Cradle for FYI
Cradle is the cloud phone system for accounting firms running on FYI. Calls log themselves against the right client, Cradle writes the follow-up summary and the transcription straight into the activity feed, and you know who's calling and what they're calling about before you answer the phone.
Try Cradle in your browser
Click through the call log, in-call screen, messages and settings. Every contact-bearing row shows the FYI badge so you can see what the integration looks like before booking a call.
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+64 9 555 0101+64 4 555 0202+64 3 555 0303+61 2 5550 0404+64 7 555 0505+64 9 555 0606+61 3 5550 0707+64 6 555 0808+64 9 555 0909+61 7 5550 1010Trusted by accounting firms across Australia and New Zealand
“The biggest game changer for us is that every call is automatically saved into FYI. That means no more missed notes or chasing people for messages. The accountants can just go back and see the conversation for themselves”
How Cradle helps
For accounting firms, three things matter: saving time, keeping accurate client records, and meeting your compliance obligations. Cradle's FYI integration is built around all three.
Saving time
Stop re-typing call details after every conversation. Cradle's AI writes the summary, voicemails transcribe automatically, and on FYI Elite, time entries draft themselves against the right job. Every call logs itself into FYI, so the "I'll log it later" backlog stops accruing.
Accurate record-keeping
Every client conversation lives where the rest of the engagement does. Inbound calls match the right FYI client by phone number, so the activity, the recording, the transcript, and the AI summary all land against the right record. Voicemails transcribe straight into the activity feed, not a separate phone-system silo.
Compliance
Practice-review ready, without exporting from another system. Calls are recorded, transcribed and timestamped against the right matter, with a clear audit trail of who handled the conversation and when. Retention is configurable per firm so you can match your record-keeping policy.
How Cradle works with FYI
Five views of the integration: what Cradle does, how the activity flow works, a walkthrough video, how Cradle compares to generic VoIP for FYI firms, and how to set it up.
What Cradle does inside FYI
When a client phones, Cradle reads their number, looks them up in FYI, and shows their record before the call connects. At hangup, the call lands as an activity against the right client, with an AI summary, transcript, and recording. That's the whole pitch: Cradle stops phone calls creating admin work.
Nobody types the same thing twice, and the "I'll log that call later" backlog stops accruing. See all Cradle features, or browse the full list of practice management integrations.
Logging calls to FYI activities
Every call Cradle makes or receives lands as an FYI activity. Here's the flow.
Call happens
Inbound, outbound, missed, or voicemail. Any direction, any device.
Cradle records, transcribes, summarises
Call recording, voicemail transcription, and an AI- written summary of the conversation's substance.
Activity lands in FYI
Against the right client, with the recording link, AI summary, transcript, and (on Elite) a draft time entry on the right job.
Inbound calls create an activity against the matching FYI client (matched on phone number). The activity includes the call type (inbound), the duration in minutes, the direction (answered, missed or voicemail), the AI-written summary once the call ends, a link to the call recording, and a link to the voicemail transcript if applicable.
Outbound calls create an activity against whichever FYI client you clicked-to-called. Same fields, with the direction set to outbound.
Missed and voicemail calls still create an activity. A missed call without voicemail logs the attempt and timestamp. A voicemail logs the transcript and a link to listen.
Time tracking and job linking(FYI Elite + FYI AI, configured with our team). Cradle posts call duration to the right FYI job as a draft time entry, ready for a partner to review and approve at month-end. Calls also associate with the right matter so partners see the full communication history alongside the work. We set this up with you because each firm's time-entry rules and matter-linkage policies are different; it isn't a generic switch in admin.
Manual editing. Anything Cradle posts is a standard FYI activity and can be edited from FYI directly: the activity, the time entry, the summary, all of it.
See it in action
A closer look at the specific surfaces — caller ID, click-to-call, auto-logging, AI summaries — running inside FYI.
