Automation for accounting firms that know their tech stack is holding them back
Multi-office practices, post-acquisition integrations, finance teams running on five different tools. We've seen it. We can help — without selling you yet another platform.
Your stack grew by acquisition. Now it's paying the cost.
Accountancy and practice management firms over 100 staff almost always end up here: Xero for one tranche of clients, Sage for another, QuickBooks for the ecommerce crowd. Karbon or Senta for practice management. Microsoft 365 and SharePoint for everything else. Each tool works — but the gaps between them are where the hours and errors live.
- Multi-ledger client bases — Consolidated reporting across Xero, Sage and QuickBooks portfolios without forcing clients to migrate.
- Practice management gaps — Karbon, Senta, AccountancyManager, BrightManager — all solve part of the problem. None cover the edges without configuration.
- Microsoft-centric ops — SharePoint, Teams, Power Automate, Excel. We work inside what you already have — we don't rip and replace.
The honest answer is usually "configure what you own"
The accountancy software market is loud. Every vendor has a practice management suite, an AI assistant, or a "platform that unifies your stack." Most of what they promise, you already own — it's just not configured. Before we build or buy anything, we audit what's already sitting unused in your tenant.
- Buy — When a category-leading tool is cheaper than the total cost of building. We'll name the ones we trust — Karbon for practice management, FYI for documents, Dext for capture.
- Build — When you have unique workflows no off-the-shelf tool fits. Usually post-acquisition consolidation, bespoke client reporting, or internal AI assistants.
- Configure — The answer 60% of the time. Power Automate, SharePoint lists, Xero workflows and Karbon automations, set up properly by someone who knows the craft.
Automations that actually move a practice's numbers
Patterns we've implemented repeatedly across UK accountancy firms. Every one of these starts with a flat-fee discovery so you know the ROI before you commit.
Four phases, flat fee, no retainer
Built for firms that have been burned by retainer-heavy consultancies and want a clearer commercial structure.
We interview partners, operators and client-facing staff. We audit your existing stack — Microsoft 365, Xero/Sage/QuickBooks, Karbon/Senta, any custom tooling. Output: a map of where time and margin are leaking.
For each opportunity: estimated hours saved, error reduction, payback period. Explicit build/buy/configure recommendation. You pick which to run.
We build or configure alongside your team. Your operators learn the stack as it goes live. Documentation as we go — not a 200-page handover at the end.
Your team runs it. We're on call for 90 days at no extra charge. After that, we step back unless you want us to scope the next project.
In the words of the people who hired us
"We'd been looking at six-figure migrations for two years. Watermelon ran a two-week audit and showed us how to get 90% of the value by properly configuring Karbon and Power Automate. The remaining 10% got built in three months. We've saved more than the entire consultancy fee in year one."
"The honest build-vs-buy advice alone was worth the engagement. They told us not to buy two of the platforms we'd been evaluating. No consultancy had done that for us before."
"The practice dashboard pulling live data from our three ledger systems changed how our partners manage the book. It was quoted at £120k by another firm. Watermelon built it for £22k and handed it over in 9 weeks."
One workflow. 30 minutes. Honest advice.
Tell us the workflow in your practice that's costing the most partner time. We'll tell you whether it's worth automating, what we'd build, and what it would cost. No pitch deck.