If you’ve been paying attention to news in the accounting world for the past couple of years then you’ll have noticed that everybody has been suggesting that firms shift from purely an accounting role to one of that encompasses more of a business advisory stance. That makes sense for the outsourced accountant in face of technological changes, but how do you convince your client to embrace the expanded menu of services?
The basic services.
Most clients will be looking to you to handle their personal or business basics – bookkeeping, taxes, tax returns, the usual suspects. As the outsourced accountant of choice you know that these aren’t just the most basic level of accountant services, they’re also the law. Businesses have to get these numbers in order for the sake of the government – but not for the sake of improving their own business.
“The Outsourced Accountant is here to improve your business.”
Doing the bare necessities is not enough for your clients’ business – without your experienced eye investigating their actual business numbers they’re learning of both black flags and of opportunities far too late.
Your clients need to go deeper. They need to learn how to see their numbers not as only a chore that the government forces on them, but also as a tool. It’s not just about doing the bare minimum, it’s about boosting their business through understanding where they’re wasting cash, or not taking advantage of inventory sales or payroll.
Except of course that your client is busy running his or her business. Learning the ins and outs of all these extra numbers is going to be supremely time-consuming. Now if only the outsourced accountant was handy to help him or her. Oh wait, you are!
Improving your own business (your firm).
So great, the outsourced accountant has convinced his or her client that they need someone with an experienced eye to watch over their profits and loss and balance sheets. They’re totally on board with the idea that a cash flow statement is ultra-important to their business’ financial health.
They love the idea that you’re going to be keeping a close watch on their balance sheet because it’s going to indicate future influxes and outflows of cash. They love the idea that you’re going to be their mentor when it comes to profit and loss statements. Great! The only question is how is the outsourced accountant supposed to handle all of this work on top of the basic compliance stuff?
We’ve got you covered. We want to help you (and thereby your clients) make the transition to the overall more business-oriented accounting approach. We take all of that compliance work out of your hands by shifting it to your overseas team.
On your end (in terms of the base compliance work) all you’ll have to do is collect all the necessary information (your overseas accountants usually won’t start on a file until all the info is in) and then send it to us via whichever I.T. set-up you’ve chosen. You can also assign this job to one of your in-house staff.
On the flip-side you, the outsourced accountant, get the file back and do a quality check. And that’s pretty much it. You’ve now freed up a ton of time for you to expend a greater amount of effort on doing just what your new form of accounting firm has promised – improving your clients’ business.
