Graham Fountain

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‍Areas of Law: Family & Relationship Law, Commercial Law, Conveyancing & Property, Wills & Estates, and other multi-practice areas

Firm size: 16+ (across multiple offices)

Location: VIC

Benefits of using Smokeball:

• An integrated practice management system and accounting platform for greater business intelligence and connectivity.

• Forecasting, cash flow analysis, budgeting, and debtor/creditor management all within a single connected ecosystem.

• Increased admin and staff engagement due to greater visibility.

• Smokeball is more than just a vendor, but a true firm partner.

Challenges

As Managing Director, firm owner and Principal Lawyer of Fountain Law, Graham Fountain doesn’t just require a legal platform, he needs a commercial one too. From the moment Graham integrated leading accounting software Xero with Smokeball, it has been a transformative experience for his firm.

Coming from an extensive commercial background in senior executive and governance roles across the public and private sectors, it became apparent to Graham very early on upon his acquisition of the former two firms that now form Fountain Law that he needed more business intelligence, and integrated systems that ‘talked’ to each other. Says Graham, “To have a practice management system and a separate accounting system just didn’t make sense.”

"Cash flow is always a challenge in law when running your own practice, especially when pay-day for matters worked on today may still be12-24 months away, and company overheads don’t wait.”

A solution built for the whole business

Graham came across Smokeball over five years ago, and was initially apprehensive about switching over, particularly about migrating large amounts of data over to Smokeball. He needn’t have worried, as the data migration of 78,000 files was seamless, and then integration with Xero was even easier. Over time, the return on investment in saved time, connectivity, visibility, and transparency from a business perspective is outstanding.

Now, budgeting, forecasting, cash flow analysis, and debtor and credit management all happen within a single connected ecosystem. Having financial visibility using the Xero and Smokeball integration has made all the difference to Graham. He doesn’t have to ask questions about business accounting or performance, how the firm is tracking against budget, or what the numbers look like year to date, month to month, it’s all there in Xero.

In addition to Xero, Fountain Law also have integrations through VXT which feed call transcription and summaries directly into Smokeball, as well as time recording, eliminating the need for manual file notes; and more recently, the InfoTrack Compliance Centre for managing their AML/CTF obligations.

“The goal has always been to have a turnkey, one-stop shop within integrated systems for our firm, and Smokeball is helping us get there”.

Impact

The biggest difference Graham noticed right away was being able to generate timely and accurate reports and have access to a ‘bird’s eye view’ dashboard of everything that was happening in the business. This was transformative not only from a financial standpoint, but in also engaging staff members to what they were contributing to the firm; Graham now says they couldn’t be without it. “One thing I always come back to is how intuitive the system is. Onboarding new staff is straightforward, and the learning curve is minimal. “

Looking ahead

Five years into Fountain Law’s relationship with Smokeball and Graham is very satisfied with the functionality he has been able to utilise daily to streamline and unify his firm’s financial processes. “This is very much a partnership with Smokeball — one I'm proud to be part of, and one I intend to keep evolving. The kind of responsiveness and support we get from Smokeball is what a true partnership looks like. Whilst as technology changes, there are other developments that I am discussing with Smokeball around business intelligence, it’s certainly not a set and forget relationship or system, and as technology changes we need to stay ahead of the curve”.

Learn more about the Smokeball and Xero integration.