OK, hello everybody, and welcome along to our RadiusCore webinar, where we are going to show you a little bit about how RadiusCore workpapers function. Joining me today, we have Stacie Shaw from PKF Newcastle and Sydney. Stacie is a partner there. And very shortly, we will hear a little bit from Stacie about how they went through their journey in terms of why they selected RadiusCore workpapers. So Stacie, over to you, please.

Yeah, I mean, thanks for having me, Andrew. And yeah, I get all nerdy and worked up about this stuff because it was a really great solution for us, particularly where we tested the market, as you say, a few years ago. There were a lot of Excel-based options that would have saved me having to update our templates and the technical content, but they didn't have the integrations or the automations that we wanted that some of the cloud-based platforms have. But then the cloud-based platforms were costing us the kind of flexibility that we had in Excel, or they needed us to create Excel templates off to the side that we then upload and attach, and that was just a bit clunky. And there was a barrier as well around how long it was going to take to get my team trained up on a new platform. Whereas Excel, everyone knows it, loves it. We're accountants after all, right? So we decided to double down on workpapers that were Excel based and bring the magic of RadiusCore that gives you that integration and automation as well. So yeah, I'll nerd out in more detail later on.

Awesome, thank you, Stacie. We will come back to Stacie a little bit later, where she will walk you through how some of the workpapers function. For now, what we have in front of us is a traditional way that firms complete their workflows in Excel. It's a very manual process. You're exporting data from Xero and copy-pasting it into Excel. You're doing the same with ledger reports, account transactions, aged payables, those types of things. Then you log into the ATO or IRD for those of you in New Zealand, copy-paste the tax data, and do it again. God forbid, if something changes partway through your set of accounts, you will be re-exporting again and again and again.

So what we would like to show you today is how we can help prevent that pattern. We will show you how we auto-populate general ledger data straight into the workpapers from Xero. We will show how we pull in sub-ledger data, and how we bring in ATO tax data. This is done via a third-party integrator called Atosa, and it comes straight into your workpapers. Then if we have time, we will look at the traffic-light index page, digital signatures, the review system, and how that integrates into your Xero Practice Manager instance. Keep in mind, all of this is happening inside Excel, and inside Excel files that ultimately live on your storage platform. So you own the data, you control where it goes, and you control who accesses it.

So coming up on my screen is an Excel spreadsheet. You may have noticed a little custom tab that says RadiusCore. This is the RadiusCore Excel add-in, which powers the integration between Xero and Excel. From Excel, I can connect, pick up my entity from my connection list, and create live financial reports directly inside Excel. I can choose this financial year, hit create, and down comes my data as a table report. You might say, well Andrew, what happens when something changes, when I post a journal in Xero or edit a transaction? This is where the efficiency really grows. With one click you can refresh all of your RadiusCore reports in one workbook. Refresh all, and just like that, our data is up to date. The Excel add-in can also bring multiple entities into one workbook, as many as you want, sitting right next to one another, which is hard to achieve in Xero.

When you use RadiusCore workpapers, you get a workpapers button on your ribbon. Click it and you get a drop down of all the workpapers available, and you always get the latest template delivered to your computer. We tend to update our workpapers about once a quarter. I'll open the latest RadiusCore Australian workpapers and we're greeted by the index page. The first control is the workpaper setup. RadiusCore integrates with Xero Practice Manager, and has a basic integration with FYI Docs. With XPM, you type the client name, we query the live XPM database, you pick the client, and it loads the jobs. For today we'll do the 2026 financial year. Step two, we connect to your client's Xero file, pick up the demo company, verify the connection, and the link is established directly into the workpapers.

Over here we have a trial balance, showing the current and previous financial year. A key part of our workpapers is account codes. Back on the index page, the next button is populate general ledger codes. This is marked as beta because we don't have full coverage yet. It reads the report code mapping from your Xero file and tells you which workpapers you need to complete. So it scans the chart of accounts and, taking GST Rec as an example, notices there's a GST account, which means you need the GST reconciliation workpaper, and enables and maps it for you.

Next is the Atosa import. Atosa is a third-party integrator through to the ATO, and there's a similar import for the IRD in New Zealand. You sign on to their website and download one single Excel file with all of the ATO data you need, including full transaction histories. Click import, pick up the workbook, and it pulls all that ATO data into the workpaper and auto-enables the right workpapers. Once you know what you're doing, this whole process takes under five minutes, and your workpaper is seeded with all the ATO and Xero general ledger data you need. There's also an edit mode that gives you every workpaper we have.

