4 Tips to Getting the Most Out of Your Busy Tax Season
We know the idea of trying to do even more during your busiest season seems like a bit of a stretch. But we’d like to suggest that your busy season is also the best season for shaping up your firm’s overall strategy. Why? Because it’s at this time that you’re going to have the clearest picture of where your workflow builds blockages. Here are 4 ways you’ll be able to use the tax return season’s busy pace to set your firm up for a healthy dose of both streamlining and expansion.
Could Your Team Be Stronger?
Getting the right people under your roof can have a major impact on your business in two ways. First, everyone on your team (including yourself) will enjoy and appreciate their work environment more, resulting in a greater output. Second, filling slots with top tier players will result in your firm being able to pull in more revenue per employee. So today let’s identify some team-building mistakes and look at ways that you can correct them.
8 Time-Tested Social Media Methods
The upside to social media is that it has the potential to bring explosive growth to your client roster. The downside is that it can be a tremendous time-sink if you’re new to the game and you can’t afford to hire someone else to handle your online marketing for you. While there are all sorts of tweaks and fine-tuning that can help squeeze more out of your social media marketing over time, there are some more basic fundamentals that will help you to at least get the ball rolling.
Are You Hurting Your Business with Your Blog?
Having a Business Blog is a way for you to give out advice and tips and answer questions, positioning your firm as an authority and becoming the go-to firm for answers. There is however a flipside – a poorly designed blog can harm your business, or at least cut way down on your potential website conversions. Let’s take a quick look at the ways in which a blog can actually hurt your firm and how you can correct these mistakes.
Want to Know How to Turn Mistakes Into Money?
Nobody wants to have to tell a client that they screwed up. This in essence is the key – do not say sorry without having a fix. The fix is part of the apology, and the two must always go hand-in-hand if you want to turn a mistake into a money-making opportunity (or at the very least keep your client from taking their business elsewhere).
Outsourcing Accounting Services – 8 Must-Ask Questions
So you’ve heard of the many financial blessings to be counted in outsourcing accounting. However, it’s not quite as simple as flipping a switch. As an accountant your raison d’etre is making sure your clients get the most out of every dollar. Don’t you deserve the same level of courtesy for yourself? Here are 8 questions BOSS encourages you to ask before you commit to our outsourcing services.
The Ethics of Outsourcing Australian Compliance Work
If jobs are outsourced what future is there for the next generation? Outsourcing value-add services, especially those requiring emotional intelligence and a lot of face-to-face consultation, probably won’t be outsourced in any volume (if at all?) for another generation. The culture difference is just too much. So there are plenty of opportunities for those willing to expand beyond compliance.
Want To Offer Your Clients More Services? Here’s How BOSS Can Help
You are the go-to firm in your area for whatever niche accounting services you specialise in. You’re certainly willing, but you’re not quite sure that you’re ready and able. Back Office Shared Services can help you feel secure when you go to expand your menu of services.
Enjoying the SMSF Game – SMSF Outsource Solutions
The race is on. SMSF offerings are getting jumped on by Australians, meaning there’s an exploding market of SMSF compliance work for you to grab hold of. It’s a golden opportunity for you to expand an accounting of financial planning firm’s menu of services. But if money is tight it might seem like the price of expansion at this time is just too dear. Happily SMSF outsource solutions can take a lot of the sting out of helping your firm grow.
Outsourcing SMSFs & How to Sell SMSFs to Your Clients
SMSF accounts continue to gain steam as a way for Australians to manage their own retirement-oriented funds. The Australian Tax Office’s year-end stats show that the Funds are also pushing age boundaries, appealing more and more to the younger set in their mid-30s. That means there is a lot of work to be picked up by your firm – but can you handle the sudden growth? If you’re not sure take a look at SMSF outsource solutions to see how they can work for you.
Don’t Make These 4 Mistakes When Outsourcing Your Accounting Work
You want your current in-house team on board. In fact, you need them to be firing on all cylinders because making the leap to outsourcing is going to require that you and your team rethink your current work processes. That is not something you want to attempt to do all on your own (unless of course you’re a one-accountant show). Here are 4 big mistakes you should make an effort to avoid when you’re gearing up to evolve to an outsourcing accounting firm:
Sell Value, Not Services – BOSS Tips on How to Keep Your Prices Up
Making sure you have highly noticeable Unique Selling Points (USPs) is a effective marketing tool. But we here at BOSS (Back Office Shared Services) would like to remind you that, aside from attracting customers away from your competition, USPs serve another important function – if you don’t offer your clients unique values then the only thing different about your firm from anyone else’s is your price.
8 Common Leadership Missteps to Avoid to Help Improve Your Accounting Practice
It’s absolutely true that missteps, mistakes, blunders, and outright errors can lead to wonderful insights. But there is no law that says that you have to be the one making these mistakes – you’re free to learn from the mistakes of others. We here at Back Office Shared Services have worked with a lot of firm owners, CEOs, and management execs, and we’ve managed to compile a list of some of the more common errors we see all the time.
How You Can Outsource Accounting to Help Make Mistakes Pay Off in the Long Run
You have flaws. You’re the one building your firm, ergo your firm is bound to have flaws. There is no question that you will make mistakes. That means that the question really becomes how can you use those mistakes to make a positive and permanent impact on your firm? When you outsource accounting you’re able to do just that.
Listen More To Your Clients to Grow Your Firm
One of the greatest challenges we face when working with accounting firms is encouraging them to ask their clients about their needs, and relate them back to the services the firm is providing. Principals and partners of firms will often tell us they already know their clients very well. However,the chances are very high that you do not know your clients as well as you think. When was the last time you sat down with your top clients and really asked them about their business and personal financial goals?
Must Read Tips for Cloud and Server Security
Everyone’s jumping on the cloud, outsourcing is becoming the norm for accounting firms and telecommuting (even if it’s just for some out of hours work) is becoming more common. But solid, robust security steps can be overlooked. So what can you do to protect your precious data?
Warning about Use of Dropbox and similar providers
Dropbox is in the news again about security issues (see the links at the bottom). The takeaway is: don’t use the same password for more than one website. You may be interested to know that BOSS has a secure web server with an Intruder Detection System which includes blocking access from an IP address that is not your office IP address. We also have a lockout system that will lock someone out after 5 failed attempts – preventing robots from hacking too!
Are You Doing Everything You Can to Streamline Your Workflow?
Keeping any organization running at maximum efficiency can be a Herculean task for any manager or CEO. And if you’re looking to expand your company in the future, you’re going to be adding more cogs to the machine – more specialized staff that has to integrate with other sections, more software that also has to be integrated, more services that have to be co-ordinated, and so on. Here are 3 ideas we think will help you streamline your management efforts.
6 Tips to Enhancing Your Accounting Services in the Internet Age
Technology is changing what clients need from their accounting firm of choice. These changes present new opportunities for a firm flexible enough to embrace them. We’d like to present you with 6 methods you and your team can use to start reworking the way your firm uses technology to establish a more advantageous relationship with your clients.
Top 10 Lead Generation Methods
Getting and insiders view on what works can save you a lot of blood, sweat, tears and money! The Welleslley Hills Group is a specialist marketing agency for professional services firms. They surveyed 700 firms and broke down the different lead generation methods to 33 in all – so in fact I am going to give you a list of all 33. So without further ado the 33 methods ranked by the percentage of firms that found them effective are..
