What small firms offer clients

The changing professional landscape means many small accounting firms will at some point in the near look to alter their service offering.

But what are accountants typically offering clients at the half-way point in 2015?

In our new content series, in association with Sage we’ll be looking at the great majority of the AccountingWEB audience - firms with typically one to two partners, but extending up seven partners - many of whom share their experiences with us via the Practice Excellence Awards.

For most accountants the working year is still very much dominated by compliance and building up to December year-end/January self assessment workload peak.

Key tasks boil down to incorporation, accounts, tax, and other services such as primarily payroll, and to a lesser extent vertical industry focus, auto enrolment advice, IT and corporate finance.

In addition, according to AccountingWEB member feedback, practitioners face pressure from clients on competitive fees, indicating that there is still a problem with the perceived value of accountancy services.

Client surveys clearly indicate they want more collaboration and contact, with growing demand for virtual FD and business consultancy services, but too much of a focus on compliance can hold some practitioners back from taking the leap.

According to Sage’s client survey findings business owners relied heavily on accountants for advice, but felt there was room for improvement in the service offered.

Around 28% said they would like to have more frequent contact, and 26% said their accountant should get to know their business better.

To help address some of these pain points, here are some key trends affecting the profession now:

1. Regulation

Regulatory change is often dressed up in the rhetoric of reducing administrative burdens for small business. However for many the anti-red tape movement is increasing complexity for small businesses while undermining the regular statutory work on which many firms depend.

2. Demographics

Clear generational divisions have emerged in recent year between the following groups:

• Baby Boomer accountants (born 1945-65) who want to retire, but can’t afford to
• Generation X (1965-1980) accountants who can’t or don’t want to meet senior partners’ equity expectations and look elsewhere for career development
• Digital native generations who have grown up in the instant-gratification internet era and haven’t got the patience to pursue the career paths their elders expect them to

Theses differing ambitions and expectations mean the kind of services being offered often fail to meet the changing needs of small businesses.

3. Technology

Mobile information, cloud computing and social networking have transformed the professional environment, creating client expectations for 24/7 service and instant answers.

These tools have also lowered the costs of entry for practitioners planning to set up on their own and have given accountants an infinite variety of ways to cater for clients’ needs.

Younger accountants like Alex Falcon-Huerta don’t shy away from technology. They’ve grown up with it and are picking up clients among their generational peers who feel the same way. “If a client has issues you’ve got to support them,” she says.

AccountingWEB’s Practice Excellence Programme gives an insight into what the UK’s leading firms are doing in their day-to-day services with clients.

Among the top-performing firms that where shortlisted in last year’s awards, services like Cloud bookkeeping, cloud-based business advice and virtual FD services helped to set them apart.

What’s becoming clear from entries this year, however, is that last year’s innovation is this year’s mainstream strategy. It appears practitioners are listening to their clients

To learn how to think big and evolve, download Sage’s new practice development guide now.