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Evolving your practice to meet client needs

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11th Sep 2015
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Your technical skills and ability to meet clients’ accounting needs are what drive your success. But expectations of what an accountant should offer have changed. Business owners need insightful, high-level business advice, coupled with a real feeling of comfort around their numbers and compliance issues. And that creates a golden opportunity for your practice.

In this 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.

But how do you change your existing services to meet this new client need?

Changing from compliance to business advice

You have the experience and technical skills to cover the basics like year-end and tax returns.

But you can offer so much more than just these basics.

Your financial knowledge and commercial experience are skills that clients will be willing to pay for. Use that experience and broaden your service offering to offer the kind of advice and guidance that your clients are clamouring for.

  • Help clients manage their cash flow more effectively
  • Offer regular management accounts to keep them on top of their numbers
  • Make sure clients are meeting all their compliance duties
  • Get them up to speed with changes like auto enrolment,  iXBRL and FRS102
  • Offer management advice that boosts performance and profits
  • Deliver long-term strategic financial advice that drives their business forward
  • Become a ‘virtual FD’ on your client’s board and be a valued member of their team

The benefits for your practice

Clients are willing to pay for trusted business advice. It gives them comfort on their numbers and compliance, and benefits their current and long-term financial health. But diversifying into in-depth advisory services also has many benefits for your practice too.

Offering insightful business advice:

  • Positions you as a trusted (and highly valued) adviser
  • Allows higher fees based on the value you’re adding
  • Builds stronger, more productive long-term relationships with clients
  • Broadens your team’s skillset, delivers new challenges and improves job satisfaction
  • Makes it easier to upsell services to clients, by taking a holistic view of their business
  • Strengthens your ability to grow the practice by appealing to modern clients

Think big!

By evolving your services, you can expand and grow your practice to meet the changing needs of your business clients.

What clients want from you has changed. They still want help with the basics of setting up effective bookkeeping and accounting. But they also want real confidence that they’re meeting their compliance requirements, coupled with the kind of business advice that will improve performance, boost profits and give them a sound footing for growth and expansion.

If you’re going to deliver these client needs, you’re going to need to change too. Having the right software is key to this evolution. Cloud accounting streamlines the basics of data-entry and compliance, and gives you flexible software tools to provide clients with in-depth numbers, reporting and forecasts.

By moving your practice to the cloud, you take the first important step in your evolution. Working online makes you more efficient, more cost-effective and far more flexible – giving you the information and agility you need to deliver the business advice that modern clients require.

So, think big and start planning a new way to offer services to your clients. You’re not just helping clients secure their financial future, you’re also investing in your own future growth.

We’ve got practical ideas for evolving your business services in our new guide Think big: a new perspective on accounting services’, produced in partnership with Sage.

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