Let's look at sub-ledger data. Jumping to the debtors, or accounts receivable, workpaper. At the top is the proof section, where you enter what makes up a general ledger balance. At the bottom is the general ledger integration, auto-populated for code 610. We can pull sub-ledger data straight into the workbook by pressing populate from Xero. The aged receivables report is pulled live from Xero into the workbook, and we get a green tick because everything balances. I've unticked summarise Xero data, so it now shows per contact how much each owes, with ageing and prior-year comparisons, fully automated. That lets us spend time on analysis and adjustments instead of typing numbers. You can also add more than one account code to a workpaper, for example adding 710 alongside 610, and it pulls both balances into the one cell. Our workpapers are flexible all the way through.

Now the ATO side. On the detailed GST rec, the ATO data has been pre-populated with a timestamp and audit trails at the bottom, all built into the review system. In an ideal world the GST rec is just two lines telling you whether your ATO data balances with the client file. Next, let's use the two-way sync. On the interest income tab I see a balance I want to check, so I add an account transactions report for that account. I can then post a manual journal: the manual journal integration is a two-way sync with Xero. I add a new journal, post it straight to Xero with a narration, and it's now in Xero. Refresh the account transactions report and the journal comes through. Refresh the general ledger data in the workbook with Control Shift U, and the balance clears to a green tick. The standard workflow is to refresh after each journal so everything stays in sync.

Back on the index page, we get the traffic-light system, designed to make a reviewer's life easier. You get a summarised view of the general ledger link status. The debtors workpaper shows a cross because I added a second account code, so I'll fix that and it goes green. Once we apply digital signatures, which are built in, you sign in with your Xero account so we know who you are. There are three tiers: staff, manager, and partner, with lots of configuration. Any crosses on GL Link should raise red flags, and you should aim for green ticks everywhere before submitting for review. On the trial balance tab you can see the same status per account, and click through to where each account code is mapped.

The final thing is customising these workpapers. Being in Excel, we want to put the power in your hands. In edit mode there's a plus next to each section heading with three options: add a blank workpaper, bring in content from an external workbook, or duplicate an existing workpaper. A blank workpaper added this way shows on the index page and comes pre-baked with the general ledger lookup code, so whatever workings you do, you just bring your final result up to reconcile with the GL code. People use this to add custom workpapers, review sheets, or job process sheets. To make a customisation permanent for every staff member, save the template into your document system and use that instead. There's also a reset button. I've flown through that, but it's a high-level example of how the automations work. Now I'll throw to Stacie with a pre-prepared workbook of real workpapers that reconcile.

Yeah, cool. I've been answering a few questions in the Q&A as we've gone, Andrew, where I felt confident enough. If we don't get to them at the end, I'm sure you'll get back to people after this.

We have a really low tolerance for repeated effort, duplication of effort, and the risk that comes with that, like typos. So one of the things I was really passionate about was the concept that you only touch a piece of information once. A lot of the information that comes in through Atosa and the GST reconciliation flows through into other year-end workpapers, and we've made sure that happens automatically. There's more accounting work in Australia, and I'm sure New Zealand, than there are accountants. I don't want my accountants spending time checking for typos or transposition errors, or even checking that the GST rec's out.

If you jump to the GST rec, straight away it tells you that it agrees, and gives you a variance if there is any, so you can decide whether it's material. Something I like, and other firms tell us they like, is that it's not just about the numbers. When we looked at other options, they would give you the balance per the general ledger and the supporting document balance, but if those didn't match, they didn't guide the accountant through it. You've always had that trainee who spent five hours trying to reconcile a $100 difference. So built in here, if there's a variance, here are things to do: have all the ATO payments been allocated to the correct accounts, are there general journals upsetting it, has the client changed from cash to accruals, have you got the correct GST report, has a BAS been amended. There's also a reasonableness check template, and because it's Excel, your team can add a calc or insert rows for the reviewer.

The detailed GST rec gives you a summary of the activity statements lodged, broken down by month, so you can see where differences are, pulling in not just GST but PAYG instalments, PAYG withholding, and wages declared. The next step is, where else can we use that without re-keying? My favourite is provision for tax. If your general ledger balances, that workpaper is one hundred percent automated. All your team enter is the general ledger code. It pulls in the opening balance, last year's PAYG instalment, the balance of tax payable or refundable from the tax rec, and instalments through the year. There's a spot for other adjustments, but otherwise it's just done.

