The 140% Growth Year: How Shapes Used Vinyl to Scale Smarter

Shapes | Accounting + Marketing Advisory Across Sectors

Before Vinyl, Shapes relied on scattered meeting notes, manual summaries, and too much memory.

With Vinyl, every meeting is recorded, summarised, and actionable, freeing the team to grow both their headcount and service lines without growing their admin.

At-a-glance stats

• Team size: 6 full-time (and growing)

• Meetings: ~15–20 per week

• Time to notes: End of day or missed → Immediate

• Admin time: ~5 hours/day across team → Near-zero

• Time saved: ~1 hour/day per person

• Adoption: Entire team within the first week

Before: What life looked like pre-change

Context

Shapes is a UK-based firm that does things differently. Set up in 2023, they deliver digital accounting and marketing support across sectors, with an eye toward long-term scale.

With just six full-time staff and more hires planned, operational efficiency mattered from day one. Meetings drive the work across both service lines, making conversations the heartbeat of the business.

Old workflow + tools

• Meetings held via Google Meet

• Some recordings made, but rarely reused

• Google-generated transcripts = low quality, hard to scan

• Some tried Fireflies or Claude AI manually

• Notes lived in notebooks, shared Drives, or not at all

• Summaries created ad hoc, not standardised

Even when transcripts existed, it took multiple steps to extract and file usable insights. In-person meetings were even worse, sometimes leaving no written record whatsoever.

Where things broke

• Inconsistent note-taking across the team

• Follow-ups delayed or missed entirely

• Team members relied on memory or each other for context

• No central source of truth

• Onboarding new hires meant backtracking through disjointed records

“Individually, I knew I wasn’t always good at it. And collectively, I knew we were being inconsistent.” — Jim Leeves, Co-founder, Shapes

The system wasn’t broken because people weren’t trying—it was broken because the workflow wasn’t built to scale.

The trigger

In early 2024, with growth underway and hiring on the horizon, the founders realised something had to change. Jim no longer needed to be across every conversation, but the team did need shared context and reliable follow-up.

After switching their practice management to Karbon, Jim saw Vinyl’s early Karbon integration. That was the lightbulb moment. If notes could live where the work lived, everything else could follow.

During: How the firm made the change

What they looked for

Shapes wasn’t just chasing better transcripts; they wanted an invisible workflow.

Non-negotiables:

• Automatic meeting joins

• Instant, usable summaries

• Direct integration with Karbon

• Zero manual steps post-call

They’d tested Fireflies and Claude, but both required extra effort to extract value. Vinyl worked the way they worked, no exporting, no context switching, no setup.

Implementation

After seeing Vinyl at the Digital Accountancy Show, Shapes moved fast. Within a week, the entire team was onboard.

They started with a few client meetings, sending summaries to clients as a test. The response was immediate; clients loved the clarity and had no concerns about recording. That early validation gave Jim confidence to set a new default: every meeting recorded and summarised.

From there, the change became muscle memory. Vinyl just worked.

The new playbook

• Vinyl joins every scheduled meeting automatically

• Summaries hit inboxes within seconds

• Team reviews, edits (if needed), and files or forwards

• Action items are captured in real time

• Summaries sync directly into Karbon

• Internal visibility stays high—no backchannel catch-ups required

New hires ramp faster. Team members stay aligned. And meetings end with clear next steps, spoken out loud, for the client and the summary.

Vinyl’s Role

Vinyl didn’t replace Shapes’ stack; it connected it.

By syncing summaries directly into Karbon and removing every manual step between conversation and follow-up, Vinyl gave Shapes consistency, clarity, and capacity. The system was there. Vinyl made it seamless.

After: Results + Proof

What Changed (Before → After)

Time savings based on internal estimates of ~1 hour/day per team member

Day-to-day impact

The shift was immediate.

• No one worries about missing something during a call

• Summaries arrive fast enough to send right after

• Actions are captured clearly, and visibly

• The team reads instead of rewatching

• Meetings feel sharper—because they end sharper

“You’re able to listen better and ask questions better. It’s changed the dynamic.” — Jim Leeves, Shapes

Business impact

• 140% revenue growth in 2025, without growing the core team

• Seamless expansion of both compliance and marketing services

• Reduced admin freed time for delivery and planning

• Clear system in place to support new hires

• Confidence across the team—no one flying blind

“We couldn’t have delivered what we did last year without Vinyl and Karbon.” — Jim Leeves, Co-founder, Shapes

Bottom line

Shapes didn’t just fix meeting notes; they built a system that supports growth.

By eliminating the need to remember, rewrite, or reformat after every call, Vinyl gave the team back time and provided leadership with peace of mind. Follow-ups are automatic. Notes are consistent. And meetings are just… smoother.

For firms juggling delivery, team growth, and internal alignment, this is what infrastructure looks like. Not more tools. Just less friction.