Reckon Accountants Group acquired by The Access Group in $100 million deal

The Access Group has today announced its acquisition of Aussie accounting and bookkeeping technology business Reckon Accountants Group, including APS and Reckon Elite.

According to a statement, the acquisition reinforces Access’ commitment to the Australia and New Zealand region and “to the accountant’s industry, signaling its intent to rapidly advance its tax and practice management offering”.

“The Access Group has gone from having no presence in the region in 2019, to today supporting more than 35,000 customers, with 900 colleagues, across five countries,” the statement reads.

The $100 million agreement will see Reckon join Access’ flagship HandiSoft suite.

This will allow Reckon to accelerate its strategy of delivering a complete suite of accounting and payroll cloud solutions to SMEs, and build upon its already 114,000-strong cloud customers, Reckon CEO Sam Allert said in a statement.

“This partnership is good news for our customers, our employees and for the market,” he said.

“We have spent more than 20 years imagining ways to create brave, new and progressive accounting firms. This acquisition is the natural next step to ensuring continued investment in our vision to simplify business for the benefit of all our customers.”

The acquisition of Reckon is the 10th acquisition in just three years for Access in the Asia-Pacific region.

Not Reckon’s first time on the acquisition block

This isn’t the first time Reckon has been approached for an acquisition, with the news of a $180 million deal with MYOB back in 2017.

However in 2018, the small business accounting services provider abandoned the acquisition of Reckon’s assets due to longer-than-anticipated regulatory processes.

The sale and purchase agreement was expected to have a six-month duration following the November 2017 announcement, however MYOB pointed to a “considerably longer” process which “could continue for some time” when pulling the deal in June of 2018.

Then on July 1, 2021, Novatti Group — a payment services provider — announced to the ASX it had entered into share purchase agreements to acquire a 15% stake in Reckon.

According to Accountants Daily, Reckon had “no prior notice of the proposed acquisition until Novatti announced its intentions to the ASX”.

Despite such, Novatti announced on July 1, 2021 that it had completed the previous intention, resulting in a 19.9% interest in Reckon.

It is uncertain how the current acquisition will affect Novatti’s stake.

SmartCompany has approached the parties for comment.