542 Partners Tracks Xero Disbursements with Practice Connect

Overview

542 Partners is a Sydney-based accounting and advisory firm, working with clients across the tech, software, and recruitment industries. Over the past 12 years, they’ve built a strong reputation for fixed-fee monthly engagements, tech-forward delivery, and an appetite for process improvement.

The challenge: Tracking disbursements and changes at scale

As 542 Partners grew, a recurring problem started to surface: managing disbursements for tools like Xero, Dext, and ASIC was becoming unmanageable. Price changes hit without warning. Clients requested plan upgrades. And somewhere in between Ignition, spreadsheets, and emails, things slipped.

“It was a manual process to check every subscription we had on a Xero invoice to every bill done through our Ignition engagements... it was seemingly impossible to get that spot on, so there was leakage for sure.”

— Stuart Brandman, Director, 542 Partners

The tipping point came when the firm was about to renew all engagements at the end of its three-year cycle. It was the perfect time to reset.

The solution: A platform designed for disbursements

542 Partners rolled out Rechargly alongside other firm-wide changes like timesheets and deeper cost tracking. The goal was to take disbursements seriously: track every dollar, recover every cost, and finally eliminate leakage.

1. Disbursement reconciliation

Before Rechargly, updating a client’s subscription involved manually editing proposals, resending engagements, and chasing acceptances - often across dozens of clients at once. Rechargly now automates all of it.

Our account managers would go into their engagement in Ignition and have to go through an edit process, which could lead to mis-billing. That’s where the hours added up.”

Now, when a client changes their software plan or a vendor increases pricing, Rechargly picks it up automatically.

2. Xero Practice Manager (XPM) and Practice Connect

When 542 Partners introduced timesheets for the first time, the need for accurate WIP data became urgent. That meant tracking not just time, but costs - including software disbursements.

Practice Connect pushed those costs straight into XPM, creating full visibility across client profitability.

“If you're going to do something, you do it properly. We're not going to do 80%. We're going to do 100%. We're able to track our overall billing against the costs, both human time and recharge subscriptions, and get a net profit and hopefully not loss.”

This shift gave Stu and his team confidence that nothing was slipping through the cracks.

3. Bundling vs unbundling: shifting the risk

For years, 542 Partners bundled software costs into their fixed-fee proposals. It made onboarding easier, but meant the firm absorbed the risk when pricing changed.

With Rechargly, they've flipped the model. Now, clients pay the actual cost of their subscription. No padding. No surprises.

“If your audit fee is X and someone else's is Y, you should pay X or Y. And that’s what Rechargly are allowing us to do:  disperse the true cost.”

How Rechargly fits into the 542 Partners tech stack

The team runs on Xero, Xero Practice Manager, Ignition, and FYI Docs. Rechargly now acts as the connective tissue, pulling in charges from vendors, syncing them to clients, issuing invoices, and pushing costs into WIP.

That integration required some upfront data clean-up, especially around customer records in Xero. But the rollout was smooth, thanks to a multi-month onboarding process.

“We had several months to plan and execute. It wasn’t just Rechargly, but having a really good lead-in was quite key to the success of the rollout.”

And the process is still evolving. Stu plans to bring more disbursements into Rechargly over time.

“We’ve got our core three or four subscriptions that we're going to tackle, knowing that maybe next year we'll build on that. Eventually, bring all types of subscriptions and disbursements into the platform.”

What would you say to someone considering Rechargly?

Since rolling out Rechargly, 542 Partners has:

• Eliminated manual proposal updates for software billing
• Synced real-time costs into XPM for accurate WIP tracking
• Unbundled software costs and reduced margin risk
• Built a scalable disbursement workflow tied to actual usage

“Ultimately, using a designated tool like Rechargly is the most appropriate format to handle these costs. While any change in process has some pain points, it’s providing us a much smoother and more transparent process.”