Often times I see the same fear in an
Most small businesses are looking to their accountants to provide not only bookkeeping and
From talking with thousands of small businesses and also working closely with accountants, I have realized that often times there is a big disconnect between what small business think they are getting from their accountant, and what their accountant is actually offering. This is not because their accountant misleads them – it’s because the typical small business owner is not comfortable with finance and
The Sleeter Group survey confirms this tenuous relationship, as it found that the number 1 reason small businesses often switch accounting firms is because they are looking for more proactive financial advice. They want their accountants to guide them in the ways a
So how do you, as an accountant, offer more proactive, strategic services to your small business clients, when you are not their CFO, and don’t have time to know their business the way they know their business?
Here are 5 simple steps to help you offer strategic financial advising services:
- Choose 3-5 financial key performance indicators as a starting point for your clients. They want you to give them strategic advice, so help them by giving them the KPI’s. They are often too overwhelmed by running their businesses and will appreciate the strategic direction.
- Give your clients visual reports regularly that they can easily understand. Help them by presenting the same information in simple, visual charts and graphs.
- Take advantage of industry benchmarks to compare against the KPI’s you are helping your clients track. These comparisons will help you very quickly identify areas where your client is doing better – or worse than their peers, giving you some easy quick “wins” with your strategic advising services.
- Help your clients put together a budget and forecast. Not only will this give them goals to try and achieve through the next 12-24 months, but it will also force your client to actually communicate to you the assumptions they have about their business, giving you chance to quickly point out missed assumptions when you compare their budget and forecast to actual results. How many times have you hear a small business owner tell you that they collect payments every 30 days, when actually their AR days are out at 60 0r 90 days? They assume that their AR days are 30 because that is what it says on their invoices.
- Take advantage of SaaS tools that will pull accounting data automatically (and securely from anywhere) into a small business dashboard for your client. This way you won’t spend as much time exporting data from accounting solutions to
Excel , and massaging the data. There are solutions that are easy to use, accessible from anywhere and will automate the reporting.
For accountants, it can be challenging to assert your relevance year-round, especially when needs can vary drastically from one client to the next. But if you follow these 5 tips, you’ll surely impress your clients and secure their business for the long haul.