Katie Williams is the Owner and BAS Agent for The Vault Bookkeeping in NSW, Australia. A truly tech-savvy bookkeeping service focused on eliminating costly, repetitive work and inefficient bookkeeping practices, The Vault Bookkeeping has been an Ignition customer since 2019 and it was the first business app that Katie implemented when setting up her practice. 

Why was Ignition one of the first business apps you implemented?

Our motto at The Vault Bookkeeping is “get maximum effect from minimum effort”. So when I started my business my top two priorities were to be virtual, and get paid on time every time.

Ignition has allowed us to accomplish this and so much more! The main appeal is that it takes the pain out of asking to get paid. Before Ignition, I had been burnt by a client who didn’t pay her bills and then went bankrupt. If my business was going to succeed, I needed to ensure that I wasn’t taking more hits like that.

Now I don’t have to chase payments and I have zero debtors. I communicate my price at the start of an agreement so there’s no confusion - and make sure we capture client payment details upfront so that we keep getting paid on time.

How did you find the onboarding and implementation process?

Ignition is so user friendly and easy to use from both a staff and client perspective. Our mission is to be virtual, but a lot of our clients are still becoming virtual, so we needed an app that wasn’t going to over complicate the client engagement process.

One of the big bonuses with Ignition is the support and guidance they provide - no other app in the marketplace offers the same level of support. From day one, the Ignition team stepped me through the fundamentals of setting up the app and helped educate me on the best way to utilise all the features and integrations. I had all the tools to ensure I was set-up for success from the get go.

Did you have any problems introducing Ignition to your clients?

I have a lot of clients who aren’t tech savvy so I thought I would have to field a lot of questions, but I didn’t have any!

Even with the introduction of proposal options, everything was clearly laid out and straight forward. The biggest and most positive surprise of all is that the clients who I didn’t expect to go for the higher tier packages were the ones who actually chose the recommended option.

How has Ignition helped you sell your services?

The New Proposal Editor and ability to present proposal options has changed the whole way we do business. It has helped us grow revenue by 70% in just six months by giving us the opportunity to grow our service offering with both new and current clients.

With proposal options, I was able to re-engage all my clients and offer them the bare basics services option, a middle option based on what they “think” they need, and the recommended option being what I feel they need. About 85% of my clients actually ended up choosing the recommended option that would really help their business.

Before using the New Proposal Editor, I was only able to really offer clients what I had scoped for them. I’m now able to easily upsell services to clients just by giving them the option.

How easy is it to re-engage clients using Ignition?

Re-engaging clients isn’t hard with Ignition. I re-engage my clients every year as I think it’s important to evaluate what I’m offering on a yearly basis. Our business is growing so fast and as we look to scale we also have to consider increasing our prices.

I’m confident that my clients, even those who may have been price conscious at the beginning, will re-sign and even move to a higher value package based on what we’ve already delivered.

What’s kept Ignition at the core of your tech stack?

For me, Ignition is core to my end to end engagement, payments and workflow and most importantly, it’s helped me grow my bottom line. Ignition is the best money I’ve ever spent and the best return on investment.