New Tools for Data Accuracy and Reliability | Michael Wood

“We know that as a user, whether you’re an accounting bookkeeping firm or an internal finance team, that’s a lot to deal with. That’s why we’ve started doing these launch events. To be okay every quarter, we will recap what we’ve done and announce what’s new (in that quarter)”.

“The tracking category audit is the first of a number of audit tools we’re going to launch. They are just to shine a light on those parts of people’s data that normally sit in the dark or sit in some corners that are hard to examine or hard to see. We just want to bring them out into the light. Tracking category audits is a free tool. Anyone can use it, single entity and multi-entity”.

– Michael Wood, CEO & Founder, Translucent.io.

Today, I’m speaking with Michael Wood, Founder & CEO of Translucent, who discusses the company’s recent launch event, new features like automated intercompany reconciliation and custom tracking categories, and the importance of addressing data model issues for multi-entity businesses.

In this episode, we talk about . . .

• Innovating for Multi-Entity Teams: Translucent unveils tools designed to tackle complex multi-entity challenges.
• New Features Highlighted: Granular permissions, tracking category audits, and intercompany auto-reconciliation take centre stage.
• Tracking Categories Expanded: Solving a long-standing limitation with additional data dimensions and smarter tracking tools.
• Custom KPIs Made Easy: Flexibility to build financial reports tailored to unique business needs.
• Future-Proofing Finance: Quarterly updates promise a steady stream of impactful features and tools.
• Shape the Innovation: Listeners are encouraged to share their input on future product development.

 I strategically partner with the team at Translucent and it is always a pleasure to talk with Michael and I hope you enjoy this interview.

Scroll down for a full transcript

This transcript has been generated and transcribed by AI

Welcome back to the podcast. How’s your week been so far?

Michael Wood
It’s been an interesting week, Heather. A little loads of questions begin with. A week ago, obviously had the first launch event for Translucent, which is a big deal. And then yesterday, it was leaked. And then today, it was announced that my previous business I founded, Dext, was sold. So I can definitely say there’s been quite a lot going on in the past week.

Heather Smith
Very exciting. Just before the festive period, I guess. Because here in Australia, we take a big, long relax in leading into the festive period. But not in Michael Wood world, hey.

Michael Wood
Well, actually, in so it’s quite in the VC world, in the private equity world, Christmas is a big line in the sand of people trying to get deals done. So it’s often, often get deals announced about now, because there’s always a feeling that deals are related to momentum. And so what you don’t want is to be, you know, halfway through a deal, you know, on the 20th of December, and trying to pick it up again on whatever it is, the fourth of Jan. A lot of people try to get deals closed for us doing the launch event. It was, it wasn’t, you know, we are going to do these launch events every quarter. At Translucent, as we’ve always been quite public about, as we think there’s a lot of problems to solve, and we want to launch a new app every quarter. This was us beginning to do that in a more public way. Whereas previously, as a younger, more juvenile company, we were still sort of learning how to do it, and, you know, being a bit softer in the launches, whereas now we’ve got that little bit more maturity. Still very young, probably, probably in primary school rather than preschool now. But yeah, so that was the thinking of we wanted to get onto this quarterly schedule of launching a new app every quarter.

Heather Smith
Absolutely. You are releasing a lot of innovation out of the solution. And I will here in Australia, we actually don’t go back to work until 27th of January. So we really have a good, good festive relax. But I guess it’s our summer, as opposed to you.

Michael Wood
By the way, South Africans are the same. Long Christmas Summer.

Heather Smith
Wonderful, wonderful. So for people listening in Michael Wood you are the CEO and founder of Translucent. And Translucent describes itself as the CFO Super App for multi-entity finance teams. As we’d expect, Translucent is very focused on supporting multi-entity businesses, in improving data accuracy and reliability. Now with that, you’ve highlighted two problems. The first is quite obvious, okay, and it’s around data accuracy, garbage in, garbage out. We need the data going in to be accurate or to surface any accurate data. And I think anyone listening in will be quite across that. But the second problem is a little less understood.

In many groupings of businesses, they have a “data model problem”. Can you explain the concept of this data model for our audience?

