Shann Curtin
Copia Business Services
Copia Business Services acts as an outsourced finance department for Australian businesses. Principal Shann Curtin built the practice to serve companies that have grown beyond a part-time bookkeeper but are not yet ready for a full internal finance function.
The team is fully remote, Australian-based and spread across multiple states. Clients span hospitality, engineering, professional services, construction and technology. Copia manages everything from day-to-day bookkeeping, payroll and accounts payable through to BAS and payroll tax compliance, month-end reporting, cash flow forecasting and general business advisory support.
Shann's goal is simple: give every client clarity, compliance and confidence.
Shann runs a high-end remote practice where visibility, consistency and trust are everything. There is no physical office to fall back on. When a team member is sick or a job is reassigned, the practice has to keep moving without missing a beat.
The tipping point came from two unresolved frustrations. First, there was no reliable way to attach one-off client instructions directly to the correct job. Payroll changes, parental leave notices and part-time arrangements would sit in an individual's inbox and disappear the moment that person was unavailable. Second, Shann had no real-time picture of each team member's workload without manually shuffling between spreadsheets.
When Shann compared XBert against the existing XPM-plus-spreadsheet setup, those two capabilities combined with XBert's automated alert engine made the decision straightforward.
I think about it in two ways - the practice management side of it and also the automatic intelligence side of it. Both of those things I wouldn't be without now. It's horrifying to think that we would have to go back to that spreadsheet system.
Before XBert, work allocation at Copia lived across multiple colour-coded spreadsheets. There was one for weekly tasks, one for fortnightly, one for monthly and a separate system for quarterly and annual work. When a team member was absent, redistributing their jobs was a slow, manual process that depended entirely on Shann knowing what was where.
One-off client instructions created a different but equally serious problem. A client calling to say a staff member was going on parental leave or moving to part-time would trigger a note that landed in one person's inbox. If that person was sick or the job was moved, the instruction went with them. There was no way to attach it to the work itself.
Visibility over individual workloads was just as difficult. Without easy access to time estimate versus actual data broken down by job and work type, Shann could not identify scope creep on fixed-fee engagements, spot training needs or build a data-backed case for repricing a client whose transaction volume had grown.
At the transaction level, the challenge was volume. Copia's hospitality client alone operates eight venues and generates high volumes of supplier invoices and casual payroll every month. Checking every transaction across every client Xero file for ABN validity, duplicate invoices, incorrect GST treatment and supplier bank detail changes was impossible to do manually and consistently. Critical compliance checks were being done as spot checks at best.
Payroll tax obligations for multi-state clients were only reviewed at the end of financial year during the full work paper process. That meant late registration risk and potential state penalties were sitting undetected for months at a time.
Copia adopted XBert as its primary practice management and compliance intelligence platform. The spreadsheet matrix was replaced with XBert's workflow and task template system. Task templates handle recurring work while job-level notes accommodate individual client quirks. Client instructions are now emailed directly into the relevant XBert job so they are visible to whoever picks up that work, regardless of who the original handler was.
The team reviews XBert alerts daily as part of the standard bookkeeping process and checks alerts before processing any payroll run. A dedicated practice manager acts as the internal XBert expert, owning configuration, custom alert setup and team communication. New alert releases are shared with the wider team through a dedicated channel so everyone stays across what to watch for. Irrelevant alerts are turned off to keep the feed focused and useful.
Within the first one to two months of onboarding, the practice manager built a custom payroll tax threshold alert that monitors total Australian wages across multiple states and triggers a warning when a client is approaching the registration threshold. This check now runs continuously through the year rather than only surfacing at the annual work paper review.
Senior staff allocate completed jobs for review directly within XBert. Shann can see comments, timesheet notes and who has amended what without needing to be across every detail of every job. Each month she reviews the top five jobs with the biggest time overruns, using the estimate versus actual report broken down by work type to drive process improvement conversations and annual fee reviews.
It's not only do I worry about me missing something, but them missing something. So it's just the use of AI working in the background twenty-four hours a day for us basically. It doesn't take away the human element, but it really gives that base level of certainty that things are being looked at consistently.
Since adopting XBert, Copia Business Services has saved an estimated 5 to 8 hours per week across the practice. That time comes from proactive alerts resolving issues at the point of processing, streamlined job management and reduced senior review time at month end.
When a staff member unexpectedly resigned just before end of financial year, Shann reallocated her entire client portfolio over a single weekend. Under the previous spreadsheet system, that would have been a major manual undertaking with real risk of things falling through the cracks.
The custom payroll tax threshold alert now monitors total Australian wages continuously across multiple states, catching registration obligations through the year rather than only at the annual work paper review. That one change alone removes the risk of state penalties for late registration.
XBert caught a duplicate invoice after a supplier reissued it with the same invoice number but a different total, with a processing fee quietly added. Neither Xero nor Dext flagged it. XBert did. The amount was credited back to the client.
When Copia took over a hospitality client, XBert quickly surfaced multiple suppliers who had been charging GST without being registered. The previous bookkeeping team had missed it entirely. Copia identified and addressed it going forward.
Senior staff now spend month end on proactive commentary and trend analysis rather than error correction. As Shann puts it, they are using their skills to point out anomalies rather than using their skills to make sure accounts balance.
Monthly time estimate versus actual reporting now supports annual fee reviews with concrete transaction volume data, removing friction from price increase conversations and giving Shann a clear picture of where scope creep is happening across fixed-fee engagements.
Across the entire client base, Shann has a level of confidence she did not have before. Every Xero file is being reviewed consistently, every month, by an alert engine that does not take holidays.
Copia is already an active participant in XBert's beta programs. Shann has put her hand up for the upcoming XBert Review feature, an automated tool that will generate a working-paper-style summary of alerts and tasks completed during a period. She expects it to slot directly into Copia's existing work paper process with minimal disruption.
Shann's husband, who has an IT background, is keen to explore the MCP gateway integration so client and team data can be queried through tools like Claude or OpenAI. Shann sees that kind of capability as a genuine competitive advantage for a high-end remote practice, freeing the team to spend more time on personalised, value-added advisory and less on transactional processing.
For Shann, AI is not a threat to the human element of what Copia does. It is the foundation that makes the human element possible at the level of quality and consistency her clients expect.
Copia Business Services is proof that a fully remote bookkeeping practice can operate with the consistency, oversight and quality assurance of a much larger firm, provided it has the right systems underneath it.
XBert replaced a tangle of colour-coded spreadsheets and inbox-dependent processes with a single platform that gives Shann real-time visibility over her team, her clients and the risks sitting inside every Xero file. The result is a practice that catches what humans miss, delegates without losing control and grows without the wheels coming off.
Shann's goal has always been to give clients clarity, compliance and confidence. XBert is how she delivers on that promise at scale.
If your looking for a Bookkeeper that goes beyond accurate numbers and provides proactive advice, get in touch with Copia Business Services.
Be the Go-To Firm with the Latest AI Tech.
Don't be left behind. Talk to a human today and learn how XBert can supercharge your accuracy and efficiency - starting with a free trial.
