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"Gone are the 70’s and 80’s heydays where firms could charge what they wanted for a set of historic accounts"
Not when I was there.......
I can’t say first hand as I wasn’t born then but happy to share some of the stories I’ve been told, from reliable sources, if you’d like to hear them :)
No, I am going to continue to be a pretend one.
The catch is most of my clients do not really want to examine the numbers, they will stay polite for a little but then their eyes glaze over and one can see the life draining from them.
The actual business advice they want is things like understanding use classes for premises, small rates relief, evaluation of marketing approaches, suggestions who to go to for a,b,c and d, do you know a bank manager who might be interested in y, a little hand holding re business insurance, a bit of input re the awkward member of staff they have, which utility companies are not total ***** etc etc
I have one set of clients where we once a year do a close out meeting and I then produce a bottle of malt and we just have a natter about plans, the next year etc as the level drops; that is true value added.
Thanks for sharing DJKL.
There certainly are different levels of support for different clients priorities.
I would say, from my experience working with 100s of business owners, the majority of clients don’t want to examine the numbers but most want to know how to grow and improve their business. Which, as we know as accountants, comes back to making fact based decisions using the numbers (historic and predictive).
The two part article series is explaining how as accountants we can help our business owner clients more by doing what we’re good at, understanding and interpreting numbers.
I’m sure you use the numbers to make the best suggestion for your clients when you’re advising your clients about the marketing approach or the best project a, b, c or d, as you mentioned. So you are a ‘real’ adviser already :)
Accountants often become the intelligent business friend to the business owner as well and get asked the other questions you mentioned, which, depending on how one feels about it, can be a bless or a curse.
"... the majority of clients don’t want to examine the numbers but most want to know how to grow and improve their business..."
Or put it another way, they don't want to pay you to examine the numbers for them but they will pay if you help them grow their business.
In all honesty with, for example one set of my clients
(group of small retail business entities-one extended family with multiple shops), the numbers, frankly, do not add that much.
The people running these entities are traders, I cannot waste their time discussing margins, they already know what they can charge from the market, the competition; frankly it is naive to think an external accountant can really tell them anything meaningful re this.
Similar re increasing sales, this is down to footfall , enquiry conversion and given they cater to tourists, the relative cost of Sterling. (That is Mark Carney's job, not mine)
Re purchases and suppliers, well they already negotiate with suppliers, buy in bulk where they can, drag discounts for early settlement from some, do area exclusive deals with others and sort a few neat sale or return deals (which can be interesting at year end), frankly they negotiate miles ahead of most accountants so, re the numbers, what am I trying to tell them that they do not already know?
Now, I am not totally naive re retail, I spent a few years in the early 1990s as FD of a company with 10 shops and 50 staff, but in all honesty it is often not the numbers that drive these enterprises forward, maybe, further up the food chain, but for my clients number analysis, beyond that needed for my being happy to sign off the accounts, tends to add little.
We all spent time in training learning ratios but in most cases, down the bottom of the food chain, little analysis is needed, the business problems tend to leap out and wave at us without bothering to look at ROCE or liquidity ratios etc.
I suspect the issue is my clients and their size, but down here, just above the contractors but below the family entities where they each have a job title, analytical review etc has limited application.
The catch is the vast majority of my customers would prefer truly not to inspect the numbers, they will remain well mannered for a little however then their gaze goes out into the distance Kerala tours and one can see the life depleting from them.
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