The evolution of accounting services – are you ready?

This is the dilemma that many accountancy firms are facing.

Choices need to be made to ensure that firms survive in a rapidly changing industry.

Of particular concern is how quickly low-end tax compliance work is moving from being reasonably profitable and sliding into making a reduced contribution.

So the question on many accountants and bookkeepers minds is: “Can we move from compliance dominance to external CFO and virtual CFO service delivery?”

This is the dawn of the evolution of accounting services!

40 years ago, the Financial Management Research Centre (FMRC) was founded at the University of New England. The objectives were clear:

• To gain a greater understanding of the SME market

• To encourage accountants to provide a broader range of commercial services

• To have an academic involvement in how accounting services could be improved for the benefit of SME clients.

A joint founder of FMRC was Andrew Geddes, who has continually advocated a broader range of service offerings for accountants to deliver to SME clients.

The vision of FMRC is now being aided by technology that was only being discussed in academic circles about 40 years ago. But this now enables accounting firms to be able to deliver a wide range of “business related services”, to assist SMEs to improve the operations of their business because of the availability of real-time data to assist them in decision-making. Not 12 months later, but in real time!

The evolution of accounting services is a challenge to accountants to become “creators of the future” rather than “historians of past events”; to assist SMEs to understand what the results will be of decisions being made today in the future.

This means that the system needs to be geared to supplying daily, weekly, monthly financial data that is then interpreted by accountants, which will assist the SMEs’ leadership team to confidently lead their business.

This is the challenge.

You are invited to join us on this journey. ESS BIZ TOOLS is presenting a special webinar on “Scaling Up Services”, incorporating the strategies outlined by Andrew Geddes. This webinar will be held on Wednesday 11 October at 11am AEST (12pm AEDT). Click here to register to attend. CPD point eligibility for CPA Australia members (must attend the duration of the webinar).