Michael Wood
Sure. Obviously, every accountant, bookkeeper, member of finance team, watching, listening is dealing with a set of books. And as soon as you deal with a set of books, you’re actually dealing with a particular data model. And the data model is most simply described as that set of data on which you’re working on for that business. And of course, it changes business by business. Now sometimes it can change in really obvious ways. As you know, business A has this chart of accounts, and business B has this chart of accounts. But of course, it then also differs in slightly more subtle ways. For example, this business may be cash based, and this business may be accrual based, or this business may not do forecasting, and this business also involves a set of forecast data. So it really is the data model is just that set of data that you as the finance team, or you as the accountancy firm, or you as the bookkeeper is working on for that business. Now, where it gets more complex beyond that sort of pretty obvious or more sort of simple examples, is, of course, more and more finance teams are both recognising and being able to deal with a wider set of data, and you know whether that’s taking in data from the CRM, whether that’s taking in the data from the payroll to provide sort of KPIs per head count, whether it’s data from an e-commerce platform, an inventory platform, etc, etc. You know that? You know that was something I wouldn’t call some uncommon 510 years ago, but was obviously much harder to do 510 years ago, whereas now it’s easier. So you definitely see the data model that a finance team is working on expanding in those ways to sort of, maybe sort of, if I can call them, non-core financial metrics. And then also, as you mentioned in multi-entity businesses, the data model problem is magnified because you’ve got the data from multiple entities. So what we realised, and we’re sort of, I started Translucent two and a half years ago, we started sort of onboarding clients about a year, 18 months ago. And what just became really obvious to us, as we were building Translucent was as much as we were adding new features and functions. A lot of users and a lot of clients have issues with their data model. And the issues really can be described as two types. One is, as you say, rubbish in, rubbish out. So one is, there is some rubbish getting in. And it’s like, how do we help those businesses just get visibility of where that rubbish is, you know, is it one particular entity that’s leaking in, or is it one process, or is it one individual? You know, where is the leak, if we can call it that. And then the second thing is actually just structuring the data model structuring the data in a better way so that you can do what you want with it more easily.

Why do you think multi-entity businesses struggle so much with their data models? Is this because we have access to more data? Is it dispersed teams that aren’t communicating with one another, or something else?

Michael Wood
So the first thing I’d say is, obviously the concept of data model is not unique to accounting and bookkeeping. You know, you have a data model in security. You have a data model in, if you’re in a sort of pricing team, for calls or willies. You know, a data model is just that set of data you’re working with, and everyone in every area, as soon as you’re working on a set of data, you can have data model issues. First, I wouldn’t want sort of highlight our industry sort of being particularly problematic, or in that, you know, data is, by its very nature, you know, very, as you say, various sort of routes in, various routes out, various people working on it, various systems working on it. There’s lots of possibilities outside of what we’re talking about that can cause data model issues. I think it’s a really good question, Heather, of for accounting and bookkeeping, if I answer the easiest one first, which is the multi-entity one, and then if I sort of more generalise. In multi-entity, I think, yes, you’re right. The issue is, quite often it’s different people working on different parts of the data. So for example, you definitely see sort of different entities. And here’s a classic one. You know, we obviously provide our intercompany tool to allow you to sort of automate the balancing of the intercompany accounts. You know, why is that so useful? Because you often see it’s one team working on one entity and another team working on another entity, and both teams think they’re doing a good job, but actually there can be, you know, the smallest discrepancy in the way they work can create a significant intercompany issue if they don’t have visibility of both sides of the data. But you also, when I say different teams, it might be people that set up the data versus people that use the data. So we’ll probably talk later about tracking categories. But this is one we’ve definitely seen happen is, you know, it’s one person that’s maybe set up the tracking categories for different entities, but then it’s different teams are then using the tracking categories in different entities. And so over time, there’s been this slow drift of one team think you are tracking categories this way, and another team’s doing it another way. So there’s lots of different reasons with that sort of multi-entity.

Heather Smith
Absolutely. And it’s very interesting to sort of keep on top of it and sort of with a solution like Translucent. Hopefully we are moving towards that data accuracy within the model. So late November 24 you hosted a launch event where you talked about recent feature releases, recent innovations, and you also unveiled three new tools within the Translucent range. So I’m keen to methodically work through all of those tools. However, before I do, I’d like to know two things. Firstly, sort of the big news that did come out is you’ve made Translucent free for accounting and bookkeeping firms.

Why did you decide to make Translucent free for accounting and bookkeeping firms?

