Over the past two weeks, the Intersect Connect team joined the Johannesburg and Cape Town legs of the Xero Roadshow; and what an experience it was. We weren’t just there to demo our product. We went to connect with the people who use (or might soon use) Intersect, to better understand their challenges, their goals, and what keeps them up at night.
What we found was a vibrant, honest, and deeply engaged community of accountants, from solo practitioners running lean, agile practices to large, multi-partner firms managing thousands of client files. Each conversation painted a more complete picture of the compliance landscape, and gave us valuable insights that are already shaping how we build.
A Spectrum of Firm Sizes and Needs
As expected, the size and structure of each firm influenced what they were looking for.
Smaller practices were often still juggling spreadsheets, handwritten notes, and manual submissions. They felt stretched thin, pulled between client delivery and the sheer volume of admin that compliance brings. When we showed them how Intersect could automate annual return filings and centralize their documentation, the sense of relief was immediate. “That would give me my evenings back,” one practitioner remarked.
Mid-size firms, those with growing teams and expanding client rosters, shared a different perspective. Their main concern was scaling without losing control. As they hired new staff and opened second offices, they found it increasingly difficult to maintain consistent processes. They needed tools that could help standardize their approach to compliance, train new team members quickly, and reduce the learning curve. That’s where Intersect’s role-based dashboards and built-in checklists really resonated. These weren’t just features, they were safeguards.
And then there were the large, established firms, often with multiple partners, legacy systems, and complex client portfolios. For them, the conversation was less about eliminating manual work and more about integration, visibility, and control. They needed a way to bring together disparate systems; accounting software, payroll tools, regulatory portals, into a single source of truth. When we walked them through Intersect’s API integrations with Xero, SimplePay, and SARS (in-progress), and showed them how our secure document repository maintains audit-ready records, it sparked a different kind of excitement: the kind that comes from finally seeing how the puzzle pieces could fit together.
Unexpected Insights That Stuck with Us
- Desire for Digital Assurance: Across the board, firms want confidence that their compliance tasks are done correctly, and on time. Manual checklists and spreadsheets leave gaps. Automating key steps, from beneficial ownership registers to share-certificate validations, resonated with attendees who’d seen errors slip through in the past.
- Value of Real-Time Visibility: Practice leaders repeatedly emphasised the need for dashboards showing upcoming deadlines, submission statuses, and team workloads (coming soon) all in one view, so nothing falls through the cracks.
- Importance of User Experience: Even sophisticated platforms can become roadblocks if they’re not intuitive. We demoed our step-by-step workflows and guided templates, and attendees reacted positively to how Intersect balances power with simplicity.
- Integration as a Competitive Advantage: Firms are investing heavily in ecosystems (cloud accounting, HR payroll, analytics). Integrations that eliminate double data entry and sync financials with compliance filings were a recurring “must-have” on wish lists.
You're shaping what we're building next
One of the most affirming moments came from a large Cape Town firm that asked whether we’d consider embedding Public Officer training materials directly into the platform. It was a brilliant suggestion and one that confirmed a belief we’ve held for a while: compliance tools shouldn’t just execute tasks; they should educate and empower the people using them.
Surprise, surprise, when we told them we’ve secretly been working on a new feature during Q1…keep an eye out for anticipated launch date – 1 July 2025!
All these interactions have already influenced our roadmap. We’re placing greater emphasis on visual reporting and analytics, allowing firms to showcase compliance status clearly to their boards or auditors. We’re accelerating the rollout of in-app tooltips, tutorials, and “How-To” videos so users can learn as they go, without having to leave the platform. We’re expanding our API integrations to bring even more third-party tools into the fold. And perhaps most excitingly, we’re enhancing our workflow designer, giving firms more control over task management and document/signature requests.
See you all next year!
Looking back, the Xero Roadshow wasn’t just a chance to exhibit, it was a chance to listen. To get out of the office, into the real world, and connect with the community we serve. Every story we heard, every suggestion we received, has sharpened our vision for what Intersect Connect can become.
To the accounting professionals who stopped by our stand—thank you. Your feedback wasn’t just valuable; it was transformative. We’re building Intersect with you, for you. And together, we’re reimagining what compliance can look like for firms of every shape and size.
