Around Finance currently uses Bright’s payroll solution, BrightPay, in addition to Bright’s accounting solutions, BrightAccountsProduction, BrightBooks and Dext Prepare. This case study explores their experience as a Bright customer and their use of our products.
Introduction to Around Finance
Around Finance is an accounting practice that has significantly evolved over the past five years under the leadership of Richie Lennon. After spending years working in CFO roles, mentoring startups through Enterprise Ireland, and providing one–to–one consulting with local enterprise offices, Richie identified a crucial gap between what accountants traditionally offer and what business owners truly need.
“There’s a gap between what accountants do and what business owners need.“
His extensive experience mentoring thousands of small business owners led him to build Around Finance with a central philosophy; “relationships plus insights.”
The practice specialises in serving three core client segments: e-commerce brands, technology companies, and marketing agencies. Around Finance structures its client relationships into three tiers, with different levels of advisory services for each tier.
Life as a Bright customer
Richie is an enthusiastic advocate for Bright’s suite of products, which has consolidated what was previously a fragmented offering of software in the Irish market.
“I think what you guys are doing is you’re creating the platform accountants and SMEs to increase engagements in a manner that is very much the norm in the UK and other markets.“
As an early adopter of technology in the accounting space, Richie appreciates how Bright is helping Irish businesses bridge the technology gap.
“Ireland is two to three years behind the UK in how accountants engage with SMEs—but that’s changing fast. As more firms adopt cloud tools and move toward hands-on, advisory-led service, this approach is becoming the new industry standard“
Around Finance has built its tech stack around Bright’s products because of their reliability and efficiency. Richie notes that his practice’s commitment to being “great at everything we do” means using the best tech, and he considers Bright’s products to be “best-in-class in the Irish market.”
Around Finance has developed a sophisticated workflow that integrates all of Bright’s solutions into a seamless ecosystem. For clients requiring full bookkeeping and year-end services, Around Finance begins with data capture using Dext Prepare. This extracted data then flows seamlessly into BrightBooks via integration, where the team completes the bookkeeping responsibilities and preliminary financial analysis. Once complete, the data transitions smoothly from BrightBooks to BrightAccountsProduction to produce the final accounts.
Speaking on this, Richie says:
“We start by extracting the data from our clients’ documents in Dext Prepare before sending it to BrightBooks to complete the bookkeeping. Once that’s done, it flows into BrightAccountsProduction for us to complete the final accounts.“
Around Finance’s experience with BrightPay
Around Finance has been a long-time user of Bright’s multi-award-winning payroll software, BrightPay.
BrightPay has delivered significant time savings for Around Finance, particularly through its bulk processing features. For example, Richie stated that for one client with over 120 employees, he was able to turn what was once a day’s work for someone to a couple of hours:
“What used to take someone a full day to complete is now completed in just a couple of hours using BrightPay. There’s no other software that I’m aware of in the payroll market that can handle that type of processing.”
Richie also described BrightPay’s flexibility in handling different payment schedules and comprehensive reporting as standout features that make BrightPay indispensable for Around Finance. Here’s what Richie had to say about these features:
“BrightPay handles all the payment schedule variations seamlessly, which many other payroll systems struggle with. The reporting capabilities are equally impressive, giving us exactly the data we need.“
To conclude our discussion about Around Finance’s experience with BrightPay, Richie praised the platform’s robust processing capabilities, describing it as the best in the industry:
“There’s no other software that I’m aware of in the payroll space that can handle that type of processing.“
Around Finance’s experience with Bright’s accounting solutions
BrightAccountsProduction for year-end accounts
Around Finance has been using Bright’s accounts production software, BrightAccountsProduction for approximately 2-3 years, with Richie considering it as the top choice in the Irish market.
“BrightAccountsProduction is the best year–end accounts production software on the market, it’s at the heart of what we’re doing in terms of year–end accounts production.”
BrightAccountsProduction is integral to the practice’s operations, with team leads and a dedicated senior accountant using the software to handle accounts production across all client tiers. According to Richie, the system has transformed how Around Finance handles year-end accounting processes through several powerful features.