The PAYG instalments also flow into the tax rec. The way we approach the tax rec, we don't want accountants preparing the tax return until a manager has reviewed it, because a change at review can flow through into one or more returns. So we want the tax workpaper to capture everything in the tax return. Things like PAYG instalments come through, your tax calc, your BRA decision tool, and your franking account, which normally gets keyed straight into the return because it doesn't come from the Xero file. We've got it pre-filled, along with payments to associates, loans to shareholders, disclosure labels, total debt disclosure, and even a comparison to tax planning. Dividends received flow through too, so the franking account and the tax rec both pick up that amount from the dividends received workpaper.

Wages rec flows through as well, downloaded as part of the Atosa summary. The PAYG withholding number comes in from the ATO, and you put in your wages per the financials. Cameo asked in the Q&A what happens if the client isn't on Xero. Andrew is looking at building integrations to other platforms, but for now you can import a trial balance and still use the rest of the functionality. Not all of our clients are on Xero and we still have our team do these workpapers. Once the balance comes in, if it matches, you're done. If it doesn't, the detailed wages rec breaks it down by activity statement so you can reconcile by month. Wages also feeds the super and payroll tax reasonableness check, for example checking super at 11.5% for last year and 12% next year. We've built in a difference here so I can show how you work through it: you decide whether it's material, and because you're in Excel you can drop notes straight in. There's a payroll tax reasonableness check too. So the info flows through, and your accountants only enter data where it's new.

Brilliant.

Your ATO running balance comes in there as well from Atosa, and you can sort and filter on it. I remember the days of manually going into the portal to download and key in the running balance, with accountants spending time manipulating data rather than doing accounting work. So that's very handy.

On the GST rec there's functionality at the top for monthly, quarterly or annual, and cash versus accruals, so you can handle clients changing between cash and accruals and whether a debtors adjustment needs to come in. A couple of other things based on the questions: on technical checklists, you already have some available that firms can use. And I'm pretty demanding of Andrew on the future roadmap.

I don't want the team getting to the end of a job and then asking themselves technical questions, like have you reviewed legal fees, because by then it's too late. So Andrew has on the roadmap, dare I say the buzzword AI, some smarts around taking your general ledger information for an account like legal fees and checking the things we'd know to check, such as an invoice for a shareholders agreement that should be capitalised. The vision is it runs over those accounts, asks the standard questions for repairs and maintenance and the like, flags anything that doesn't belong, and drafts a proposed journal you can post straight back to Xero.

On journals, sometimes clients are a bit funny about us touching their live file, or you have a less experienced accountant, so RadiusCore lets you draft journals without sending them to Xero until the manager has reviewed. Another question was whether you can use this for monthly workpapers or month-on-month comparisons. Yes. The RadiusCore add-in stands alone, and we use it for that. Last month I built a personal asset and liability statement for a client with property developments and trading entities, pulling in the balance sheet and P&L for each entity to show his profit, asset and cash position across every entity. I've also got a client who is a CFO for a family office using it to create consolidated reports across the 25 Xero files she manages.

Yeah, we could. You can customise the periods in our workpapers to be whatever you like, so you can use these for quarterly or monthly too.

There's a question from Jason about whether GL dumps from Xero can be pulled through with detailed transaction narration. The answer is yes, and you can pull in the sub-ledger reports too.

Yes, debtors comes through automatically as an aged receivables report, and I showed how you can manually pull through an account transactions report too, though that will be coming in future integrations. I'm aware of the time, so thank you, Stacie, for running us through all of that, very insightful. Let me bring the slides back up. We got through the whole demo without any technical issues, so high five.

Let's talk about what's next for RadiusCore workpapers. We have two major upgrades coming this year. The first, coming very soon, is AI-powered analysis. We have a webinar on the 8th of July where we'll show the test build, so please register. We have a very strict approach to data privacy here at RadiusCore. You might see it says, your tenancy, your AI. We'll explain what that means in the next webinar. The second major feature is that our ATO and IRD integrations will both move to APIs instead of file download imports, which will streamline them. We'll still integrate through Atosa as the third-party integrator, so you'll need an Atosa subscription as well, and we have special pricing that makes it economical.

Finally, we have a special offer for those attending. For the next 48 hours only, if you go to our website, download our add-in and sign up for a free trial of the Excel add-in, you get 30 days free. You'll also get a 14-day workpaper trial, which we don't usually offer, so it's exclusive to this webinar. Everything you just saw, you can be using in five minutes. There are two QR codes: the first sends you to the downloads page, a simple three-step process, and only one person from each firm needs to sign up and then invite others. The second QR code takes you to a booking page where you can book a webinar follow-up to see anything in more detail. This event was recorded and we'll send the recording afterwards. If you've already signed up for an add-in trial, email us at enquiries@radiuscore.co.nz and we can add the workpapers to your existing trial. Thank you so much everybody, and a special thank you to Stacie for joining us. Bye-bye.