Michael Wood
It’s something obviously Xero did right back in the day, sort of early days. It was just something that felt made sense to us. We wanted the community to get the benefit of the new software, and we wanted the community to be able to be familiar with our software, with, you know, zero cost, zero upfront, zero worries, zero commitments, etc. So it was something at the Xero playbook, and it’s something just, it felt, you know, very easy to do. I’m glad to be able to help all those multi entity bookkeeping and accountancy firms, you know, solve these problems for free.

Heather Smith
Absolutely, it’s always easier to try a solution when it’s free, isn’t it? And I’m keen to go through, as I said, the various tools in in detail, but just before we do which feedback have you received from the launch event?

What feedback have you received from the launching event?

Michael Wood
It’s been really interesting. Translucent is new, still very new. As I say, I started the business two and a half years ago. We started onboarding clients a year ago. We started being sort of truly valuable, sort of Q1, Q2, this year. And what the launch event really seems to have precipitated is just that outpouring of affection for what we’ve built. And it’s just been lovely. The number of sort of unprompted messages on LinkedIn, people popping up in forums, etc, you know, appreciating what we’ve built. We’re very much still are a team whose heads are down. I know some of you might have met us at the odd roadshow and things, but we really haven’t built a sales and marketing machine yet. We’ve been just completely focused on building. So it’s a little bit like we’ve been in a bunker for two years, just frantically building, frantically building, frantically building. We’re sort of emerging, blinking into the sunlight. And the launch event was the beginning of that. And so to get so many messages of people appreciating not just what was announced this week, but also things they’ve been using for six months, 12 months, etc. And as I say, we’re not sales and marketing organisation yet. We haven’t recruited those people, we haven’t developed those muscles. We’ll do that over the next year. So we haven’t been out there, you know, collecting reviews, you know, doing all those things that a business often does, because we’ve just been so focused on building. So it was just, it was lovely to get that feedback. Like, really, humanly nice when you’ve been, as I say, in a bunker for two years. It’s like, I think this is being appreciated. I can see more and more and more people using it every day. But to get those, as I say, sort of unprompted messages of, oh, you’ve never met me, but I use this. And it was really nice.

Heather Smith
Oh, that’s wonderful. The accounting and bookkeeping world, I find, is very quiet, and it’s just a few people who surface constantly. So it is nice that you, that they engage with the launch event, and that they did reach out to you. And that’s, that’s one of the reasons I go to conferences, is people actually come up and talk to you. You got no idea who they are, but, you know, you they have been monitoring and watching what’s happening, and they’re keen to have a conversation. And you’ve always been very front-facing with the community, which is wonderful that they’re communicating with you. But let me get on. Let’s talk about some of the features and functionalities that you’ve released. These are already out. These people can go and touch them right now that you’ve released over the last six months and what they mean for accountants and bookkeepers in practice.

Let’s talk about some of the features and functionalities released over the last six months. What about the 445 Reporting in consolidation? Does it mean you can see consistent 13-week quarters across the periods?

Michael Wood
Yeah, I think so. The first thing for everyone to just let you know is I’m not a trained accountant. For some of these answers, I could absolutely trip myself up and embarrassed myself quite massively. What Translucent is, is a series of different apps all focused in multi-entity businesses, and in our consolidation app from hospitality businesses, mainly, we were being asked again and again for two things. It was weekly reporting of the consolidated P&L and other reports.Because previously, we just had monthly, quarterly, annually. So they want to be able to compare week by week. And as you say, they wanted 445. It definitely isn’t something for everyone, but for those, those hospital businesses, you know, it’s basically a deal breaker. You know, if you don’t have, if you can’t do their reporting period, a consolidation tool is no good. And so we were delighted to ship that and be able to help those businesses.

Heather Smith
That’s interesting. I wasn’t aware that hospitality were focused on that sort of reporting. So I’m learning something.

Michael Wood
Again, this is where I could trip myself up. I think it is because they have the issues of, you know, monthly can be problematic for them. Because the last week of the month can be busier and all those kind of things, yeah. But again, don’t want to go too deep into it, I’ll embarrass myself.

Heather Smith
Months can be so strange. They some get five weekends, and some, you know, some don’t.

Michael Wood
You’re exactly right. That’s what it is. You are right. I am wrong. My explanation was incorrect.

Heather Smith
Absolutely.

In addition to all of the normal metrics, are you offering the flexibility of Custom KPIs in the financial analysis?

