Matthews Steer saves up to 45 minutes on every annual collation
Matthews Steer is an Essendon Fields-based accounting and business advisory practice, supporting clients across accounting, tax, business advisory, wealth advisory, and related services. With 5 partners and 55 team members, the firm needed a document workflow that could support a busy team and produce consistent, professional client reports without unnecessary admin drag.
When Matthews Steer decided to move from a Windows file directory to Virtual Cabinet, the team saw an
opportunity to improve more than just where documents were stored. By implementing FuseDocs at the same time, they could also automate the
annual report collation process that had been slowing the administration team down.
A manual process creating delays
Before FuseDocs, annual collations were prepared in paper using a “tick and flick” checklist from the accountant.
The administration team had to locate and print each document, place everything in the correct order, prepare and print a covering letter, and package the final report for the client. Their existing PDF collation solution was also unreliable, often crashing and delaying the completion of client collations.
For a large team managing annual reporting at scale, this process was too slow, too manual, and too dependent
on workarounds.
Automating annual collations with FuseDocs
FuseDocs helped Matthews Steer move from a cumbersome manual process to a faster, more consistent collation workflow.
A dedicated FuseDocs implementation consultant supported the team through setup, helping Matthews Steer create strong naming conventions, build a new collation checklist, and automate the preparation of personalised client covering letters.
This was especially valuable during the firm’s transition to Virtual Cabinet. Rather than treating the move as
a separate technology change, Matthews Steer used the opportunity to improve the full document workflow around annual collations.
Creating client-ready reports faster
With FuseDocs in place, Matthews Steer can now prepare annual client collations much faster, while still producing professional report packs.
The team still provides paper copies of collations for many clients, but preparing those packs has become significantly easier. FuseDocs helps compile the required documents, apply the right structure, and support a more consistent final output.
The result is a saving of up to 45 minutes on every annual client collation.
“We’re loving all the work Matthews Steer and FuseWorks have been doing together (with FuseDocs) – it’s changing our world for the better every day!”
Freeing the team to focus elsewhere
The impact went beyond speed. By reducing repetitive collation work, FuseDocs helped the administration team reclaim time for other areas of the business.
The support from FuseWorks also helped the team build confidence through the transition, from creating templates and making amendments to embedding the new Virtual Cabinet workflow.
“FuseDocs has helped the administrative team to streamline our processes and cut down our processing time dramatically. This has enabled us to focus our time on other areas of the business.”
After seeing the value in annual collations, Matthews Steer also rolled FuseDocs out to automate FBT and SMSF
collations.
The result
Matthews Steer used FuseDocs to modernise a repetitive, paper-heavy annual collation process during its move to Virtual Cabinet.
The firm now saves up to 45 minutes on every annual client collation, has a more consistent workflow for preparing report packs, and has extended FuseDocs into other recurring collation processes across the practice.
For accounting firms moving document systems or rethinking legacy workflows, Matthews Steer’s experience shows how FuseDocs can turn a necessary admin process into a faster, more reliable way to produce client-ready documents.
Ready to spend less time preparing documents?
Ready to see how FuseDocs can support your firm’s next step in consistency, time saving, and polish? Book a discovery call today.