Would practice accountants benefit from an informal partnering relationship with clients rather than just a transactional relationship i.e ' as needed approach

Would practice accountants benefit from an...

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Hi folks

I am conducting a survey on the evaluation of the relationship between small businesses and practice accountants. The aim of the study is to explore the benefits that both parties could gain by changing the nature of their relationship from a transaction based to a partnering relationship .

I would greatly appreciate it if you are able to please complete a questionnaire using the link below . The estimated time to complete the survey is about 5-7 minutes.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/Survey-Accountants

All the data that you provide will be anonymous and confidential.

If you have any questions or require any further information please feel free to contact me 

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Thanks

Simba

Replies (8)

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By pauld
07th Jun 2014 01:52

Beam me up Scotty

.

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Stepurhan
By stepurhan
07th Jun 2014 07:27

Why are you doing it?

Market research? Student thesis?

Your question is confusing, but I think that is because you have typed "transnational" when you meant "transactional". Assuming I am correct then the answer to the question is "What makes you think that they don't?".

Thanks (1)
Replying to Jdopus:
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By Simba
07th Jun 2014 16:12

Thank you , I have corrected the typo. This is for a Student thesis  . Based on previous studies and responses so far  on a questionnaire that  I sent to small businesses , some small businesses feel their accountants do not understand their businesses and therefore key business support needs are not been satisfied. Some of the questions that the survey is trying to answer are  (1) what proportion of services provided by accountants is non regulatory & compliance reporting services ?  (2) Are the accountants marketing business support services such as tax efficiency planning, competitor analysis, pricing  etc well enough to small business (3) What are the factors limiting some client  relationships to only transactional .

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By andy.partridge
07th Jun 2014 10:20

False premise

Anyway, Q3. Is your business turnover less than £6.5m?

Yes, it is. Hope that helps you.

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By andy.partridge
07th Jun 2014 16:41

Cutting through this

Accountants are generally keen to be proactive and provide the non-compliance services. Some darling clients are reluctant to pay for them either because a) they do not understand the concepts and so would not be able to control the process and measure success themselves and b) they believe that they should have the service, and free as of right, because they have paid a fee for the compliance work.

It can dampen the enthusiasm.

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By ShirleyM
07th Jun 2014 17:13

I agree with Andy

Clients may say they want these extra services, but few are willing to pay for them, and of those that do, few of them actually appreciate it and come up with every excuse under the sun not to follow our advice.

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By User deleted
07th Jun 2014 17:28

Real life

In an ideal world clients would appreciate everything we do and would pay us for the benefits they receive. In reality they only want to pay the bare minimum to meet their statutory needs. 

They ask us to quote for x and we do. We offer y and z for additional fees. They decline. We do x. We charge the agreed amount. They then say 'why didn't you provide y?' 'You didn't want y' we reply. 'But I'm paying you' 'No. You're paying us for x, which we've done' and so on. 

You can offer as many services as you want but at the end of the day most clients won't part with the money for them. And since my experience of relationships with partners is that they cost me money, stress me out and end in grief, I'm damned if I'm going to have a partnering relationship with a client :)

Thanks (1)
Stepurhan
By stepurhan
07th Jun 2014 22:30

Take another try

As others have indicated, you are starting from a flawed premise. You have made a false assumption about accountants, that they aren't willing to offer other services. As you have discovered, starting out with this premise is something that accountants find irritating. I suggest you go back and start over taking the above comments on board. I have a few other observatons about the survey itself.

For an anonymised study, you are asking for a lot of personal information (turnover, number of employees, etc). Anyone who answers all your questions is likely to be identifiable from the resulting data. Think about what you really need to know and restrict the personal data to that.

Cut out the buzz-speak and use clear English. Willingness to engage in a more partnering relationship (question 10) and creativity (question 11) are both open to wide interpretation, which will render your results meaningless. As for question 13, a handful of these are standard techniques (SWOT, Bench marking) but you then go on to throw in nonsensical sounding phrases (Use of utilization statistics?) and things accountants should avoid getting directly involved in (conflict resolution).

Incidentally, it is possible to click all five boxes on every line of question 13. You probably don't want that.

Thanks (3)