For Accountants, Growth Opportunities Outweigh Challenges
Cloud Solutions for Accountants
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Once tax season (thankfully) comes to a close, it’s
the perfect time for accountants to take a broader
view of their practice. They should think not only
about how they’re going to survive the next tax
season, but also about generating perennial revenue
streams beyond tax season.
A recent survey of 301 managing partners of small
accounting firms (firms with five or fewer equity
partners and a maximum of $10 million in annual
revenues) found that seven out of ten managing
partners expect it will be more difficult for their
firms to make money in 2016 than it was in 2015.
However, opportunities to make money may not
be so difficult to come by.
In this ebook, we’ll explore various
avenues open to accountants to grow
their practices, and show how the latest
advances in technology and processes
can point the way to sustainable, hassle-
free growth.
A recent survey of 301 managing partners
of small accounting firms found that seven out of ten managing partners expect it will
be more difficult for their firms to make money in 2016 than it was in 2015.
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Not All Clients Are Created Equal
While taking on additional clients is one viable option to increase
revenue, that strategy presents its own set of daunting challenges.
Identifying and marketing to new prospects takes a significant
investment of time and money. And once they are on board, new
clients continue to require an outsized level of hand-holding, from
data migration to software and communication issues. In fact, 82% of
companies agree that new customer acquisition is more expensive to
execute than retention, according to a 2015 eConsultancy report.
For most firms, a better option is to successfully deliver additional services to your existing
clients. Most accountants don’t know what additional services to offer, and many think they don’t have
the time to handle additional services. These accountants should start thinking immediately about
streamlining their internal processes to accommodate a larger volume of work, because significant
opportunities for offering additional services to their existing clients do exist.
Complement better technology with better ways of doing business
To make the most of your firm’s human and technology resources, you also need to revamp your
processes and the way you conduct business. One way to maximize the impact of these new resources
is to use client portals for exchanging documents. Client portals save you time and money, and
greatly streamline your workflow.
But the most important thing is to review your method of billing. If you’re still using hourly fees, it’s
time to change to a fixed-fee pricing model. And simple math will show you why.
One of the major outcomes of all the techniques discussed in this whitepaper is to help you perform
your client engagements faster and easier. But if you charge by hour, then you’ll make less money by
becoming more efficient! You certainly don’t want that. The only way to be truly rewarded for your
efficiency is to charge a fixed fee for most tax, accounting and payroll services.
A question we’re often asked is: how I move to a fixed fee model? It’s easy. Divide your average yearly
fee by 12, and that’s your starting point for a monthly fixed fee. Then you can adjust this fixed monthly
fee upward or downward depending on other factors, including additional services you might be
providing to some clients.
This method serves both you and your clients well. As mentioned, you make more money by becoming
more efficient. You also have a more evenly distributed revenue stream that helps you manage your
cash flow. And clients are happy to know upfront what their cost will be for your services. A fixed
monthly payment also helps them manage their cash flow.
New Client
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Highly Profitable Payroll (Really!)
A first step to growth: consider adding payroll services for your existing clients.
Since payroll is so highly intertwined with clients’ overall expenses and tax liabilities, it is a natural fit
for accountants to also manage this function for their clients.
If you haven’t considered offering payroll services because of the perceived notion that payroll is an
“all pain, no gain” service, consider that thousands of accountants have turned payroll into a virtually
painless, highly profitable service using professional, robust cloud-based payroll systems created
exclusively for accountants.
Payroll Center
Processing
E-Payments
Tax Forms
Collaboration
Integration
Payroll Relief ®
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Complete Accounting Services: Good for You AND Your Clients
A new survey by AccountantsWorld found that 25 percent of the small business owners surveyed said
they’d be interested in transferring more of their accounting work to their accountants. So, with one
out of every four small business owners open to an expanded relationship with their accountants, there
is no better time for firms to be reaching out to current or prospective clients to expand their slate of
services before the tax season crush.
The survey also found that when a small business
employs an internal bookkeeper, interest in outsourcing
accounting work increases to 45 percent. By encouraging
existing clients to expand the services they use, firms can
easily create more revenue streams for their practices
with minimal lift.
It is widely recognized that the primary source of wasted
time in accounting is dealing with the errors clients make.
Fortunately, accountants can now use a professional
accounting system that lets them work collaboratively
with their clients, and gives them the ability to customize
the system for each client. Clients only access the
functions they can perform, which enables accountants to drastically reduce client errors and regain
significant time.
