cloud based accounting

cloud based accounting

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As far as I can see there are two ways of using cloud based software.
The first is just as an extension of your normal practice so that when clients ring up you can open their accounts on your machine. We have had pretty minimal take-up on this. The most telling comment coming from the director who said "if my bookkeeper leaves I can just get another sage familiar bookkeeper so I don't want to move to another system"
The second category are accountants setting up as purely virtual operations serving clients they have never met. This is appealing to me in some respects as a way of expanding. However it strikes me there are only a finite number of clients in UK who want a virtual accountant, and it will soon reach saturation point
I think that most of the early adopter accountants who went down this route focused on contractors and this is telling as with that market you have an army of well educated computer literate people earning decent money who know the benefit of getting someone else to look after the accounts.
I can see few hairdressers/corner sop owners - OK maybe I'm being a bit unfair here - embracing an online accountant

So my question is ate the virtual accountants either spending fortunes on SEO or something else.

Replies (7)

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By zarathustra
01st Nov 2012 12:16

does anyone have a separate online practice running in parallel

I guess there must be some on here with a separately branded online practice. Do you set different fee levels?

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By Maslins
01st Nov 2012 13:49

I guess my firm would be considered in your second category.

I had no great master plan when I set up 4-5 years ago, and originally anticipated I'd get a broad spread of local businesses.  However I started to get a few contractor/freelancer type clients further afield, found FreeAgent, and that side of the business grew far faster than the local stuff.  After a while it made life easier to not take on local clients where each one does things their own way.

Having clients all do things the same way, using the same software etc obviously helps us from an efficiency point of view.  Also, like you suggest, most of these types of clients are very IT savvy, happy to use emails, online software etc, and are making reasonable sums.  Possibly where there is no face to face relationship some would say they can be a bit more flaky (ie more likely to change accountants regularly), but I think the pros outweigh the cons.

To answer your final line, we spend £nil on SEO...but then if you Google "contractor accountants"/similar, you'll struggle to find us.  If we wanted to be first page for that type of search I think we would have to pay lots, for a long time.  Being page 2 is negligibly better than page 10, so as we're currently nearer the latter, I don't feel it's worth the spend.  We are (just about) first page for "freeagent accountant", being the software we chose to work with.

We're not growing at an amazing pace, but typically take on 2-5 clients/month, perhaps losing 1-2 (mostly due to taking on PAYE roles/emigrating rather than to another accountant).  Growth just due to word of mouth.

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By zarathustra
01st Nov 2012 14:07

@maslins

Thanks for your reply, you have helped to reinforce what I first thought.

It would be interesting to hear if the are any accountants out there with a more mixed bag of clients who are happy to work via the net.

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Image is of a pin up style woman in a red dress with some of her skirt caught in the filing cabinet. She looks surprised.
By Monsoon
01st Nov 2012 14:20

Both

We do both. We have a high street practice serving the local community, people dropping in to see us etc. We also have clients nationally who we've never met - at least 40% of our client base. We initially hed 2 separate websites but I've turned off the online one, preferring to treat everyone the same. And yes, the online one had lower prices, but this was a legacy system from my ex business partner that I wasn't fully on board with).

My verdict: you can do both, but don't have 2 faces.

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By Figurate
01st Nov 2012 15:53

Two websites

We also do both.  We do have two websites because one started off as a blog on a free platform but now has it's own domain name.

Having two different fee strategies was quickly abandoned (pretty much instantly), because it seemed rather unfair that the "online" client got cheaper fees than someone up the road using desktop software.  (It also seemed ludicrious to say "if you go online and do everything by email/post/phone/whatever, it will be cheaper than if you just drop your stuff round with a backup file).  Also, our fees are probably at the lower end of the spectrum as it is, whether online or not.

Our clients (who are a lovely mix) use a variety of software both online and desktop (plus the odd shoebox/carrier bag or spreadsheet) and not all our geographically distant clients are using online software.

Neither have we pushed any of our clients onto online software.  Apart from the fact that personally, I'm rubbish at sales, if the software - whether it be online or desktop - is any good, it will speak for itself.

At the start, I did the SEO myself and managed to get to the first page in google for quite a few accountant-type search terms, but in recent years, that has slipped (as has the google rankings).  We are still gently growing, though.

Louise

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By Maslins
01st Nov 2012 16:02

For a while we had two separate websites (maslins.co.uk and maslinsonline.co.uk) aiming at different client types...but we made a decision to focus very much on the online stuff, so now just one website which the other domain forwards to.

The two websites caused a bit of confusion (phone call "I saw your website", "which one", "eh?").

Whatever floats your boat really, we tried a few different things, bits that didn't work well we cut down on, whilst actively pursuing the bit that did go well.

I do have concerns along the "all eggs in one basket" lines...but made a business decision to pursue this, keeping in the back of my mind that it won't be around forever.

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By zarathustra
01st Nov 2012 19:47

different fees
The reason why I thought different fee levels were appropriate was not to do with online software but if clients don't want face to face meetings it definitely saves time.

If I was going to bother with a separate website I think I would brand it completely differently with a separate trading name.

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