Stephen Edwards is a business coach, accountant and consultant for accounting practices. Having started Cheltenham Tax Accountants from scratch in 2013 it now runs almost on auto-pilot leaving him with time to work on advisory related services for clients in the form of business coaching and also specialising with business automation and tech. Stephen works with other accounting practices to help them automate parts of their business and free the practice owner from the 'daily grind'.
I'm sure extra tax knowledge will help you. I suppose what I'm saying is that CTA is very specialist and often people that do CTA work purely in tax (in the tax dep of a larger firm). So it will be beneficial but a lot of it will seem academic unless you work in high end tax day to day. Not saying that some of it won't be beneficial to you as I'm sure it will.
ATT usually more than covers what a small practice owner needs in my experience.
Hi FT. The only thing I would say is that we as the business owner can always improve our own knowledge. If you want a business where you are not the one who has to be involved day to day as much which I believe is the case then you don't necessarily have to be the best tax brain in your business.
Yes you need to know your stuff but if others are going to eventually be acting as a client manager which is probably the only way you can be hands off then you will eventually require less expert tax knowledge.
The goal would be to work on running the business itself.
Tom on here once said in a comment 'always hire people more intelligent than you' and I think he has a good point if we are to be less hands on as our businesses grow.
The penny dropped with me recently re trimming the fat by cutting/increasing fees with certain clients.
It was always the plan to grade my clients in year 2/3 but never got round to it (now year 4). My mentality has changed from say yes to everyone to putting up fees by 25% minimum and trying to be more in control of the client relationship.
This along with being part of the GoProposal facebook group (sharing ideas with like minded accountants) and also looking too get 80% of suitable businesses onto Xero this year should completely transform us. I also spend a lot more time on processes, Glide has been great for this as it is so flexible (although lacking in the CRM side).
We now have bigger premises, the right amount of staff and a great sub-contractor so can look positively to 2018.
I’d say you need high value clients or (more) staff to achieve that particularly if you genuinely mean take home . Not impossible but according to AVN the average gross (not take home) profit is around 68k with its members
Good read. I'm actually in a very similar place in terms of being far more fussy with what type of client we take on. I've been using goproposal (GP) to have more consistent (and higher) fees which has reduced the new client take up but that's what I'm looking for. Quality over quantity.
I want to use GP to provide a fee review for all existing clients and flush out the PITA clients that don't want to pay the increase.
I can also relate to the tax comments. I have not been spending as much time as I would like upping my game due to time constraints with practice growth. I have a sound tax knowledge but am more interested in additional added value tax areas.
My answers
I access my onedrive files on my Mac just as easy as the PC’s in the office , don’t see any difference
Always enjoy your blogs FT as you are so honest. Keep it going :)
I can’t recommend goproposal enough , the Facebook group is worth it alone
How experienced is Q? I always thought she was fairly junior but maybe I'm not reading properly!
Feels so good being able to delegate to the right people.
Hi FT,
I'm sure extra tax knowledge will help you. I suppose what I'm saying is that CTA is very specialist and often people that do CTA work purely in tax (in the tax dep of a larger firm). So it will be beneficial but a lot of it will seem academic unless you work in high end tax day to day. Not saying that some of it won't be beneficial to you as I'm sure it will.
ATT usually more than covers what a small practice owner needs in my experience.
Good luck though.
Hi FT. The only thing I would say is that we as the business owner can always improve our own knowledge. If you want a business where you are not the one who has to be involved day to day as much which I believe is the case then you don't necessarily have to be the best tax brain in your business.
Yes you need to know your stuff but if others are going to eventually be acting as a client manager which is probably the only way you can be hands off then you will eventually require less expert tax knowledge.
The goal would be to work on running the business itself.
Tom on here once said in a comment 'always hire people more intelligent than you' and I think he has a good point if we are to be less hands on as our businesses grow.
The penny dropped with me recently re trimming the fat by cutting/increasing fees with certain clients.
It was always the plan to grade my clients in year 2/3 but never got round to it (now year 4). My mentality has changed from say yes to everyone to putting up fees by 25% minimum and trying to be more in control of the client relationship.
This along with being part of the GoProposal facebook group (sharing ideas with like minded accountants) and also looking too get 80% of suitable businesses onto Xero this year should completely transform us. I also spend a lot more time on processes, Glide has been great for this as it is so flexible (although lacking in the CRM side).
We now have bigger premises, the right amount of staff and a great sub-contractor so can look positively to 2018.
I’d say you need high value clients or (more) staff to achieve that particularly if you genuinely mean take home . Not impossible but according to AVN the average gross (not take home) profit is around 68k with its members
We use slack to reduce internal email. I couldn’t praise it enough, it’s essential in our practice now .
Good read. I'm actually in a very similar place in terms of being far more fussy with what type of client we take on. I've been using goproposal (GP) to have more consistent (and higher) fees which has reduced the new client take up but that's what I'm looking for. Quality over quantity.
I want to use GP to provide a fee review for all existing clients and flush out the PITA clients that don't want to pay the increase.
I can also relate to the tax comments. I have not been spending as much time as I would like upping my game due to time constraints with practice growth. I have a sound tax knowledge but am more interested in additional added value tax areas.