Vela Software Group has acquired a South African provider of practice management solutions to accountancy firms, GreatSoft, for an undisclosed amount.
Vela is owned by Constellation Software, a Canadian diversified software company. With six operating units, it is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
The deal comes after Volaris, another Constellation Software firm, acquired 63.87% of Adapt IT, a South African software services firm.
Pursuant to the implementation of the deal, Adapt IT was delisted from the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) with effect from 4 January 2022.
GreatSoft offers cloud-based practice management software designed to help accounting firms better manage their employees, clients, and work-in-progress – all in one scalable and centralized platform. It also integrates with other leading practice solutions – including MYOB’s own practice software – to build a single view of a company’s practice.
In today’s announcement, Portfolio Manager at Vela Software Group – Dylan Webb, said:
We welcome GreatSoft customers and team to Vela Software Group, and look forward to supporting the long-term growth of the business through access to capital, international networks, and sharing of best practices.
General Manager for MYOB Enterprise and Practice, Kim Clarke, welcomed the news of the acquisition:
GreatSoft is being increasingly recognized as a leading practice management solution for A/NZ accounting practices and we’ve seen this positive reputation in the market translate into both strong interest and uptake, with 79% YoY sales growth in the past 12 months alone.
We congratulate Bruce Morgan and the team at GreatSoft on this special milestone for the business, and we look forward to working with Vela Software Group as they invest in growing the platform and accelerate the delivery of new innovation and capability to our local markets.
GreatSoft CEO, Bruce Morgan, explained the acquisition brings many benefits to the business, its customers, and its people.
This major investment by Vela Software Group will allow GreatSoft to accelerate our investment in R&D, enabling us to build more of the profit-improvement products demanded by our clients. In addition to this, we now have the resources to grow GreatSoft further into Africa and other global markets.
Being a Vela company also provides our teams with exciting career growth opportunities and ensures that our clients will continue to receive the fantastic products and services they have come to love.
The addition of new capabilities over the past couple of years have seen practice customers in Australia and New Zealand benefit from increased efficiencies thanks to GreatSoft, including improvements in billing workflows (such as recurring billing) and automated client onboarding.
A new module – Planner – which allows practices to easily create, assign and work on client tasks and integrates with their timesheets, budgets, and billing, has also been added.
