Business Intelligence

From year-end close to advisory – how accounting firms scale their reporting

Advisory is the fastest-growing part of an accounting firm's offering – but it requires source data that isn't compiled by hand every month. Here's how accounting firms build a reporting engine that holds up across a hundred clients.

Anders Grandt

Sells, develops & trains, Vellox

6 min read

Illustration: four customers' ERP systems connect through a shared model to a reusable reporting package featuring KPIs and charts.

In short

  • The margin lies in advisory. Industry growth slowed from 11% (2023) to 5.7% (2024), and the firms that increase their advisory hours by reducing manual work are the ones performing best on profitability.

  • The bottleneck is the source data. Monthly reports built manually in Excel for each client don't scale – and they say nothing about why the results look the way they do.

  • The solution: a ready-made semantic model per ERP system, so the same report package can be rolled out client after client.

  • A new service line: with Vellox MCP, the consultant – or the client themselves – can put questions directly to their business data in Claude or ChatGPT.

  • From bookkeeping to business: when ERP data sits alongside the general ledger, the conversation shifts from "this is what happened" to "this is why it happened".

Advisory is growing – but the underlying data is still compiled by hand

The direction of the industry is clear. Revenue growth among Swedish accounting firms halved between 2023 and 2024, from 11 percent to 5.7 percent, while staff costs rose (Realtid, February 2025). The answer that recurs in every industry report is the same: reduce manual work and sell more qualified advisory. Oxceed's benchmarking of more than 180 firms points in the same direction – those that invest in system support and work in an advisory capacity perform best on both margin and growth (Oxceed, 2025).

The problem is rarely willingness. It's that advisory requires source data, and in practice that data is rebuilt from scratch for every client, every month. An SIE file here, an Excel export from the client's ERP system there, a template someone once built that only one person now dares to touch.

That works for ten clients. It doesn't work for a hundred.

Three things that change with a shared reporting engine

1. The report package is built once and rolled out per client

Vellox modules are preconfigured per ERP system – Business Central, Jeeves, Monitor, Pyramid and Visma Business. This means the firm defines its report package and KPIs once, and then connects client after client to the same semantic model instead of starting over.

Update the definition of gross margin and it takes effect for every client at once. No more hunting for which version of the template applied.

2. The monthly reconciliation stops being handicraft

When data is pulled automatically from the client's ERP system, the part of the work no client really wants to pay for disappears: the exporting, pasting, formatting and cross-checking. What remains is the interpretation – which is what you actually charge for.

3. The conversation moves from the ledger to the business

This is where the biggest difference lies. Bookkeeping tells you what happened. ERP data tells you why. When accounts receivable, order lines, items, inventory and purchase prices sit in the same model as the results, the consultant can go from "the margin fell 1.8 percentage points" to "two suppliers raised their prices in March and the increase was never passed on to three of your largest customers".

That's the conversation clients pay advisory fees for.

A new service line: clients query their own data

With Vellox MCP, Claude or ChatGPT connects directly to the semantic model. Clients can ask questions in plain language – which customers did we lose the most on this quarter?, which items tie up capital without moving? – and get answers based on the same figures as the firm's monthly report.

For the firm, that's two things at once: fewer ad hoc questions in the inbox, and a service to package and price. The connection is read-only, permissions are controlled per user, and you decide which parts of the model each client sees. More examples can be found in ten questions you can ask your own business data.

Where to start

Pick a client you know well, running an ERP system we already have a ready-made integration for. Set up the model, build your standard package on top of it and run it for a month. After that, the next client on the same system takes a fraction of the effort.

Book a demo or get in touch directly, and we'll discuss a setup for your firm.

Frequently asked questions about Vellox for accounting firms

Can we manage multiple clients in the same solution?

Yes. Each client has their own data environment, while the firm's report package and KPI definitions are reused across clients. Permissions ensure no client sees anyone else's data.

Does it replace our accounting or reporting system?

No. Vellox complements them. Accounting stays where it is – Vellox places the operational data from the ERP system alongside it, so the analysis can go beyond the profit and loss and balance sheet.

What does the firm need technically?

No in-house development capacity. The integrations are prebuilt per ERP system and we manage the data layer. You contribute the business expertise: which KPIs to track and how to interpret them.

How long does it take to set up a new client?

The first client on a given ERP system takes a few weeks, since the report package needs to be defined. The next client on the same system goes considerably faster, because the model already exists. Here's how it works.

Can the client log in themselves?

Yes. You choose whether the reports are delivered by the firm, whether the client gets their own access, or both – with different views depending on role.

Which ERP systems do you support?

Business Central, Jeeves ERP, Monitor ERP, Pyramid Business Studio and Visma Business, plus complementary sources such as PIM, WMS and web analytics systems. The full list is available on our integrations page.

Sources