As 2016 winds down, it’s a time for celebration and reflection. What will you focus on in 2017 to make your life and your business even better than it is now? What new skills and tools do you need to make these transformations? That’s today’s topic.
The team at Accountant’s Accelerator wishes you and your families a very happy holiday season and an exciting and successful new year.
Five Trends for the Modern Accountant in 2017
As accountants, our daily work is full of to-the-penny details that keep us focused on transactions, charts, data, and numbers all day long. We have to be good at the details to be in our industry. But we also need to be able to move from the trees to the forest and see the big picture.
It’s such an exciting time to be an accountant. Not only are they making cool movies about us, we are seeing so many exciting and productive changes that we can benefit from. Here are some sweeping trends and how to measure how your firm stacks up.
From Compliance to Advisory
The most exciting change for me is how accountants are making a difference in the lives of owners of small businesses. A study by Intuit showed that when small business owners hire an accountant, their success rate goes up by … drumroll, please…. a whopping 89%. Did you realize you had that much impact on your small biz clients? You are truly dream shapers for these entrepreneurs.
As compliance work becomes automated, advisory work will take on a larger role in your business. One measure of how your firm is doing is to calculate the percentage of revenue that comes from compliance work vs. advisory work. The modern accounting firm is generating a growing percentage of advisory work year after year.
From Hourly Billing to Value Pricing
As data entry becomes more and more automated each year, hourly billers are actually giving themselves a demotion year after year by staying with this pricing method. More than half of the profession has switched to fixed or flat fee pricing or a version of that: package pricing. Many are also value pricing which is a better way to price high return-on-investment engagements.
How is your firm doing in this area? What percentage of revenue is being priced by the hour versus flat fee or value pricing? As the mainstream catches on to fixed and value pricing, the hourly pricing method will be less and less common.
I still think hourly pricing is easier when you first get started, but as soon as you have some history, you should move to a better pricing method.
From Operations to Multiple Functions
In the traditional accounting firm partnership and compensation model, the emphasis has been to promote accountants who were good technically as well as able to bring in business. This makes for a great service for clients, but often shortchanges development of other corporate functions, such as sales and marketing and human relations. Newer business models are appearing that don’t have these deficits, which leads to a more well-rounded corporate business model for accounting firms.
From Desktop to Cloud
Today I just moved my last desktop app, Outlook email, to Google apps email in the cloud. My accounting system, my scheduling system, my to-do list, my payroll system, and a huge number of other vendor apps are all in the cloud now. All of our client delivery is done via the cloud. We are nearly 100% cloud-based.
Measure how your firm fares by calculating the ratio of desktop apps to cloud apps. More and more firms are moving everything to the cloud for better accessibility, security, and collaboration.
From Technician to CEO
As accountants, almost all of us start out being technicians. We’re good at accounting and taxes. As our business grows, our skill set needs to expand from accounting knowledge to CEO-level skills: deal-making, pricing, developing new markets, and managing and growing people, to name a few.
Do you see yourself more as a technician working on client work, or do you see yourself developing your staff, your clients, and your business by adding these skill sets? You can rank yourself based on the amount of time you spend being a technician versus being a CEO.
A Great Start to 2017
This month, we have a chance to reflect on the trends above, assess where our firms stand, and decide on a course of action that will take us where we want to go in 2017. How did your firm rate in each of the above trends? Which trend should you start improving first?
The good news is a growing number of practice consultants, including our team at Accountant’s Accelerator, are focusing on providing marketing and practice management training and support for the small CPA firm. This means you have easy access to courses and tools that can help you modernize your practice.
Create your 2017 plan, and perhaps your New Year’s resolutions, around these five trends, and watch your success grow in 2017.
Accountant’s Accelerator 2017
I’m super-jazzed to announce Accountant’s Accelerator 2017, which will be two different products: a library of the last 6 years of AA’s “greatest hits,” and a live webinar series across 2017 of 6 multi-webinar courses with CPE.
The training content that has been Accountant’s Accelerator for the last six years is now available in the all-new Accelerator Library, making it more affordable than ever. With full access through December 31, 2017, you can watch dozens of training videos, download dozens of forms, samples, and templates, and learn from several ebooks, all designed to help you make more, work less, and serve clients better.
Regular $199, now $149 through December 23, 2016.
Find out more and sign up here:
The second product is a series of 6 live webinars to be held throughout 2017 on topics including value pricing, practice management mastery, marketing, selling and proposals, and advisory opportunities. For the first time ever, Advisor Accelerated plus an Advanced Advisor course is included in this series.
We don’t have all the descriptions and dates posted yet, but we know some of you are already ready to commit to the 2017 schedule and want to spend some profits down in 2016. You will be able to sign up for each of these courses separately at prices ranging from $149 to $299, but if you plan to attend all of them, you will benefit from the All-You-Can-Eat price of $497.
Find out more and sign up for one or all here:
Accountant's Accelerator 