Together with her husband Simon, Fiona Calvin is owner and partner of Eco Camp Glenshee which offers quirky glamping accommodation and lama trekking throughout the year in a stunning location just outside of Blairgowrie, Perthshire. She has worked with Fraser+ Accountants since 2011 and upon our recommendation, recently began using Cloud based accountancy apps, QuickBooks and Receipt Bank to help her with the business' accounting. She says:
“Receipt Bank has been an absolute God send! Before using the app we used to spend four or five days every three months sorting out our receipts which had built up during that time and doing our VAT returns. Now, we can photograph our receipts on our mobile phone and upload on the go and Receipt Bank sorts them for us! It is a massive time saver and very easy to use. We are delighted; it has improved our efficiency so significantly. We have claimed back that four or five days which used to be totally dead time for us and can spend it on other aspects of our business. As anyone who owns a small business will know, time is precious!
“We have found QuickBooks to be another great resource. A couple of features in particular are really useful. It allows us to compare our business’ performance year on year easily and quickly, at any time. It shows us very clearly our profit and loss and whether we are reaching our annual targets or not. It can also tell us why. This kind of information is invaluable and allows us to operate our business in a much smarter and informed way.
“QuickBooks is a very flexible system and allows you to look at your accounting data in various different ways and in ways which best suits you. As someone who has numeracy issues, I particularly like being able to look at the data in pie charts and graphs. It speaks to me much more clearly this way and is able to give a snapshot of how your business is doing.
“The strategic advice Director Fiona Fraser continues to give has been invaluable to us and has helped us through some lean periods for our business, which unfortunately is very much subject to the weather! She is a lot more than just an accountant to us; as well as offering great advice, she genuinely cares about our business and has been there since the beginning for us. It feels like we are building the business together – she feels like one of the team!”
ENDS