Michael Wood
We’ve got a long way to go in this. Obviously in our consolidation tool, producing the P&L the balance sheet, Trial Balance, everything you’d expect, but back to the point of the data model. Of course, more and more businesses, you know, in their board, pack reporting, etc, want very specific KPIs. We’ve got a really exciting roadmap around all this. But this was just the beginning to allow people to be able to sort of do formulas of, you know, reports, you know, EBITDA percentages, or whatever it might be they might wish, from the numbers in the P&L. So a lot to come from us in 25 on this, but, but this was good to get the beginning and be able to help some of the more basic queries?

Heather Smith
And people do like to be able to go in and customise things. So that is a good thing.

Michael Wood
They really do. That’s one thing to be an interesting building Translucent is just how much people are attached to, you know, a particular format of a report. And, you know, we’ve, if you’d have asked me a year, 18 months ago, we first have set out and building consolidation. That would be the thing. I think I definitely, you know, I always, you know, as many things I got wrong, but that would been one of them, just the degree of customisation that’s required for, you know, as table stakes.

Heather Smith
Yeah, absolutely. Now this is a really exciting one, which is data dimensions. So you’re providing six additional tracking categories, each with up to 250 options. And that kind of lets you cut and splice detailed data segmentation, sort of beyond the limitations of typical General Ledger software. So for example, Xero. Actively, you have two tracking categories with 100 options in there. And if you push it beyond that, it really becomes cumbersome and difficult to manage. So you’ve really opened up the ability for people to push some robust tracking categories in there. And you did cite, I saw a comment that said the limited number of tracking categories is the number one reason people leave Xero to migrate to an ERP, which I was astonished that would be the reason.

Can you comment on the Data Dimensions feature?

Michael Wood
Yeah. When I first was thinking of doing transitions of business, I obviously interviewed a lot of CFOs accountants about either who had already migrated and why they’d migrated, and also those that were, you know, on the cusp, and those that were sort of running larger businesses on Xero. And this is just it came up again and again and again. Of this is the problem, like, obviously, other issues can be cited, like some people might talk about sales invoice limits, or volumes and things like that. There are other sort of issues that Xero are aware of that larger businesses can struggle with. Most of those had workarounds in the market, to be honest, whereas this one is just a really big problem. And another way you can see how big a problem it is if you look at intact or Acumatica, or anyone else, their advertising and marketing at Xero clients. They make a really big thing of the number of data dimensions they have. You know, they will, they have it front and center of their marketing. I don’t know how many each does, but they will be we do eight, or we do 12, or whatever it is. They know just how big thing this is. And so we wanted any business single entity or multi-entity. The multi-entity is obviously our core to not need to leave Xero for this issue anymore. You know, it was one we were able to solve. And so, you know, we’ve added these six extra dimensions so a business can keep using their existing tracking categories, as I say, whether single entity or multi-entity. Then they’ve then got the ability to create six more within Translucent. And then you do, then need to do the reporting in Translucent. You know, we were not able to push the data back Xero. We can, in this ways, we can get data back into Xero, but there’s not ways we can get the data back into Xero in a way it would then show up in Xero’s reporting as per tracking categories. I absolutely acknowledge it has that limit. Some people might see that as a limitation, but we’re really proud of any business single entity or multi-entity can now run more than two tracking categories and data dimensions with their Xero file.

To clarify, the core focus is multi-entity. However, this feature, a single core general ledger, could utilise this feature?

Michael Wood
Exactly. It was actually for them that we made the we increased the number of options from, you know, 100 to 250 because we know there’s quite a lot of single entity businesses out there that actually are happy with two tracking categories. But it’s the 100 option limit they hit and that put that up to 250 you know, to be able to accommodate those people.

Heather Smith
So next one to talk about is intercompany auto-reconciliation. Automatically when you’ve got multiple files, matching those intercompany transactions across the files, automatically, and assisting with reducing discrepancies and streamlining your workflows and giving better transparency over your data.

What about Intercompany Auto-Reconciliation, could you share some insights on this one?

