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Accountants are in the business of helping people. They, and the accounting firms they work in, generally put clients at the centre of everything they do.
Automated business systems are freeing up accountants to do what counts
19 August 2021
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5 minute read
Accountants are in the business of helping people. They, and the accounting firms they work in, generally put clients at the centre of everything they do.
When COVID-19 struck, businesses scrambled to sign up to various government assistance programs. Many accountants worked well into the night to help clients who had called them in distress about what was happening to their businesses.
Because accounting firms tend to be so time poor, automation – and the time and effort required to research the right solutions for their businesses – hasn’t always been at the top of their to-do list.
The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), the global body for professional accountants, conducted a worldwide survey of 4264 accountancy and finance professionals, finding “lack of time” was the biggest challenge – at 52 per cent – they faced in developing their digital skills.
That survey also asked respondents: “In what areas do you think you may need to develop your digital skills to perform your role in the next three-to-five years?” The most popular was responses was data analytics, at 72 per cent. It was followed by spreadsheeting, at 54 per cent; project management, at 43 per cent; and digital transformation/strategy, at 40 per cent.
Fortunately, one of the very few good things to come out of COVID-19 has been the acceleration of digital adoption across the entire economy. There are many solutions available to accountants who want to automate processes that have traditionally been paper-based.
Getting started with automation
What does an automated accounting firm look like? It’s a practice in which technology takes care of as much as possible, freeing up accountants’ time to focus on client relationships.
It could involve an automated engagement letter, for example, for which the accountant can also charge the client, creating an additional revenue source for a task that may have previously only been an unchargeable 10-minute phone call.
David Boyar is chief executive at software provider changeGPS, which helps accounting firms automate with a series of apps.
“Very often a client will come to an accountant, their business is going well, and the accountant might say ‘it’s probably time to set up a company, and maybe that company’s shareholder should be a family trust’,” says Boyar. “But too many accountants give the advice away for free over a quick phone call.”
Services such as Boyar’s changeGPS automate that advice and send it out to the client, inclusive of all the necessary legal and regulatory information.
“You can tell your clients you can offer them this, give them a physical report and then you can quantify that advice, because it’s a professional report it’s easy to charge for,” says Boyar.
When automating processes, Boyar says accounting practices need to think about what the end-to-end experience will look like for the client and focus on how to make that as easy and seamless as possible. If that flows well, then the accountant’s life will be made easier as well.
This approach is backed up by ACCA’s survey of accounting and finance professionals, which found that 60 per cent of respondents thought it was extremely important to understand how their clients used technology.
Digital core
The cloud has made many of these new applications for accountants possible. It also facilitates interaction between different applications, which means firms can create their own ‘tech stacks’ of different services that work for them.
Many of these cloud-based applications address one or two of a business’s needs. For example, accounting businesses may have different applications for communications, HR and payroll, customer relationship management, management reporting, document signing and document management. A firm might prefer one system over another in each of these areas but all systems need to be able to feed into a ‘digital core’ and, potentially, share data.
“Technology provides a more integrated environment where data can be shared between applications and the data repositories that facilitate them can in turn be interrogated to facilitate analyses and insights,” ACCA said in its 2020 report, “The digital accountant: Digital skills in a transformed world”.
Automating systems and processes within an accounting firm isn’t therefore just about speeding up systems and freeing up accountants’ time or offering financial benefits. Done well, automation improves data collection and the examination of that data.
The firms that succeed in this digital world will be those that not only automate, but also use the data collected through the automation process to add value to their businesses and clients.
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