Woah is it the end of the year already?! 2018 went very quickly and what a year it was.
No doubt the highlight of this year was Jerome and I welcoming our son Marley into the world in April. He has been a constant source of joy for us and he’s settled into our life very quickly. Although Tracy officially sacked me and forced me to go on maternity leave for 4 months, I was working behind the scenes at night to help keep the team running. Marley came to the office with us from just 3 weeks old and became the mini Trust Accountant. I have to really thank Jerome for holding everything together during the early months where we were ‘one man down’. As they say it takes a village to raise a child, well this is definitely true. All of the girls in the office are the best aunties we could ever ask for.
This year we had the addition of several new team members. We welcomed Jo our Trust Angel in April, our Junior Bookkeeper Susan in May and my personal Assistant Angel Jessica in June taking us a solid team of 7. We’ve definitely come a long way since I launched EOM Angels in 2012. Back in the days when it was just me and my car, driving around like a mad woman on end of month, floating in and out of as many agencies that I could cram into one day. Thank god we’ve evolved since then! Thanks to my strong team and amazing new technology.
A Year of Change
2018 we made the bold decision to discontinue supporting server based software. It was a tough decision for us to make as a business as we like to help everyone. Yet I don’t regret converting to cloud. We’ve supported and trained several agents throughout the year converting their data from server to cloud. We’ve directly handled more than 10 migrations for our own clients, manually converting data from one program to another – a huge job but one that has paid off. Supporting our clients is now a breeze. We don’t experience access issues, there’s no lag time, we don’t need screen sharing software and tasks that used to take 3 or more hours, now take under 30 minutes. And our clients could not be happier. Our clients, Landlords and Tenants are singing praises as the new technology is making their lives easier too. The transparency it provides them in the way of accessing their data and contacting their agent after hours.
I expect 2019 will be another huge growth year. We expect to see many more agents get fed up with the slow speed and outrageous costs of their server based software and take up the latest cloud programs.
This year was my 5th year training Trust Accounting for the Australian College of Professionals. Rosy and John do such an amazing job at providing a fabulous workplace for the staff and trainers. It is a pleasure to be a part of their extended family. I love going to the College every month seeing my students wanting to change their careers or improve their current work position.
Fair Trading Reforms
Although we didn’t see the NSW Reforms take place this year, Fair Trading have stated that changes are ahead. We expect to see this take place in the first half of 2019. Throughout 2018 we have been prepping our own staff for these changes by putting them through the NSW Real Estate licensing course in association with the College. You may have read in some of our earlier blogs this year that only people with a Licensee in Charge category of license will be the ONLY people authorised to move funds from a trust account. So we have armed ourselves with as many licensed agents as possible so we can offer premium service to our clients in 2019 that may not have staff at the required licensing level.
A Growing Client Base
As our staff grew this year so did our client base. We now support clients Australia-wide in all things Trust Accounting, Bookkeeping and Real Estate software related. We’ve had lots of positive feedback throughout this year about this newsletter and the articles that we provide. We spend lots of time sourcing the information (whilst keeping out the boring bits) to arm you with some powerful tips on compliance and legislation. If there are some topics that you would like to see covered in 2019 then email us. We’ll be sure to include some new and exciting ways to do business!
Thank you to all of our new and continued to clients for all of your business throughout 2018. We look forward to continuing to provide you with the same premium service in 2019.
Jane x