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Bookkeepers have been urged to embrace being “technology experts” to remain competitive as transactional processing gets increasingly automated.
‘Experts in technology’: Bookkeepers urged to adapt
30 May 2019
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4 minute read
Speaking to The Bookkeeper, Australian Accounting Awards 2019 Bookkeeper of the Year Martine Hoosen said that, with technology increasingly automating traditional transactional processing work, there is a need for bookkeepers to lean more towards advisory work.
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“There are so many add-ons and platforms that are out there to help small business automate transactional processing and provide real-time data and you’ve got some bookkeepers who are embracing that and being real experts in technology, but there are a lot out there who are not and it’s an issue for them,” said Ms Hoosen, managing director at Bookwiz Bookkeeping.
“With the automation around transactional processing, it can lead to a reduction in revenue for some firms if they are not getting on board with it.
“We’ve moved to fixed fee pricing models and we’ve implemented the provision of advisory services because five, six years ago, transactional processing took up a huge amount of time and there was a lot of revenue that was raised for bookkeepers but technology replaced a lot of that.”
Ms Hoosen also believes the change is driven by a new breed of business owners who are increasingly looking for real-time data.
“We want to start providing advisory such as automatic payment solutions to help reduce debtor days, add-ons that give live feeds into accounting software to give real-time data, payroll automation to help with compliance, so really becoming an expert in technology and moving into that advisory space and packaging it into a value price fixed fee package,” she said.
“It’s a lot to stay on top of all the time — there’s a constant stream of add-ons and platforms and it’s constant learning and it can be pretty daunting to constantly upskill to stay progressive and relevant, but any bookkeeper who is not getting on board with it is doing a disservice to their clients.”
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