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Why a growing Irish software holdco runs on Big Red Cloud
- 4 days ago
- 9 min read
Ishikawa Technologies bought Big Red Cloud, and we use Big Red Cloud to run our group of companies.
We are a small but growing Irish software holding company. We acquire and operate software businesses, work across multiple companies, use fairly sophisticated commercial systems and increasingly use AI in the way we manage the businesses.
That has made Ishikawa a useful test case for Big Red Cloud. We have ended up using it well beyond the traditional small-business bookkeeping use case and, in the process, have learned quite a lot about the product we acquired.
APIs, Open Banking, shared access and standard financial reports are useful, but they are also basic expectations of modern cloud accounting software for Irish SMEs. What has become more important to us is the accounting depth underneath them.
BRC sits at the financial core of our own systems
Within our group, our commercial systems run through Salesforce Revenue Cloud, with Big Red Cloud integrated underneath as the accounting system. The wider architecture also connects systems such as Stripe and GoCardless, so information can move through the operating stack and into the accounts without finance having to reconstruct elsewhere what has already happened in the business.
There is nothing remarkable about connecting modern software through APIs. We expect software to connect properly. What is more important is being able to decide where each part of the business architecture belongs, without having to compromise the accounting system underneath it.
Big Red Cloud sits at that financial core for us across multiple companies. Other systems can support the processes around it, while BRC maintains the accounting record. Big Red Cloud supports native consolidation and group reporting, including elimination of intercompany balances such as group loans. That gives me a consolidated view of the group without having to export everything into spreadsheets or introducing a much heavier enterprise finance system simply because we have several trading and non-trading entities.
That puts quite a lot of demands on the accounting layer. It has to deal properly with Irish accounting, support detailed management analysis, work across multiple companies and accommodate our finance team and professional advisers. At the same time, I want it to remain accessible enough that management can get directly into the numbers.
BRC does not have to run every process in our group to be central to how the group operates.
Founders should know their numbers
Paraic Nolan at Big Red Cloud says this often: owners should know their numbers. I agree with him.
That does not mean a founder should do all of the bookkeeping or try to replace their accountant. Ishikawa's accountant and auditor is Xeinadin, a fast-growing accountancy group in Ireland and the UK. They work with us in Big Red Cloud and are themselves BRC customers.
That arrangement suits me. Our finance people and professional advisers can work properly in the accounts, while I still have direct access to the financial reality of the businesses we own. A growing company should develop a more professional finance function without putting greater distance between the owner and the numbers.
The way BRC is licensed helps. The standard subscription includes unlimited users, so access to the financial system does not have to be rationed by seat. The same live books can be used by the business, the finance team and the accountant.
There is also much more analytical structure in BRC than I appreciated before we bought the company. It supports up to 60 analysis categories per book across its books of entry, allowing management information to be captured when the transaction is recorded. Once you start relying seriously on management accounts, that becomes important. The quality of the analysis later depends heavily on what you bothered to capture at the time.
RED has changed how I use the accounts
The biggest change in my own behaviour has come from RED.
I use ChatGPT and Claude extensively in running Ishikawa. Over time, the value of those systems has become less about asking isolated questions and more about working with an AI that has context about the companies, acquisitions, plans and problems I am dealing with.
RED connects that working environment to Big Red Cloud. It currently supports ChatGPT, Claude and Mistral and is included with the BRC subscription.
I have used it around management accounts, statutory accounts, debtors and creditors, performance analysis, possible bookkeeping errors and corrections, invoice creation and other supported accounting work. The chat interface itself is not especially important. The useful thing is being able to bring two different sorts of context together.
Big Red Cloud knows the financial facts. The AI assistant I am already working with knows what I am trying to work out.
That changes how I approach the accounts. If I am already discussing a customer issue, an acquisition, a pricing decision or a change in one of our businesses, I can bring the live accounting evidence into that same conversation. I do not necessarily begin with a report any more. I begin with the business question.
Sometimes I want to understand a debtor. Sometimes I want to know why a period looks different from the last one. At other times, something I believe to be happening operationally does not seem to fit what I am seeing in the books, and I want to investigate it.
Because RED can support controlled accounting actions as well as access to information, some of those conversations can also lead directly into work in the accounts.
That, to me, is much closer to what AI-native accounting should mean: making the accounts available to the intelligence I already use to run the business.
We inherited more depth than we expected
Before acquiring Big Red Cloud, I thought of it as fairly simple accounting software for small businesses. I no longer think that is a particularly good description of the product. There are decades of accumulated accounting capability inside BRC. Much of our product work since the acquisition has been about preserving that depth while making it more useful in the way businesses operate now.
This year, for example, we made Purchase Importer part of the standard Big Red Cloud proposition. Automated purchase-invoice processing had previously been an add-on. We decided it belonged in the normal product.
The useful outcome from invoice automation is not simply extracting text from a document. It is getting the supplier, VAT treatment, coding, analysis and source document into the accounting system properly, then carrying that transaction through the rest of the accounting workflow. Saving the typing is nice; avoiding unnecessary work further down the line is much more valuable.
RED is the most visible development because it changes the way users can interact with the accounts. Around it, we are continuing to build out the wider BRC ecosystem. Turbo supports operational workflows including stock, purchasing, orders, ecommerce, EPOS, fulfilment and workshops. Power Accounting connects Excel to the accounting system. Our APIs allow BRC to sit inside wider business architectures like our own. We are also building the next generation of our cloud payroll product for 2027.
