Xact Accounting has won both Best Wellness Program/Initiative of the Year and Marketing Program of the Year at the 2026 Australian Accounting Awards. Here is what sits behind both.
Winning one award at the Australian Accounting Awards takes serious work. Winning two in the same year, and in categories as different as team wellbeing and marketing, says something more specific about a firm.
For Xact Accounting, both wins point to the same underlying commitment: build something people want to be part of, then tell the story honestly.
The Best Wellness Program/Initiative of the Year award recognises what Xact built inside XactOS, our proprietary internal management platform: the Wellness Hub.
For a remote-first firm operating across Australia, Philippines, and Sri Lanka, the core problem was straightforward. Traditional wellness programs assume everyone is in the same building. Ours does not. So, we built a centralised digital home for every wellness resource the firm offers, structured around four pillars: mental health, physical fitness, nutrition, and personal growth.
The Mind Gym section gives every team member direct access to qualified mental health professionals in their region – free and anonymous. Physical challenges like our 6,000 Steps program combat the sedentary habits that remote work creates. Nutrition plans are tailored to local diets, not just the Australian team. And personal growth is built into the operating rhythm of the firm through career development plans, fortnightly one-on-ones, and leadership programs.
What makes the model work is integration. Wellness resources sit inside a platform our team already uses every day, which means engagement does not require extra effort. It is just part of how we work.
The in-person program reinforces the digital one. Twice a year, the entire firm comes together for major events. In alternate quarters, our Go Local program runs localised gatherings that build genuine connections within regions – relationships that often continue long after the firm calendar moves on. Many team members now organise their own regular meetups, which is exactly the outcome we were aiming for.
We also addressed something most wellness programs do not touch: financial stress. Interest-free emergency and calamity loans are available to all team members, recognising that financial pressure is one of the most significant barriers to overall wellbeing, and one of the least addressed in the profession.
“When your team is based across three countries, it is easy for people to fall through the cracks. We built the Wellness Hub because we wanted every person at Xact – wherever they are – to feel genuinely supported. That means mental health, physical health, financial security, and career growth. All of it matters.”
Kat Scales, Operations Manager
The Marketing Program of the Year award recognises a deliberate, data-driven approach that turned a proven model into a scalable system.
In 2024, we built the foundations: buyer personas, a content matrix, per-channel attribution, and a measurement framework. In 2025, we used that data to build a customer journey that shaped every campaign, channel, and asset we produced.
At the top of the funnel, paid Meta campaigns promote gated content addressing the real pain points of construction business owners – QBCC compliance, bookkeeping, WIP accounting, cashflow, and growth strategy. Organic search captures high-intent traffic from owners actively looking for construction-specific accounting advice. Industry partnerships with Master Builders Queensland put our people directly in front of the right audience across more than 35 events in a year.
Once prospects enter our database, we nurture them through our monthly eDM reaching over 17,000 subscribers, webinar masterclasses averaging 200 registrations with over 50% attendance, and ongoing partner activity with organisations like NAB, Buildxact, and CCF Queensland.
One of the most significant marketing decisions we made in 2025 came from a single data insight. Analysis of our CRM revealed that Meta download leads and direct consultation requests converted at vastly different rates. We separated the two streams: lower-intent downloads went into automated nurture sequences, while sales effort concentrated on high-intent enquiries. The result was a materially stronger return from the same media spend.
To scale content production without expanding the team, we built Xact Copywriter: a custom GPT trained on our brand voice, strategic marketing plan, and published articles. This became the engine of our content flywheel, producing over 60 articles across four service lines while maintaining consistent quality.
“Marketing only matters if it brings in the right clients. Every channel, every piece of content, every campaign we ran in 2025 was pointed at construction business owners with a real problem we could solve. That focus is what made the program work.”
Phil Brown, Partner and Chief Operating Officer
A wellness award and a marketing award might look like separate achievements. At Xact, they are connected.
Both programs were built on the same logic: identify the real problem, design a system that fits how people actually operate, and measure what is working. The Wellness Hub is not a collection of isolated initiatives. The marketing program is not a set of disconnected campaigns. Both are integrated systems with deliberate structures and clear objectives.
Both also reflect what Xact is trying to build as an employer. The people who do the best work for our clients are the ones who are growing, connected, and supported. And the marketing that attracts the right clients is built by a team that understands the sector deeply and communicates with confidence.
For accountants thinking about where they want to build their career: these awards are a signal, not a sales pitch. They represent the systems, culture, and ambition of a firm that has grown organically for close to a decade without mergers or bought fees – and that is still accelerating.
Xact Accounting is a Chartered Accounting firm specialising in the Australian building and construction sector. With teams across Brisbane, Melbourne, and the Sunshine Coast and integrated offshore capability, we work with construction business owners from compliance and bookkeeping through to financial control, advisory, and growth strategy.
