If you could pull a lever to create more capacity at your accounting firm, would you? Of course you would! We know from speaking to many growth-focused firms that capacity is a major issue, and firms will do whatever they can to increase it.

How do you drive success in terms of sales and growth? Are you looking at average revenue per client (ARPC) as a key metric?

To be fair, ARPC is a metric often prioritized by software companies, but in this day and age, firms can learn a lot from this simple yet valuable metric. And yes—we know that it’s often overlooked or regarded as a vanity metric...but we also know that’s not the whole story!

When it comes to adding accounting advisory services to your firm’s menu of offerings, there are a lot of resources available that will tell you to do this or do that. In fact, a quick Google search returns more than 81 million results for the question, “how to build accounting advisory” (although the most relevant/helpful results are probably limited to the first few pages). 

In a detail-oriented profession like accounting, it can be difficult to transition to a more hands-off approach after you’ve been responsible for all of it in the first place. If you have to review something to ensure it’s done right, why not just do it yourself in the first place?

The accounting industry is changing, and with it comes a change to how accounting firms service their clients.

For instance, in Sage’s “The Practice of Now 2019” report, 44% of accountants believe that “business advisory” is a necessary skill set for the industry. But fewer than 20% of practices offer advisory (with only 5% offering outsourced CFO services).

Regardless of if you’ve decided that a sale is your end goal, you should be running your firm like you’re going to sell it tomorrow.

We don’t say that to mean that you will sell tomorrow, but being able to means that your ducks are in a row, your firm is desirable to buyers, and you have an idea in mind for what you’ll do afterward.

The role of accounting professionals has been in constant evolution for decades. Traditionally, accountants and CPAs were relegated to the books and compliance duties. This is mostly due to the pre-spreadsheet and pre-internet era when these tasks legitimately took up most of a firm’s available bandwidth. 

Every accounting firm is a business, but does that mean your firm should function like a traditional company? A typical business has many moving parts, a variety of roles, and a structure in place. It’s an entire system that revolves around the company’s core offerings, products and/or services.

This may come as a hard truth for those who fear change, but there’s no escaping automation. We come in contact with some element of automation from the moment we wake up—it’s in our smartphones, computers, cars, TV, behind the scenes of your bank account, and in too many other places to list out!

There’s a preconception that the accounting industry is very “traditional.” And in many ways, that’s a positive; good accounting traditions help keep our world running, like filing taxes and supporting small businesses. And accountants are the heroes who make those important traditions happen! 💪

What are all businesses—accounting firms included—trying to achieve on a daily basis?

It’s here….

You know, that time of the year where accounting practices (like yours) are inundated with corporate tax preparation. Some repeat clients from previous years, some first-timers.