Michael Wood
Yeah. So, you know, 99% of businesses with intercompany transactions today are probably running some form of an Excel matrix. You know, you’re nodding. Everyone nods. Everyone knows it. You know, they have to upload the data into Excel, download data into Excel and and create a manual matrix. So we’ve created that matrix in Translucent so for both AP and AR accounts and your loan accounts. So if I talk about the manual version, first, you can manually map your intercompany accounts. We then automatically produce the matrix. Then when you click through on any imbalance, the matrix shows you’re able to then see the transactions behind it and do the reconciliation to identify where the problem lies. And then from within Translucent post, the balancing journal or invoice back into Xero. So that’s the manual version. Fully exists today. You can do. But when I speak to clients and businesses, they are very keen for us just to fully automate this. So I automate the mapping of the accounts at the beginning, automate the reconciliation of the transactions behind the imbalance and automate the posting back to the correct the balancing transaction back to Xero. And so we’ve been working on different stages of the automation of that process, and we’re still a few weeks away from fully automating all of it. But yes, we automate the reconciliation today, and we do some mapping of the intercom, automation of the inter-company mappings today as well. And but we think it’s very soon for those that want it, they’ll be able to use Translucent and we will automate the entire workflow. And they can choose to, you know, let’s say, get an email on a Friday lunchtime to say, look once again, your intercompany accounts balance. But FYI, for that balancing to occur, we had to create this transaction in this Xero here it is. You can click and audit it. If you want to undo it or edit it, you can, but everything balances. So we think we can make that whole workflow automated. So we’re excited to begin to automate the reconciliation as part of that.

Heather Smith
I’m sure people will be relieved to have a solution to assist them. Because it’s not necessarily fun finding all those needles in a haystack. Another one, which is a very sensible one, which is reordering columns in group reporting, which is just a simple one there being able to reorder columns, making it more usable.

Could you comment on the reorder Columns in Group Reporting feature?

Michael Wood
No, just back to the customisation everyone requires.

Heather Smith
Absolutely, absolutely. So let’s talk about the three new tools unveiled at the launch event. And I realise I talked about one already, so I’ve gone and stuffed up there. Sorry. But let’s talk about those three tools, and if we can, I’ll touch on them, and maybe you can elaborate more on them. So let’s talk about this one, I was quite excited about the tracking category audit tool. Okay, so the tracking category audit tool. It enables users to synchronise and review all of their tracking categories in one place, and identifying consistencies. For example, like if you’ve gone human resources and HR in one and human resources in the other, getting all the names correct, and ensure that they’re happening across all entities. That look like a really cool tool for checking things out. Do you have any comments on that one?

Let’s talk about the three new tools unveiled at the launch event. For instance, the Tracking Category Audit tool.

Michael Wood
Again, just what we talked about the beginning of just as we worked with more and more clients and more and more people’s and their data, this was just a problem that shouted out of and there’s two or three versions of the problem there is the tracking categories have been set up incorrectly. So you absolutely see this of, you know, in entity one, it’s called Projects, and in entity two, it’s called Project. Just like you get sometimes they’re egregious the differences, and sometimes they’re really small. Then within the naming of the options, as you said, in one entity, it’s called HR, and another one, it’s called Human Resources. Actually, the more subtle one than that is is actually just the count of options. It’s so common. You see, across the entities, a tracking category is obviously meant to have, let’s say, 30 options. And you see, it’s got 30 options, 30 options, 30 options. Oh, and in entity four, it’s got 29 and then it goes, and you see, oh God, someone in setting up has just missed one. They’ve obviously been doing a data entry task, and they’ve just missed one. And of course, again, really difficult to spot if you’re just reviewing your data in a P&L format, because it’s not showing up as you know, because it’s very difficult to spot an absence. You know, you see these different kinds of problems. And then the third type problem we were seeing a lot is, again, back to different teams just working in different ways. So everything might be set up properly, but transactions in one entity are being coded to one tracking category, and the same transactions in another entity being coded to another tracking category. The tracking category audit is the first of a number of audit tools we’re going to launch, and they are just to shine a light on those parts of people’s data that normally sit in the dark or sit in some corners that are hard to examine or hard to see. We just want to bring them out into the light. Tracking category audits is a free tool. Anyone can use it, single entity, multi- entity, they can just plug in Translucent, get the odds they don’t need to buy anything else, and just get that visibility. And as I said, we’re going to be launching more tools like that, because our job is to help groups and multi-entity businesses make the most of their finances and the data’s got to be right.

Heather Smith
My bookkeeper spider senses like the that tool. Would love going across and just making sure everything matches up and is accurate. And I’m sure a lot of the bookkeepers love that.

