Harvest Accounting - Finalists at Xero Awards Asia 2024

We were super excited, and just a little surprised to have been named as finalists for Large Accounting Partner of the Year at the Xero Awards Asia 2024!

This was a huge honour and we are so proud to be nominated in back to back years after taking home the win as winners of the Xero Medium Accounting Partner of the Year award in 2023, with the team growing rapidly over the past year to now be recognised in the Large partner category.

We had a fantastic evening on August 6, along with the other nominees. Thrilled to represent Singapore 🇸🇬 alongside other impactful and innovative firms across the region from Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, and even Samoa. It was a fun evening of food, entertainment, and also exchanging insights and ideas.

Judging was based on five criteria: Xero knowledge and education, innovation, efficiency, digitalisation, and marketing strategy. We'd like to share some highlights of our submission, and the things that sets Harvest apart.

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Xero knowledge and education

Since the beginning of our firm six years ago, a key point of difference is that every one of our clients are on Xero. This has enabled our team to develop deep deep knowledge of Xero and its ecosystem. We are a Xero Platinum Champion which puts us in the top 2% of Xero advisors worldwide.

We are committed to sharing our knowledge with the industry. In August 2023, Bryan attended Xerocon in Sydney where he was one of the selected partners from Asia to be a panelist for “Helping your clients maintain a healthy cashflow”. He shared a case study on how Xero invoice reminders and enabling Xero online payments using Stripe and Paypal, helped a client reduce their debtor days from 180 to 45 days. 

We are a PSG pre-approved vendor. We have assisted many clients moving to Xero with setup and migration services, along with training. Our practice is also Xero Migration certified, with industry specialist badges for Retail & E-commerce and Professional Services.

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Xero Innovation 

We've committed to streamlining operational finance, and reimagining workflows. This year, we helped clients simplify their vendor payments and save time by implementing Airwallex’s accounts payable integration with Xero. Clients can see exactly what they need to pay, and seamlessly arrange payment through Airwallex without having to enter separate bank payment instructions.

We’re also proud to be the only Singaporean member of the Early Adopters Hub, which is essentially an invite-only international community of the most forward thinking accounting firms globally. The Early Adopters Hub works as an incubator for new accounting software startups to demo their apps and receive valuable feedback from pacesetting firms. This helps us to identify new trends in the world of accounting tech and keep on innovating. 

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Efficiency 

By being strict on only supporting clients on Xero (or migrating clients to Xero), we’ve standardised our monthly bookkeeping services and workflow with clients. Apart from Xero, all Harvest clients submit their vendor bills and expenses through Dext by simply taking a picture on their mobile app. Standardisation has led to efficiency and savings of headcount. Our staff only have to follow one method rather than learning multiple workflows and systems. This in turn has brought about great customer satisfaction.

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Digitisation 

From day one, Harvest was envisioned to be a fully remote, “work from anywhere” firm. All of our systems, apps, workflow, and communications run in the cloud, and with Airtable and Zapier, we've enabled our apps and systems to talk to each other.

This year, we also adopted AI tooling for basic casting, version comparison, and reference and calculation checking for annual financial statements. This tool has helped to reduce our review time by 40%. 

We also adopted Practice Protect for an additional layer of cybersecurity protection. 

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Marketing strategy 

In August 2023, we partnered with Xero for a case study in Money Matters report, sharing our insights on cashflow management for local Singaporean businesses.

We were also featured in national publications, offering insights on topics such as AI, and cross border payments.

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Thank you! 

We would be nothing without our team. Thank you for having a growth mindset, and sharing our vision of helping small businesses win. Thank you once again to our friends, clients, vendors, and supporters for allowing Harvest Accounting the opportunity to help you have peace of mind with your financial processes, through cloud accounting.

There is so much more to be done. We look forward to keep raising the bar for accounting services in Singapore, and stay at the forefront of what is possible when powerful accounting tech meets with a great bunch of accountants!