Hi all,
I'm new to Aweb ... we are a small-ish sole practitioner practice in the North West, started 5 years ago, £400kish gross fees, and 6 staff, including myself & 1 CTA. We have 2x AAT trainees, and 2x ACCA trainees.
As more and more basic work is completed by clients, I'm finding it more difficult to keep the staff busy - the AATs in particular - and I'm wondering if I've got our staffing wrong in terms of experience. The AATs deal with admin (Engagement Letters, post, Annual Returns, creating Excel templates, and basic accounts work). But as clients increasingly provide better information, the involvement of the junior is becoming less of a requirement.
What do other firms around our size have as a staff mix? Thanks for any thoughts you may have ...
Replies (19)
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In my last employment we had a couple of AAT's. They were very capable and did lots of accounts prep and taxation.
I would expect that if that is all you are giving them to do, they will be looking for a more satisfying role sooner rather than later.
Your staff are only as good as the effort you put in to training them.
Sometimes the more junior staff have to do all the work while the owner stays at home. But it's not an idea I'd recommend as the staff are likely to set up on their own and take all the clients.
When I worked in practice (many moons ago) they took a new (ACCA) trainee on each year and everyone moved up a step so you'd automatically progress onto bigger and better things and not feel the need to leave so quickly. Obviously there has to be movement at the top but at that point they'd be close to qualifying (or occasionally qualified) so it made sense that they'd go on to find more and different experience.
I'd have thought that getting juniors onto 'proper' work as soon as possible would be better for them and you. And either looking to increase the number of clients or reduce the number of trainees.
Aspiring accountants are not going to want to do basic admin for long. The job description you describe sounds very 'old-school', almost like a rite of passage or public school [***]. I exaggerate, but you get the point.
If you are only providing something that can be learned in moments you will be building frustration if you don't move them on to more challenging tasks.
Use the opportunity to develop your trainees and your business
Treat each of your staff individually according to their strengths and ambitions (but allocate interesting work fairly if a couple are similar). You may be surprised at what some of your junior staff are capable of, given the opportunity and encouragement. Are your AAT students the type who will just want to work steadily at a certain level, or are they likely to want to go on to ACCA after AAT?
Let the AAT juniors, if they are bright, take on more of the work the ACCA students have been doing - the ACCA students can train them as long as you keep an overview (training others is also a good way to cement their own knowledge.) Let the ACCA students take on more of your own work - especially any bits you find a chore but they wil find new and interesting. Encourage everyone to think about their procedures, and if they see room for improvement, suggest this to you. Listen to their ideas, explain if there are any reasons they are not aware of why they might not work, but if they seem genuinely good let them develop them in practice.
Then that will free you to consider how you can develop your business, moving beyond compliance work to the sort of business development for your clients that they will be happy to pay for because of the improvement it will bring to their own profits. Or helping them to stay abreast of modern developments. So they will want to use you rather than a consultant. Or being able to take on new kinds of business yourself.
You can develop expertise in your own interests in the modern world, whether it is in the use of social media for business development, or in worldwide and multi-currency trading (which these days is even relevant to a micro-business selling knitting patterns from a laptop), or in getting to know a number of software packages so you recommend the most appropriate to each client, as well as help them make the most of it ...... whatever is your interest (and perhaps also take advantage of any expertise any of your junior staff might develop.
When software took over from clerks adding up columns by hand or on comptometers (remember those?) it didn't mean there was suddenly nothing to do, but that suddenly more information was available to help people run their businesses more effectively.
Now there is another information explosion, and once again those who will gain the most from it will be those who look forward and take advantage of the opportunities it frees up.
£400k
Nobody else has asked, so I will.
How did you get to £400k in 5 years? Did you buy a block of fees?
No admin staff?
£400K GRF and no admin staff, but rely on AAT trainees to do the admin, answer the telephone, book appointments, etc?
Who does the organising of the workload, gets the clients bringing records in to schedule, raises invoices, gets the money in, and all the rest that a really good admin person could take in their stride, leaving the technical staff to get on with the fee paying tasks?
team
http://www.ttca.co.uk/team Thats what i do...
£400k in 5 years is easy....If you tried hard you could probably double it.
I would train them to be ACCAs and find more clients to keep em busy. You want them as bright and sharp as possible so they dont [***] anything up.
Mid tier wrong?
I'd have thought you might be better off with 1 x ACCA trainee for every 2 x AATs, plus an admin bod for all the filing etc. That would give both the AATs the opportunity to do more technical work.
Or how about the 2nd ACCA and the Admin bod both being part-time? We find part-timers invaluable and some are very flexible about adjusting their hours in busy times.
In hindsight...
Perhaps these were considerations you ought to have had when you were hiring?? I don't mean to be negative but this is harsh lesson in the importance of forward planning, having a clear vision for your business and implementing this through the recruitment process.