Michael Wood
It’s really interesting. When you do it. I didn’t put a percentage on it when we announced it, the percentage that have no issues is very, very small. I didn’t feel quite confident I’ve put an exact percent. Is it 5% have no problems, or 7%? But it’s a small number that have zero issues.

Heather Smith
You want to make decisions on accurate data, and something just going in the wrong direction can can just have a big implication that you just didn’t didn’t realise. So one of the other things is in the that’s coming up is granular permissions, so allowing precise control over data access and enabling restrictions by criteria such as tracking category or account code to ensure data the appropriate data is visibility, visible in areas? Is that correct?

Tell us more about the Granular Permissions & Access functionality.

Michael Wood
Yeah, this one’s a few weeks away for it’s in everyone’s hands, but obviously permissions and access is one of the areas, areas of Xero that people are most vocal about, that they’d like it to be more granular, they’d like it to be more specific. They’d like to be able to sort of set more detailed permissions. And whilst that problem, you know, can apply to any size of business, it’s almost more common at larger businesses and the multi-entity businesses. It was really obvious one again, for us. We were getting a lot of requests to do it, to be able to for people to be able to create a super granular permission. So if you want someone to only see, I don’t know, the Facebook ads transactions, you could just do that. Or if you wanted someone to only see one workflow in Translucent, like the Treasury cash management. They can do that or, you know, whatever they want to do.

Heather Smith
They’re coming in through Translucent. And are they drilling down into QuickBooks or Xero or Penny Lane, or are they just staying in Translucent for that?

Michael Wood
They are just looking at the transactions in Translucent, and always drill down into Translucent, and there is always the option to click back to the underlying accounting software. But of course, if they didn’t have permission to the underlying accounting software, the click back wouldn’t Yeah, it would Yeah.

Heather Smith
That’s definitely something that people ask for. And the other feature functionality that is coming out is that is the data dimensions. But I mentioned it earlier by mistake.

Michael Wood
That is available now.

Heather Smith
Okay. You talked about three things in the launch, but that’s correct, am I correct?

Michael Wood
That is correct.

Heather Smith
The data, dimensions, tracking, category audit tool, and granular permissions and access. So many people are going to be so excited about that because, like, I’m sitting in the forums all the time, and these are things that they are asking for. They didn’t even know they wanted that tracking category audit tool, and now they will. They didn’t even know it was possible.

Michael Wood
We’ve got a few more up our sleeve, like that that we think are really exciting. People may not be shouting about it today, but you know, we just think there’s just a lot of ways we can help people.

Heather Smith
Yeah, absolutely. And it sounds like you’re taking a lot of feedback directly from accountants and bookkeepers, which is shaping what that you’re doing, but also you’re actually in there and issues are surfacing which may be triggering what you’re doing is that, does that correct?

How has feedback from accountants and bookkeepers shaped the evolution of Translucent?

Michael Wood
Absolutely, and it also comes from two things. Of one, Translucent is born from my experience of running a multi-entity business on Xero. You know, it was eight entities. And so, though that’s a while ago, those those sort of memories of the problems are fresh. Also at Translucent., we are a multi-entity business, you know. Of course, we’re using Translucent. We’re (sort of) every day in there, and understanding the issues of multi-entity business and experiencing it and trying to make it easier for people like us.

Heather Smith
I’m getting the feedback from everywhere, the 360 degree feedback. That’s fantastic. So how do you balance, because there’s a lot of features and functionalities and innovation come back.

How are you balancing that with accountants understanding and bookkeepers understanding it and the awareness in the community?

Michael Wood
I don’t think we’ve done a good job at that yet. Basically, we think the software industry is undergoing some pretty radical changes right now. It is possible, and we’ve shown it’s possible, to ship new features every week. For those that follow this on LinkedIn, every week we will announce the new features we’ve shipped that week. They’re not always big. They sometimes are quite big. They’re sometimes really small. But we’re shipping every week. We know that as a user, whether you’re an accounting bookkeeping firm or an internal finance team, that’s to deal with, That’s why we’ve started doing these launch events. Every quarter, we will recap what we’ve done and announce what’s new in that quarter. And that way, if you’re a customer or a potential customer, if you want to ignore us the other 12 weeks when we’re making these announcements, you can feel free, because I you know you’ve got enough going on with your business. You don’t need to listen to what we’re doing with our business. And what we’re trying to do is say, look, four times a year, you know, if we could possibly have your attention for that half an hour or hour, we can bring you up to speed on what’s new, what’s happened, what’s coming, and therefore, what’s changed for being at the cutting edge, running a multi-entity, company or group. I don’t think we’ve done a good job at all yet in communicating what we do. You know, as again, we’re a super young business. You know is our support centre as good as it could be? No, it’s not. Is our onboarding as good as it could be? No, it’s not. Frankly, is our website as good as it could be? No, it’s not. There’s many, many things that we’re still getting up the curve, but we will get there.

