Flexible at small scale, but increasingly costly and risky as complexity grows.
Before the feature detail, the choice is architectural: keep Spreadsheets & others at the centre and add the missing pieces around it, or run the firm and its clients on one rebuilt record.
A cloud ledger at the centre, a separate practice manager, AI tools reading a copy of the data, and paid connectors holding the parts together. Every join is another sync to watch, another subscription, and another place the same number can disagree.
COUNT rebuilt the ledger and the practice engine together. Practice Manager and COUNT Workspace are two experiences on one system, with the intelligence reading live data — a single source of financial truth for the firm and its clients.
Spreadsheets are free, infinitely flexible and completely under your control. That is exactly why they keep working right up until they suddenly don't. There is no audit trail, no reconciliation, no controls, and no second pair of eyes. COUNT replaces the workbook with a real ledger without asking you to give up the flexibility you actually use.
A real modern ledger on one consolidated platform, with the audit trail, controls and live access a growing business needs, without giving up the flexibility you actually use.
Pre-revenue or very low-volume operations where the books fit on one screen.
How the two products differ on the things firms and businesses tell us matter most.
| Capability | COUNT | Spreadsheets & others |
|---|---|---|
| Bank feeds | Included | Manual entry |
| Audit trail | Complete | None |
| Real-time reporting | Yes | No |
| Error detection | AI monitored | Manual review |
| Advisor collaboration | Live | File swapping |
Expand any area for a line-by-line view of how COUNT and Spreadsheets & others differ.
| Capability | COUNT | Spreadsheets & others |
|---|---|---|
| Double-entry enforcement | Yes | None |
| Audit trail of every change | Complete, immutable | Version history at best |
| Bank reconciliation | Automated and matched | Manual, if done at all |
| Error detection | Continuous AI monitoring | Whoever happens to notice |
| Access control | Role-based per user | Whoever has the file |
| Capability | COUNT | Spreadsheets & others |
|---|---|---|
| Transaction entry | Bank feed, AI-coded | Typed by hand |
| Month end | Continuous close | A weekend |
| GST return | Generated from the ledger | Rebuilt each period |
| Year-end pack for your accountant | Already live | Exported and emailed |
| Capability | COUNT | Spreadsheets & others |
|---|---|---|
| Handles rising volume | Yes | Degrades quickly |
| Multiple users at once | Yes | Conflicting copies |
| Inventory, payroll, multi-entity | Supported | Not realistically |
| Audit or lender review | Ready | Painful reconstruction |
Upload your existing workbook; COUNT maps the columns for you.
Bank feeds replace manual entry from day one.
Your accountant gets live access instead of a monthly file.
We'll import a copy so you can compare like for like.