Professional accounting systems also make it faster and easier to produce customizable financial
statements, and accountants can take advantage of time-saving features, such as bank feeds that
reduce the data entry time needed for the write-up work they perform for clients who write manual
checks.
Cloud-based professional accounting systems can also help accountants offer
complete accounting services faster and easier by making it possible for
accountants’ staff to do what clients’ staff or their external bookkeepers
currently do – only faster, easier and more accurately and without leaving
the office.
As a bonus, cloud-based professional accounting solutions
include analytical tools to monitor client key performance
indicators (KPIs) and cash flow with minimal effort. These value-
added services provide additional sources of increased profits while
strengthening client relationships.
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Cloud Solutions for Accountants
The Big Picture
Knowing that additional ways of raising the bottom
line exist, the next step is to find the resources
needed to add those services. The trick for
accountants to offer additional services without
adding any staff is to focus on streamlining. By
reducing the time spent on existing services and
finding ways to provide additional services with
minimal time and effort, adding services without
adding staff becomes possible. The right professional
cloud solutions can help you accomplish both.
These systems make it possible for accountants to
generate significant additional revenue by offering
payroll and complete accounting services without
adding any stress to their staff. In fact, streamlining
work flow and eliminating redundancies and
unnecessary work actually increases staff satisfaction.
Your clients are looking for you to offer them the additional services they need - services that you can easily offer. What are you waiting for?
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Take the Next Step
Now that you’ve been introduced to a range of ways to grow your bottom line, it’s time to learn how to
implement these ways into your practice.
PAYROLL RELIEF®
HIGHEST RATING 5 YEARS
Practice Advisor CPA
PRACTICE RELIEFSM
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ACCOUNTING POWER®
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WEBSITE RELIEFSM
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Visit AccountantsWorld.com/APower to learn more about Accounting Power
The award-winning Accounting Power solution from AccountantsWorld integrates a powerful
professional accounting system with a comprehensive bookkeeping system in one unifi ed cloud-
based accounting solution. Learn how it puts accountants like you back in full control of client
accounting, and can help you perform your accounting engagements 20-30% faster than your
current solution – guaranteed.
Schedule a one-on-one growth consultation
Call 888-999-1366 to schedule a personal demonstration of AccountantsWorld’s flagship solutions for professional accounting and payroll processing. A Practice Development Consultant will answer any questions you have, and detail how Accounting Power and Payroll Relief can help accelerate your firm’s growth and boost client satisfaction.
Visit PayrollRelief.com to learn more about Payroll Relief
The key to more profi table payroll: full automation. The award-winning Payroll Relief system can
perform direct deposit, tax payment, tax-form e-fi ling, and child support-related tasks automatically,
on time, with 100% guaranteed accuracy. And you get all this power for a very modest investment...
as little as 45¢ per paycheck. The result: a no-hassle, high-margin payroll service.
PAYROLL RELIEF®
HIGHEST RATING 5 YEARS
Practice Advisor CPA
PRACTICE RELIEFSM
Practice Advisor CPA
ACCOUNTING POWER®
Practice Advisor CPA
WEBSITE RELIEFSM
Practice Advisor CPA
www.AccountantsWorld.com
Thank You for Reading Our Ebook
About AccountantsWorld
Many accountants don’t realize that major corporations have used
technology to penetrate deep into your core tax, accounting and
payroll services.
At AccountantsWorld, we use technology for a very different
purpose.
For over 15 years, we’ve been committed to using cloud technology
to create new opportunities for practicing accountants like you, and
to help you reclaim lost ground so you can better serve your clients
and raise your bottom line.
We created the first-ever cloud-based payroll solution,
Payroll Relief, to help accountants easily offer highly
profitable payroll services to their clients.
Then we created Accounting Power, the first cloud-
based professional system to put you, the accountant,
back in control of client accounting.
We now offer a fully integrated suite of highly
acclaimed solutions for professional accounting,
bookkeeping, payroll, document management,
client portals and more.
Using our pioneering cloud solutions, you can tailor your services to
best meet the individual needs of each of your clients, increase your
firm’s productivity, better serve your clients, and raise your bottom
line.
And unlike other service providers, AccountantsWorld has made an
unwavering commitment to accountants. We never compete with
you, or sell our products or services directly to your clients.
Learn more about how AccountantsWorld can help your practice
thrive at AccountantsWorld.com
PAYROLL RELIEF®
HIGHEST RATING 5 YEARS
Practice Advisor CPA
PRACTICE RELIEFSM
Practice Advisor CPA
ACCOUNTING POWER®
Practice Advisor CPA
WEBSITE RELIEFSM
Practice Advisor CPA