Heather Smith
Yeah, absolutely. Well, look the accounting and bookkeeping community like feature and functionality over fancy websites. I absolutely am sure of that, and you are releasing it. It almost makes when you’re working with other things, you’re like going, why aren’t they evolving the way that this is evolving? So it is quite exciting to see something evolve as fast as this. So kudos to the team that you have collected and who are all working together to do this.

Michael Wood
It’s the team, Heather. But it’s also a very specific way of building. You’ve got to build in different ways. It’s like, if you’ve got a team structured, you know, sort of, in a way, sort of designed in 2015 it’s just not going to happen. So if you look around the world, there’s a handful of teams in sort of the touch accounting and finance that ship as fast as us. Ramp in New York would be the best example. Our American users will know them very well. Rippling begin to touch the finance space, mainly, HR, but there is, there is sort of a handful around the world that are building in specific ways that allow users to get the benefit of this really fast pace of development. But it is very, very rare, but you’ve got to build in that specific way, and then, as you say, hire the caliber of team to fulfill it.

Heather Smith
Absolutely. It’s very exciting. Is there anything more that you want to share on the long-term vision of Translucent role in the accounting industry for accountants and bookkeepers? Is there anything else that you want to touch on there?

What’s your long-term vision for Translucent’s role in the accounting industry?

Michael Wood
A great opportunity to actually make a request. We’ve talked about, every quarter we’re going to do a launch event, and every quarter we’re going to be announcing a new solution that’s solving a different problem. And like this quarter, it may be more than one solution. That means every quarter we’re looking again at our roadmap. And obviously, things often take more than three months. They often take six months or nine months to build. So we’re planning the May release, we’re planning the August release, etc. But to to hear from your listeners, your followers, etc., what do they think is a problem? You know, if they’re experiencing multi-entity businesses and working multi-entity businesses, what do they think is the most urgent thing? Please, please, reach out to us. My job is to prioritise the most urgent things the top of the pile. I try to do a good job at that. But you know, one pair of eyes is nothing like as good as the as the community. So, you know, that would be, rather than me sort of broadcasting, we’re going to do this next. I’d much prefer to just say we’re the ears are open. So, you know, please, if anyone thinks, oh, this a particular pain point, or this really bugs me. It can be very big, it can be very small. Please, please let me know.

Heather Smith
Fantastic.

How can our listeners learn more about Translucent? How can they start using the platform, and how should they get in contact with you?

Michael Wood
Anyone can just sign up for Translucent. It’s at Translucent.app is the website. The sign up process is, you add your Xero files, and it begins to sync the data. And depending on the size those files that can take seconds or a few hours. I say, depending on how many transactions and how big the group is. Then you start getting all the apps and tools and workflows, which are available to use. So it’s very easy to sign up. If you’d like to get in touch with me, I’m easily found on LinkedIn. The only problem is, I do have an incredibly common name. There are many, many Michael Woods in the world. At one stage it doesn’t happen anymore. It makes me quite sad. But about 10-20, years ago, whoever owned the Michael Woods.com domain set up as a community site where Michael Woods could meet and greet. So that’s just how common the name is. But if you search for me on LinkedIn with Michael Wood, I probably shot was Michael Wood Receipt Bank or Michael Wood Translucent.

Heather Smith
That’s probably the highlight. You’re in a panda outfit.

Michael Wood
Skunk outfit.

Heather Smith
Exactly, the skunk outfit. Sorry, the black and white. I’m getting confused. I’m getting confused by my black and white animals.

Michael Wood
Easily done.

Heather Smith
Thank you so much, Michael, for joining us today and sharing everything with our listeners. We look forward to catching up with you again in in three months time.

Michael Wood
Launch events in late Feb. So looking forward to. Thank you, Heather, for your time.