Are you the staff, rainmaker, management and leader to a small accounting firm? We understands how hard it is to juggle your commitments and challenges when you are the leader. We know that you got into the accounting profession because you are good accounting technicians and want to help your clients succeed.
We know what challenges you face in your practice. We work with CAs, CMAs and accountants all over the world who share your frustrations and who, like you, are looking for solutions. Working closely with our professionals helps us to understand what problems need to be solved. And when we find a solution… we bring it to you.
The Pain of Professional Practice
Providing the services that clients want the way the client wants them is easier said than done. Particularly if you run a small accounting practice, how can you effectively market to new clients while attempting to meet the needs of your current clients? And what happens when you can’t meet your client’s needs? It is easy enough to go to the accounting firm practice management literature to find out what the pains are. But there are four major complaints registered by clients of accounting professionals that continually come up…
1. The accountant’s work product is always late and therefore the value is significantly diminished (price is usually not the real issue).
2. Clients are always retraining the accountant’s staff, because a new staff member is assigned every year.
3. Accounting professionals are unresponsive and therefore don’t appear to care about their clients.
4. When clients grow larger they tend to feel that their small business accountant is not equipped to handle all of their needs as well as a larger firm could.
Complaints that accounting professionals register
Clients aren’t the only frustrated parties here. Some of the complaints regularly expressed by the professional are:
1. Accounting professionals are always under stress putting out fires from clients.
2. It is difficult or impossible to find and retain quality staff at a price that is economically feasible.
3. There is not enough time to keep up on all of the technical literature that would be necessary to solve all of our clients problems.
4. I know that my competitor down the street is trying to market to my best client.
5. My individual tax practice is eroding because of do-it-yourself solutions and retail providers.
6. My clients want more services, but I hardly have time to keep up.
7. Who do I refer my largest client’s audit to without fear of losing the rest of my client’s business?
8. Our largest client is leaving… where do we go to find a replacement?
9. I am 60 years old and would like to retire in 5 years. Who is there to buy me out?
10. What will happen if I become incapacitated or die?
Added complications… Issues with Small Partnerships
The above lists are by no means comprehensive, but they are representative of the common concerns facing most practitioners. If the practice is a small partnership, then you can add the issues of:
1. Why am I working so hard and my partner isn’t?
2. I know that we joined forces to relieve the stress and to share overhead, but why am I the one with all of the management problems? Or,
3. My partner wants to retire but there is no one coming up in our firm that wants to become a partner.
Spending Quality Time
The requirement to continually sell and produce, as well as the complications of running the practice, keeps your time all tied up. Where once you spent time with clients, understanding their needs and their businesses, you now find yourself simply trying to keep up with the workload or, in leaner times, finding a workload to keep you busy.
Outsourcing to help support the back-office can help you return to your relationships – with clients and with family. Not only is there a great potential to lower the actual costs of processing, but the resultant availability of TIME and RESOURCES gives you the flexibility to forge new relationships and build your clientele. And you gain the freedom to focus on listening to your clients, and delivering the service that you know they need.
Online Solutions Enable the Outsource Model
Using technology to improve the efficiency of your service can have a significant positive impact to your bottom line. But engaging new clients may become difficult if you are unable to find the skilled workforce you need in order to keep up with market demands. In many cases, your clients probably outsourced their accounting or bookkeeping functions to you because they, too, find it difficult to hire and keep good workers.
Skilled workers and highly trained professionals are where you need them, when you need them. By working in the cloud and leveraging partnerships with bookkeeping service providers and outsourced processors, you can engage the clients your business wants without the concern of having adequate personnel available to do the job. There are many professionally-trained bookkeepers and accountants available to assist with serving almost any client requirement. From daily bookkeeping to a full range of compliance work, partners can help you coordinate the workflow and the personnel necessary to ensure that your clients’ needs are being met.
Applying the right technologies and solutions to help you serve your clients and expand your market is essential to business growth, competitiveness, and long-term survival. Your online accounting service provider remains a “silent partner” to your practice, and is there to provide the platform support which assists you in serving your clients and expanding your market. Working online means working beyond geographic boundaries while retaining the security and control you and your clients require.
Accounting in the Cloud is a Big Part of the Solution
Whether you’re involved in public or private practice, and no matter where you are located, there is an online accounting service or solution that can help you with your business.
Improve your business efficiency and your profitability while focusing more closely on your core service and value. Your clients view you as their trusted advisor, and we are there to help you continue to deliver the value and service your clients expect and need.
Make Sense?
J
Canadian deliveries; Canadian applications; Canadian market. Learn more…
