Back Beach Accounting is a boutique, tech-driven Chartered Accounting firm based on the NSW Mid North Coast, servicing the Coffs Harbour region and clients nationwide.
They specialise in fixed-fee cloud accounting, proactive tax planning, and business advisory services, while uniquely committing 1% of their sales turnover to local environmental charities as a member of 1% for the Planet.
Founder Jack Dixon had been running his business as a startup and subsidiary of an established accounting firm. He worked at CharterNet Advisers in Sydney for several years. When his wife got a job that moved them to Coffs Harbour in 2018, he approached the management team there about opening a new branch in Coffs. This resulted in the creation of CharterNet Coffs Coast, which ran as a separate entity under the CharterNet banner.
In July of 2022, the business amicably separated from the parent entity. However, he had to quickly replace all the subscriptions he would lose by parting ways with the Sydney team.
The problem
Dixon had been using DocuSign for document signing, and while it worked fine for emails, at the time, it didn’t have text message capabilities. When he began setting up his own account, it became clear that the pricing for DocuSign and many of its competitors was opaque. Given that he was planning for a lean year and needed to implement several tech solutions, cost was a key consideration.
Another issue he hadn’t anticipated was that some clients were not very responsive to emails. He needed a way to send signing requests to their phones via text message quickly and easily to overcome this communication barrier.
The solution
Annature’s transparent and reasonable pricing was a clear win for the firm. The onboarding and assistance were fantastic, especially at a time when Dixon felt overwhelmed by numerous product demos and training sessions for other software. Annature proved to be by far the easiest platform to onboard.
He also noticed a much quicker turnaround on documents sent via text message for signature. While he does not use this feature for every client, for those who are more reachable on their phones, it has allowed him to secure signatures much more quickly.
The outcome
As a sole practitioner, Dixon's feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The transparent and reasonable pricing is a major highlight, and the intuitive user interface is fantastic. The ability to add quick and easy branding when sending communications to clients is a winning feature, and the templates were simple to build and standardise for all of the firm's documents.
