Jodilee Manuel joined our team as the new Head of Education and Training. You've probably seen her face popping up on your screen, inviting you to webinars or letting you know about cool new features. Jodilee runs our product update webinars and is instrumental in creating helpful videos for you to watch about each and every feature of Syft. If you've watched any of our help videos, you're likely to be familiar with her voice, and if you're keen to get to know Syft even better, you're going to become even more familiar with it.

But let's backtrack a bit. Who is Jodilee and what brought her to Syft?

Jodilee knew from when she was just 10-years-old that she wanted to be an accountant when she grew up. She studied to be a Chartered Accountant (CA) at the University of the Witwatersrand and completed Academic Articles in her first year of Articles as she really loves teaching... and wanted to avoid auditing. Ironically, Jodilee went on to work as an Audit Manager at PwC for four years!

Jodilee also completed her Masters while doing articles. Our Head of Education knows her stuff.

She took a year off to travel after Articles, and when I say travel, I really mean it. Jodilee has visited 50 countries! Following these amazing adventures, she spent four years as an Audit Manager, climbing the ranks and working with some awesome tech clients.

Our co-founder, Vangelis, reached out to Jodilee on LinkedIn and that is when she found out about Syft. After hearing from Vangelis, she thought it was time to do some research.

When Jodilee first looked into Syft and what we were all about, she noticed that although most of her clients were very big companies that were not using Syft, they were doing a lot of similar things to what Syft empowered you to do, from budgeting to forecasting to KPI analysis.

"They were all things that clients need and that I could definitely see the business use case for. And it seemed like an easier way of doing it than using a really expensive software or having a dedicated budgeting division or a dedicated forecasting system... If you're a small business, you can't have a budgeting division. Syft gives you all of the different divisions but without the need for extra manpower." — Jodilee Manuel, Head of Education and Training at Syft Analytics

One of the first features that wowed Jodilee when she joined Syft was our consolidation feature. As she says,

"When I joined and looked at the consolidation feature, I was very impressed because I had worked with a lot of consolidations and I did a lot of testing of consolidated journals, and I thought this is very cool. You can basically do everything that you can do on those big softwares on Syft."

For most small and medium-sized – even slightly bigger – businesses, Jodilee says "you can do everything you need to" with Syft's consolidation feature.

In addition to consolidations, Jodilee loves Syft's new Customers and Products features and says that they are really powerful. To give an example of their uses, she says:

"If you get a Profit & Loss and you see your sales were $100, 000, you don't know where they came from, you don't know how to repeat them, you don't know what you can do about it, and it's usually 12 months later. Whereas, with Customers and Products, you can go and see 'I sold to this customer for this much and it made me this much product gross profit' and you can actually make a decision about it, which is quite cool."

And these features are just the tip of the iceberg. With Jodilee's work, she is learning everything there is to know about Syft!

Jodilee has spent a lot of time updating the help videos on our Knowledge Center so that every time we implement an update or add a new feature, there's a video for you to follow. She's also been working on more extensive courses on Syft (more on this in the future!!)

Jodilee has also been involved in working with universities, trying to make what students learn about accounting more practical and relevant with the help of Syft. In addition to this, four Third Year Bachelor of Accounting Science students from the University of the Witwatersrand completed their vacation work at Syft under Jodilee's supervision. These interns dubbed themselves "the Baby Syfties" and were very enthusiastic about their experience of working in the Education division.

The Baby Syfties are a powerful band of top students: Sithuliswe Ndlovu, Naledi Moabi, Nawaal Ahmed, and Laura Ribeiro. Thanks to their work with Jodilee, they are now intimately familiar with Excel. Naledi calls herself an "Excel expert" – and no one argues with that. Jodilee has exposed them to complex financials, as well as different industries and industry-specific reporting requirements that they had never seen before.

When I asked if working at Syft had changed their view of accounting or their future careers, their answers said it all.

"I always had this fear of how technology would impact the accounting space, but I feel like Syft is allowing me to actually see how the two integrate." – Sithuliswe Ndlovu

Laura says she was worried that she might "get bored of continuously looking at the same thing over and over," but she's now seen that accountants can work in different industries and are consequently exposed to different things, which "keeps [them] on [their] toes" and keeps the work interesting.

This experience has also changed the way in which they think about what accounting work looks like. You don't have to spend all your time auditing and your career doesn't have to follow one set path.

"You don't have to become a partner... You can actually just enjoy growing with the company and learning and being in the industry instead of just watching it from afar." – Laura Ribeiro

They've also learned that accountants are needed everywhere, not just in banks or big corporations.

The accounting interns describe Jodilee as "always very high spirits and high energy and positivity", as well as "super patient" and "always willing to help". She's changed the way in which they see accountants and managers too.

"I would say she's shown me a different leadership strategy. Her approach to being a leader is refreshing... You walk into a space knowing yes, she is your boss, but she also cares about your progress." – Naledi Moabi

The Baby Syfties agree that "what makes Jodilee such a good manager is that she's really passionate about what she does." They also appreciate that Jodilee taught them to always voice their opinions and never apologize for them.

"I've always seen an accountant as quite a rigid person, so focused on the numbers and the logic, but I think Jodilee has shown us that you can be soft and sensitive and gentle and caring and still be really successful with an accounting background." – Nawaal Ahmed

Jodilee inspired the interns to push themselves with positive reinforcement, which was a great confidence booster. They learnt how to work better as part of a team and how to communicate more effectively with others in this team. We miss them around the office already!

When I asked how Jodilee was settling into Syft, she responded: "I've been loving working at Syft. I think it's a really cool working environment." She feels empowered to contribute valuable information to our clients and to accounting students and has a great deal of autonomy within her role. In her words:

"If you come up with a cool idea and you run with it, people are very open to it. It's not like, 'No, that's not in the plan'. It's so exciting to know that you're part of something and you're not just here doing your work; you're helping Syft grow and if you have value to add, people want to hear it."

Jodilee is excited to add additional value to Syft clients and I am very happy to be able to work with her on her various projects.

As a final question, I asked Jodilee what else people should consider about Syft as a tool. She says the following:

"Syft is powerful in terms of analytics – it helps give you information about your data – but it's also got a lot of tools to help you delegate. So, often as a business owner or financial manager, you'll have all these other people working for you but you need them to take on the responsibility for their numbers. You're not the person who's ordering the stationery or the food, you know? You're the person who gets all the receipts and records them and you're desperately trying to hold it against this budget, but no one else is taking ownership over it. So, Ledgers and Segments and the user access features we have help hold people accountable."

Syft is a tool that helps with financial analysis, consolidating entities, reporting, data quality assurance, and also general practice management. It's one tool that supports all these different functions, from review to analysis to prediction.

Jodilee has just started working at Syft and she's already making waves. If you're keen to learn more about Syft and how you can make the most out of this software, keep an eye out for messages from our new Head of Education and Training.