Direct Advisory is a Hamilton-based accounting and business advisory firm working with motivated business owners across New Zealand. Founded in 2023 by directors Ian Black and Sam O’Reilly, the firm has built its offering around forecasting, management reporting, and hands-on strategic advice, with Spotlight Reporting and Spotlight Forecasting sitting at the centre of every client conversation.

Ian and Sam both spent their earlier careers moving between big four, mid-tier, and smaller firms before deciding it was time to build a firm of their own. That background shaped a deliberately simple approach: fewer clients, closer relationships, and straightforward advice delivered with Spotlight sitting strategically at the core.  

Rather than selling fixed monthly packages, Direct Advisory works out what each client actually needs during onboarding, and a good number of them end up in a monthly reporting rhythm that runs heavily through Spotlight.

Forecasting That Closes Deals

Like many countries, New Zealand businesses have faced a raft of challenges in recent years – rising costs, supply chain disruption, higher fuel prices, tighter lending, and growth uncertainty. In that environment, Ian says clients need more than a set of historical numbers. They need a forecast they can test against different scenarios – like whether revenue slows, costs increase, or if a deal falls through. Business owners need to make decisions with confidence and understand what's ahead in these uncertain times.

Over the last six months, there's been a growing appetite for scenario planning across Direct Advisory's client base, ranging from employees stepping into ownership, to existing businesses buying or merging for growth. Almost every deal has needed a Spotlight Forecast for due diligence or to satisfy the bank.

Ian points out, "I've done more forecasting work over the past six months than at any other point in my career."

In one recent deal, he sat down with a client and their banker to work through an acquisition, adjusting the numbers live in the room rather than taking them away to model separately.

“What was really powerful in that room was the ability to very quickly adjust revenue, adjust COGS, adjust OPEX, and see the cash flow impact of that at the click of a couple of buttons. After a couple of hours, we put together a price everyone was happy with, got the bank across the line on financing, and had it all stress-tested without having to go away and manually calculate a whole range of scenarios. The bank was impressed at the usability of the tool and how quickly we could model things.”

That particular deal went through ANZ, though Direct Advisory works with every major bank, and every one of them receives Spotlight Forecasts by default. In the last three months, Direct Advisory has had five acquisition deals and one refinance deal secured, each backed by a Spotlight Forecast that gave the lender enough confidence in the numbers to approve financing and extend terms.

Choosing Spotlight Over a Free Alternative

Ian has used the Spotlight platform for close to a decade, well before Direct Advisory existed. However, in early 2026, he decided to test the market when a free reporting tool (a competitor to Spotlight), became available to use at no extra cost. The team gave it a genuine trial across a number of clients for historical reporting. When it came to forecasting, they decided that the competitor's forecasting functionality would not hold up under real use. 
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While there were some good aspects to the free competitor offering, it wasn't strong enough overall and Ian said they decided to move their clients back onto Spotlight after a short period of time.

“We trialled a bunch of clients on the free tool for reporting. Forecasting was a straight no, we tried about 10 minutes of a forecast and said no. Across the last three or four months we’ve migrated 80% of those clients back onto Spotlight Reporting. We personally find Spotlight easier to use, and from a client point of view, the customisability around the graphs and the reporting gets us better feedback.”

The ease of use for the team and clearer output for clients has made Spotlight the tool of choice across most of the firm's reporting base.

Reporting That Keeps Advisory Fresh

For ongoing monthly clients, Direct Advisory runs a preset reporting template built around current performance, twelve months back and twelve months forward, and actuals against budget. The risk with any recurring report, Ian says, is that after a year or two of the same format, meetings start to feel routine rather than useful.

“Once you’ve been talking to a client for 12, 18, or 24 months, constantly looking at the same report, it’s important to keep bringing new insights to the conversation. We’ve really enjoyed using Spotlight Reporting and Spotlight Forecasting to highlight different numbers or graphs and focus on two or three key things each month or quarter, rather than covering the same ground every time.”

That habit of swapping out graphs and re-cutting the P&L recently helped the team catch a client's marketing spend heading in the wrong direction, with sales growth tracked against marketing spend surfacing a mismatch early enough for the client to change course rather than finding out at year end. Spotlight also allows their firm to talk to clients about broader economic pressure: businesses that understand their own margins can react to a shock like a fuel price rise within days rather than months, putting a surcharge in place and moving on rather than absorbing the hit in silence.

Ian’s Advice for Firms Considering Reporting and Forecasting Software

Asked what he'd tell a firm that's weighing up reporting and forecasting software, Ian's advice is simple: don't overthink it. Choose a tool your team enjoys using, start having better conversations with clients, and build from there.

“If you’re putting something in front of clients that initiates a conversation, you never know where that might lead. Even if it’s just a simple Spotlight Dashboard with six insights, just pick one insight and call the client about it. It’s amazing how much more work you can generate from clients, and how much more you can help them, if you just talk to them.”

That’s exactly how Spotlight Dashboards get used day to day at Direct Advisory: they pick an insight, make the phone call, and let the conversation go wherever the client needs it to. Both directors and the wider team are in Spotlight most days producing reports and forecasts, and Ian says there’s no one on the team who doesn’t use it. It’s that combination of forecasting that holds up in front of a banker, and reporting that gives every team member a reason to check in, that underpins a bespoke advisory model built on fewer clients and stronger relationships.

The Total Cost of Ownership With Spotlight Tools

Beyond the day-to-day time savings, Direct Advisory’s experience also points to a broader value story: Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO.

TCO looks past the sticker price of a platform to the full cost of running it over time, from how long it takes to get a team up and running, to how much ongoing support is needed, to how much time gets quietly lost when a system is clunky or slow to adopt.

TCO factors in:

• Time to implement and onboard new team members
• Training and ongoing support requirements
• Day-to-day efficiency, or the drag created by a poor fit
• How quickly time saved gets reinvested into client work

Every team member at Direct Advisory uses Spotlight every day, so getting onboarding right is essential. The team values a platform that's intuitive to learn and backed by real human support, allowing new users to become confident quickly without compromising the quality of their training. That means they spend less time learning software and more time delivering value to clients.

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