Cradle vs 3CX, RingCentral, MS Teams & 8x8
Most generic VoIP providers don't integrate with FYI at all. The phone system records the call; FYI has no idea the call happened. Your team copies and pastes the details from one to the other, or doesn't bother. That's as true for 3CX and RingCentral as it is for MS Teams Phone or 8x8.
Cradle is built for this. The FYI integration is included on every paid Cradle tier, configured in a few minutes once you have an FYI API key, and runs from then on without anyone thinking about it.
| Capability | Cradle | 3CX / RingCentral / MS Teams / 8x8 |
|---|---|---|
| Caller ID enriched from FYI client list | ||
| Click-to-call from FYI client record | ||
| Calls log as FYI activities automatically | ||
| AI call summary written to FYI | ||
| Voicemail transcribed and attached to FYI | ||
| Time tracking + job linking | FYI Elite, set up with our team | |
| Setup time | A few minutes | Engineering project |
| Included in monthly subscription | Often a bolt-on |
If your firm runs on FYI and your phone system isn't aware of it, you're paying twice: once for the phone system, and again in admin time.
See also: the phone system for accountants page for the broader workflow story across FYI, Xero Practice Manager and HubSpot. If you want to model the ROI for your firm, the Cradle ROI calculator takes about 90 seconds.
How to set up the Cradle FYI integration
Setup is simpler than most VoIP integrations. Cradle Admin deep-links you to the right place in FYI, you copy two values across, and the integration runs daily after that.
- Set up your Cradle account. The fastest path is to book a 30-minute call with us so we can provision your number, users and basic routing while we're on the call. Self-serve setup is at cradle.io/get-started.
- Open Cradle Admin → Integrations and click the FYI tile. Sign in to admin.cradle.io with your Microsoft account, open the Integrations section, and click the link in the FYI tile. That deep-links you straight to your firm's Cradle integration page on FYI, so you don't have to hunt through FYI's settings menus. (Cradle doesn't use FYI credentials, and FYI customers are already on Microsoft, so this is the same identity you use every day.)
- If the FYI tile is greyed out, request access. The integration is feature-flagged on some accounts. Click "Request feature" on the tile and Cradle's AI logs a ticket for our team. We'll enable it shortly.
- Generate the API key and secret on FYI's page. On the FYI integration page that opens, create a new key. Copy the API key and the secret. (Both values are required; keep them somewhere safe between the two browser tabs.)
- Paste back into Cradle and save. Return to admin.cradle.io → Integrations, paste the API key and the secret into the FYI tile, and save.
- Cradle starts syncing.Cradle pulls your FYI client list on a daily schedule. The first sync runs as soon as you save the credentials; future syncs run overnight. You can also trigger a sync manually from the FYI tile in admin.cradle.io if you've added a batch of new clients in FYI and don't want to wait. Inbound calls will start showing FYI client context once the first sync completes.
Outbound activity logging starts the first time someone makes a call after the integration is connected. There's no user-by-user opt-in for the basic logging; every call from every Cradle user lands in the right FYI activity feed automatically.
Frequently asked questions
Does Cradle work with FYI?
What does the Cradle FYI integration actually do?
Will Cradle log calls automatically against the right FYI client?
How do I set up the Cradle FYI integration?
Does Cradle track billable time into FYI?
Can I bring my own phone numbers?
What happens to call data if I cancel?
Is the integration available on the Standard tier or only on higher plans?
Keep reading
More on how Cradle works for AU and NZ accounting firms.
Customer stories
Features that pair with FYI
What other FYI customers say
“I can't stress how much this app changed our practice for the better. I wished we would have moved to Cradle earlier as it has not only improved clients phone experiences but also helped with compliance and saved a heap of admin time and $$$.”
Book a 30-minute demo of Cradle for FYI
Bring your FYI account, your number-porting questions, and your team size, and we'll model the rollout and answer anything specific to your firm.