How Ziffa started: two months buried in my own paperwork

By Andrew Cassar Overend · 28 September 2026 · about 5 minutes

A founder buried up to his neck in invoices, receipts and envelopes at night, holding up a phone that keeps spitting out more receipts — Where it started: documents from everywhere, filed nowhere.

People ask me how Ziffa was born.

The truth is, I solved my own problem first, with the help of my all-time best friend and co-founder, Daniel.

Rewind to 2023. I had just opened my first company, and since finance was my background, I thought I could be sales manager, finance manager and CEO at the same time. Little did I know there’s a reason finance teams have their own function.

Documents started flowing in from everywhere. Invoices, receipts, supplier statements, delivery notes, tax obligations, arriving by WhatsApp, by email, in cloud folders and on paper. A few weeks later the same documents kept coming, and new ones joined them: late payment reports, more supplier statements, requests to send an invoice for work we’d done, penalties, tax receipts. I was a mess.

Three files in a shared folder named document_pdf (6).pdf, Scanned_20260319-0839.pdf and TaxStatementPrintout2022 (1).pdf — How documents usually arrive: named by the scanner, not by what they are.

I used my coding skills and some Power Automate to post recurring payments and sales into a master ledger. That helped, but it didn’t solve the document collection problem.

A year later came another cringe-worthy period in my life: an audit. I was asked for the annual return, which had never been submitted, plus my service agreements and specific invoices. Honestly, I spent two months buried in paperwork trying to find everything.

I couldn’t do that again.

That was one company. You have hundreds.

If you run an accounting practice or a corporate service provider, my bad year is your normal week, multiplied by every client on your books. Documents arrive late, in the wrong place, named by a scanner. Someone on your team chases, checks, renames and files them, then does it all again before the next deadline.

It wears you down. You’re a partner who feels stuck on a hamster wheel, and an upcoming audit means late nights digging through inboxes. And it’s wrong: qualified accountants should be doing the work they trained for, not chasing paper.

Two ways to fix it

The first is discipline. You insist that clients send everything exactly where you ask. That’s good, but clients may not feel comfortable using your system, they may ignore you and do what they like anyway, and you still have to do the filing and keep everything organised.

The second is to let clients send documents however they like, and have an intelligent system bring everything into one place. That’s what we built Ziffa to do. It recognises over 170 document types and files every client’s documents into the same folder structure, in your own Google Drive or SharePoint.

A client's document folder in Google Drive with the same subfolders as every other client: Accounting, Advisory Services, Corporate Services, KYC, Payroll, Taxation and VAT — The same folders, for every client.

What Ziffa checks, in practice

Filing is the easy part. Ziffa also checks every document that comes in, the way a careful senior would:

The passport that expired last month.
The utility bill sent as proof of address that’s eight months old, when you need one from the last six.
The certificate of good standing that’s more than three months old.
The invoice made out to the director personally instead of the company, so the VAT on it can’t be claimed back.
The invoice with no date on it at all.

When a date fails its check, the document is held for review with the reason written down, so it doesn’t get filed as if it were fine. Ziffa also reads what’s inside: the key figures in a set of financial statements, the risk rating in a risk report.

An invoice held for review, with the note "Why this needs review: Invoice Date must be a valid date." — The one file that needs a person, with the reason written down.

How it works for your practice

We set Ziffa up around you. Your folders, your services, your clients’ deadlines. Nothing to migrate.
Requests go out on their own. As each deadline approaches, Ziffa emails the client asking for exactly the documents that deadline needs, and reminders follow on the schedule you set. Clients reply however they like.
Your team sees only what needs a person. Everything else is read, checked, renamed and filed.

A practice dashboard showing documents pending review, expiring documents and upcoming deadlines by client — One view of the whole practice.

What changes

Since those two months, Ziffa has grown into far more than a filing tool, and it’s trusted by several accounting firms and CSPs in Malta. Our mantra is Capacity, Control and Consistency.

Capacity: get more done with the same resources.
Control: a full audit trail, so you know where everything is, while the routine work runs on its own.
Consistency: no guesswork and no wondering who did what, with a view of your whole practice you’ve never had before.

That’s the story of Ziffa: a pain point I had at my own company, turned into a way for your team to focus on the work they’re qualified to do, and leave the office on time.

So if your next audit is coming up, if you’re fed up with chasing clients for documents, or if you want to grow your practice without growing the pile, we’re here to help.

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Andrew Cassar Overend is co-founder and CEO of Ekselera, the company behind Ziffa. He holds a BCom in Accounts and Economics from the University of Malta and an MSc in Economics from Durham University, was Chief Economist at Malta’s Ministry of Finance, and has taught economics at the University of Malta.