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!

Growing an accounting firm means you become a pro at overcoming your firm’s obstacles as well as helping your clients overcome theirs. Likely, one of those obstacles you’re familiar with is client onboarding—how to begin delivering your valuable services as efficiently and effectively as possible. The last thing you want is to create a bottleneck at the very beginning of your client relationship!

Since 2013, Calgary, Alberta-based Achen Henderson CPAs has been focused on helping business leaders and entrepreneurs take their organizations to the next level. The firm offers customized services to fit the needs of each client, providing a high-performance virtual accounting solution that’s tailored for growth. But Achen Henderson CPAs didn’t start out that way.

You might visualize bookkeeping as sitting at a desk covered in receipts, looking through a green visor at rows and rows of hand-written numbers. And you wouldn't be entirely wrong. Many businesses have traditionally used programs like Excel to handle their business finances. But we live in the future, and technology exists to make this arduous, expensive approach to bookkeeping go the way of the dodo.

Automated booking software has eliminated the need for Excel in many cases, yet the Microsoft tool is still used by businesses and entrepreneurs for their bookkeeping, budgeting, and accounting needs. Sure, Excel can be a valuable bookkeeping tool, but it has its share of disadvantages too.

The following is a guest contribution from Raincatcher, a business broker focused on helping entrepreneurs buy and sell small and medium-sized businesses.

When you own a business, it’s easy to view accounting as a necessary evil, but not something that you can strategically use for growth. By re-framing your thinking and approach, you can use accounting to your advantage. Accounting practices can be an integral part of your strategy for growth.