Regarding the compliance database, Richie emphasised its importance for maintaining accuracy:
“Using BrightAccountsProduction helps make sure that everything that we produce is up to date and compliant, which means that I can be assured that there’s consistency with the compliance of each job.”
Richie also praised the iXBRL functionality in BrightAccountsProduction, noting the automatic tagging and one-click conversion for its time-saving capabilities.
“The automatic iXBRL tagging feature speeds up a lot of time in our year end production.”
Richie highlighted the common challenges firms face when preparing multiple year-end accounts, where a single error or change can ripple through numerous financial statements consuming valuable time. He explained how BrightAccountsProduction addresses this issue with its editable financial statements, significantly reducing time spent and boosting efficiency in year-end accounts preparation.
“The editable financial statements saves a lot of time in the production of year end accounts and is key to more efficient processes”
Before moving on to talk about how Around Finance use BrightBooks and Dext Prepare in their practice, Richie reiterated how BrightAccountsProduction’s powerful functionality helps his practice create and finalise client accounts quickly.
“The compliance database, direct editing of the financial statements and being able to tag IXBRL is what is what speeds up getting the accounts out the door”
BrightBooks for bookkeeping
BrightBooks serves as a key bookkeeping platform for many of Around Finance’s clients, offering a powerful yet accessible solution that bridges the gap between data collection and financial reporting. For Around Finance, BrightBooks‘ greatest strength lies in its integration capabilities.
“If we get all our clients into BrightBooks, it greatly helps us with the year-end process, working alongside BrightAccountsProduction.”
Dext Prepare for data extraction
Data extraction forms the foundation of efficient accounting processes at Around Finance, and Dext Prepare has been their solution of choice for nearly a decade. As a critical first step in their workflow, the optical character recognition (OCR) technology in Dext Prepare allows Around Finance to streamline document processing by automatically capturing, categorising, and digitising financial information from receipts, invoices, and bank statements with remarkable accuracy.
“I’ve been using Dext Prepare at the heart of what we do for a decade, it’s a great piece of tech.”
Richie shared his experience using the platform to manage bookkeeping for clients with high transaction volumes. He explained how certain tools helped simplify the export process and reduce manual work. In particular, he highlighted the accuracy and efficiency of the data exporting features
“Dext is best–in–class. It’s hugely accurate in terms of extracting data, it is far more advanced than competitors in the space.”
Customer support that makes a difference
One aspect of Bright that Richie particularly values is the exceptional customer support. The team at Around Finance has found Bright’s support to be responsive, knowledgeable, and genuinely helpful when issues arise.
“Whenever we’ve needed your support team, they’ve always been able to help us out quickly.”
This reliable support framework has been crucial in Around Finance’s decision to build their technology ecosystem around Bright’s products, providing peace of mind that expert assistance is always available when needed.
“The supporting material on the website is super, I will be keeping an eye out for webinars taking place in the future.”
Final thoughts
Around Finance represents the modern accounting practice: client focused, technology enabled and committed to providing insights beyond traditional compliance services. By building their tech stack around Bright’s suite of products, they’ve created efficient workflows that allow them to deliver higher value advisory services to their clients.
In our interview, Richie also expressed interest in exploring additional products, specifically mentioning the pricing and proposal tool. This indicates the practice’s continuing desire to leverage more of Bright’s product portfolio as our developers work hard to achieve our goal of a fully integrated ecosystem.
“The seamless integration between products is what makes Bright stand out in the market. I can see where it’s going to go, and I’ll be keeping an eye out for new developments.”
Interested in learning more about our Bright solutions?
In addition to our payroll, accounts production, bookkeeping, and data extraction tools, Bright also offers practice management software, a working papers solution, a proposal system, and more — everything you need to power a modern accounting practice.
Want to learn more about Bright’s solutions? Book a free demo below to speak with our product experts and see how Bright can help transform your practice.
