests
Lodge through Xero Practice Manager
"It's time-consuming and monotonous," Graham says.
Before email, it was paper. Returns were prepared, signed by hand, lodged, and then bound into a physical pack once the notice of assessment came through.
"You've got to get it all together, punch it, bind it, put it all together nicely."
Two or three clients still ask for that pack, and the firm still makes it for them. "They want the paper, and they want to hold it, and they want to touch it, and they want to feel it."
The Decision to Change
Nothing had fallen over. That shaped what Graham went looking for.
"My old system wasn't broken. It was working pretty well. It's all about improving the efficiencies and trying to modernise so that clients can sign online, send it back, and they're not having to print the document, sign it, scan it, send it back."
He put a number on the gap himself:
"The pain point is you send it out, the client's got to print it off, sign it, scan it, send it back. There's about four steps involved. Now you want to just improve that. Take it out, sign it, send it back. Two steps."
Admiin came across his desk in an email promoting a webinar: "The Lodgement Workflow That Handles KYC Too", run by founder Darren Hosiosky on 22 June. The pitch was one continuous workflow from document intake through to signed, paid and verified, with identity verification as a single click inside it rather than a separate project. It ran nine days before AML obligations started on 1 July.
Graham watched the session.
"I thought, gee, the programme looks pretty good, and I really wanted to give it a try."
That combination is what got him over the line. He was already after fewer steps on signing, and AML screening had just become something the firm needed on every client it took on.
The team came on board without objections, and the practice manager took ownership of the rollout.
"The practice manager loves it, and she's been instrumental in fixing up a lot of the ways we want to use it for our practice. And Admiin has been brilliant in coming to the party."
The After: Upload, Sign, Filed
Admiin sits between finishing the job and lodging it. Xero Practice Manager still handles the lodgement.
"All we've done is introduce Admiin as an intermediary between completing the job, getting it to the client to sign, and then lodgement. So improving the efficiency of that process."
The process now:
The completed documents are uploaded into Admiin
Admiin emails the client
The client clicks the signing box and signs on screen
The signed documents return to the firm automatically, ready to download and file
"The client gets a little box to click on, please sign here, signs the documents, and then they automatically come back signed."
Two steps for the client, down from four. And the wait on the way back changed too.
"You're not waiting days, you're not waiting weeks. It comes back, and you get the returns lodged."
The second feature Graham rates is AML screening, which now applies to every client the firm takes on.
"The AML section of the programme is very good, which we now have to do for every client anyway. So that's actually very, very good."
The Results
Area | Before Admiin | With Admiin |
|---|---|---|
Signing process | Email, print, sign, scan, return | Sign on screen, returned automatically |
Client steps per signature | 4 | 2 |
Turnaround on signatures | Days to weeks | "It comes back" (no wait reported) |
Document pack | Rebuilt by hand in firm folders | Signed pack returns ready to file |
AML and KYC | Not covered in interview [CONFIRM] | In the same workflow as signing |
Physical binding packs | Punched and bound as standard | Kept for the two or three clients who ask |
Lodgement | Xero Practice Manager | Xero Practice Manager (unchanged) |
Graham holds off on putting a number on it, and says so plainly.
"I wouldn't like to quantify it. But I would like to say it's certainly more efficient. There's no question."
"Let's look at it in six months' time and I'll tell you, look at this, we're quite efficient."
The Client Experience
Most of the client book moved across without much prompting.
"Most of them are on board, and most have been pretty happy with it."
A few needed a hand. "Some old-schoolers were finding it a little difficult navigating the process, but with a little help from the practice manager, they'll generally get there."
One or two still prefer to sign by hand. The firm is happy to keep that option open for them, which suits a practice built on 25 years of the same client relationships.
Implementation: What to Expect
Graham's answer on what a firm should decide before go-live was that it depends on the firm.
"Every single practice is different. They operate in a different way."
What worked at Eintracht Bell was putting the practice manager in charge of the rollout and raising the small things directly with the Admiin team as they came up. One example: a signature appearing outside the signature box, sorted in a single round of support.
"I wouldn't say there's a bug in the programme which is making me go, oh God, I should never have taken this on. That's certainly not the case."
"Darren and Dylan have been really good with support. They've really been brilliant."
"Onboarding was good. Painless."
What's Next for Eintracht Bell
A Xero invoicing integration is in progress, so fees the firm raises in Xero can be tracked through Admiin.
"That's the new feature which I want to have a look at, so that it's integrating between the two."
Two months in, Eintracht Bell has taken two steps out of every signature, moved most of a 400-client book onto digital signing, and brought AML screening into the same place as the rest of the work. Graham is holding the numbers back until he has six months behind him. What he will say now is that the firm runs on fewer steps than it did in June, the signed documents come back on their own, and the two or three clients who want a bound paper pack still get one.
"If you're looking for efficiency and you'd rather be more paperless than what you are, just give it a go."
— Graham Eintracht, Owner and Director, Eintracht Bell Pty Ltd
Is your firm still asking clients to print, sign and scan? See what Admiin can do.