Across those investments, the direction is fairly consistent: automate routine work, retain the accounting depth and make the financial information useful wherever the business needs it.
Irish accounting depth matters
Being an Irish company also makes us more conscious of product differences that are easy to miss on a generic international accounting-software comparison.
Irish VAT is a good example. Real businesses encounter cash-receipts VAT, reverse charge, Postponed Accounting and other treatments where the workflow beneath the return matters. BRC has explicit support for VAT on a cash-receipts basis, construction reverse charge and Postponed Accounting inside the accounting product.
Those things are the product of spending decades around Irish businesses and Irish accountants. They tend not to be the features somebody gets excited about when they first buy accounting software, but they become increasingly important as the business grows and the accounting becomes less straightforward.
An owner may never configure one of those transactions personally. They still benefit from using a financial system which understands them properly. It is one reason I think an Irish business should be wary of treating a generic international “best accounting software” list as the final word on which product to use.
Big Red Cloud, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage in Ireland
For an Irish business choosing cloud accounting software, Big Red Cloud, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage are all obvious products to consider.
At the basic bookkeeping level, the differences are much less interesting than they once were. Serious accounting products can send invoices, connect to banks and produce financial reports. The more revealing differences appear as the business becomes more complicated.
Big Red Cloud and Xero
One comment we hear surprisingly often from customers moving from Xero is that “it's upside down”. Usually they say it with a laugh. It is not meant as a technical criticism of Xero. It describes the experience of moving between two products built around different assumptions about how a bookkeeping workflow should feel.
The more significant difference for us is architectural. Xero has built an enormous ecosystem around its core product, which gives it marketing network effects and an extraordinary range of connected applications. The consequence is that parts of a customer's accounting workflow can sometimes sit in separate products.
Irish VAT illustrates the point. Xero supports Irish VAT, while its route to VAT3 preparation and Revenue upload uses Parolla Plugins, a separate application sponsored by Xero.
BRC grew up differently. Irish VAT workflows, transaction correction, analysis, year-end controls and a great deal of practical bookkeeping capability accumulated inside the accounting product itself.
We are perfectly happy to integrate BRC with other software and our own systems demonstrate that. But the integrations are more useful when there is plenty of accounting depth at the centre.
Big Red Cloud and QuickBooks
QuickBooks comes at the market from another direction. It is a very large international accounting platform, including an Advanced product for businesses with more complicated requirements.
Its Irish product range segments users and capabilities across different subscription tiers. Big Red Cloud's standard accounting subscription includes all accounting features and unlimited users, along with Purchase Importer, RED, and local support.
The bigger distinction, though, is the market each product has spent its life serving. QuickBooks has to work across many countries. BRC has spent decades around Irish businesses and accountants. You tend to notice the value of that experience in the awkward transactions and unusual cases rather than in the headline feature list.
Our approach to AI is another example of that difference in philosophy. RED makes BRC available through ChatGPT, Claude and Mistral. I can use the AI environment in which I already work rather than having to move into a separate AI experience supplied by the accounting product.
For the way I work, that is considerably more useful.
Big Red Cloud and Sage
Sage is a somewhat different comparison because it covers a much wider range of the market. Its Irish portfolio stretches from small-business accounting products through Sage 50 and into Sage Intacct for larger and more complex organisations. That helps explain the part of the market that I think is becoming increasingly interesting for BRC.
A company can become quite sophisticated while remaining an SME. It might have several entities, need consolidated group reporting and intercompany eliminations, multiple people working in finance, detailed management-analysis requirements, complex purchasing and Irish VAT, and other operational systems surrounding the accounts. It can need considerably more depth than lightweight bookkeeping software provides without being ready, or willing, to embark on a much heavier finance implementation.
Historically, BRC has not always been positioned strongly enough for that middle ground. Using it within our own group has made us much more conscious of how much room there actually is in the product.
The Big Red Cloud customer we now have in mind
That experience has also changed how we think about BRC's ideal customer. When we acquired the business, our mental picture was primarily the micro and small-business owner. That customer remains important, but it is no longer the whole picture. The customer I now find particularly interesting is an ambitious, owner-managed Irish business that is becoming more complex.
The owner still wants to understand the numbers, even though other people are increasingly involved in producing them. There may be a finance team, an external accountant or both. Management wants to understand the business by job, department, location or some other meaningful dimension. There may be several companies. Irish VAT has acquired some real-world complications. Ecommerce, inventory, Excel, Salesforce or other specialist systems need to connect into finance.
Increasingly, management also wants the accounts available through AI as well as through reports and accounting screens.
That is a very different business from the tiny company buying its first bookkeeping package. It is also a long way from the kind of organisation that needs a large enterprise finance implementation. There is a substantial space between those two points. We think Big Red Cloud belongs there.
What using BRC ourselves has taught us
The thing I value most about the product now is how its capabilities compound. If the supplier invoice is captured properly, the VAT and management information are better. If an operational system connects cleanly to the accounts, finance spends less time recreating information. If analysis is captured when transactions happen, the management accounts become more useful later.
Xeinadin and our finance team can work in the same live books while I remain close to the numbers. RED then makes those financial facts available inside the AI tools I am already using to think about the businesses.
None of those things is especially exotic on its own. Put together, however, they make BRC much more useful to us than the product I thought we were buying.
We have found Big Red Cloud saves a lot of time in everyday accounting, with enough depth underneath it to form part of the operating architecture of a growing software group.
