Posted: 26 April 2022

Diversification: Why Accountants Shake In Their Boots

Accountant's Minute 320

How often do you take the time to step back and catch a high-level view of your accountancy practice and the way it’s performing?

Most of us are too busy doing the things we do day-to-day to meet our clients’ tax needs. We just don’t get the time to take that helicopter view as often as we’d like.

Yet, clearing that time to assess what’s profitable and what’s not, can give you some real insights into your business.

Let’s face it - it’s what we’d tell our clients to do, right?

We all know that it’s important to analyse what you’re doing in your business, so you’ll know if you’re just ‘spinning your wheels’ doing tasks that sometimes don’t even pay the rent. Those results can tell you if you could be using your time more efficiently to create far more value for the same effort.

If you’ve been reading the Accountants Minute lately, you’ll know that we’ve been talking about Business Advisory Services and other diversified activities, like Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising.

As accountants, we’re often a conservative bunch and even the word ‘diversification’ sounds more than a little scary. But, it doesn’t have to be.

Our team here at ESS BIZTOOLS has developed information systems to help even the smallest of accountancy firms seamlessly deliver a range of additional business services to their clients.

Best of all, those Business Advisory Services can be very profitable.

One of the best ways to start with diversification is for accountants to think about those business clients, who are currently paying them fees of up to $5,000 a year.

These are generally smaller SME clients, who may have the need for Business Advisory Services to improve the efficiency of their current operations and increase the value of their companies.

Then there are those clients you bill between $5,000 and $10,000.

There’s probably fewer of them.

However, if they can afford those fees, then chances are they’re already running successful businesses that could be made even better with your professional advice.

Some of these companies may be candidates for:

Virtual Chief Financial Officer services
Research and Development Grants; or
Export Market Development Grants

It’s highly likely that many of your SME business clients may not even be aware that these services exist or that you’re able to offer them.

Providing these Business Advisory Services may be worth an additional $2,000 - $6,000 per client to your practice.

This type of work also provides both you and your staff with far more interesting challenges than the day-to-day tax compliance that’s been your bread and butter.

Of course, this tax work will continue to roll on, but we all know that the return from compliance work is falling year by year and premium rates for this type of work are few and far between. Savvy accountants are now looking for ways to generate new revenue streams and it’s not as difficult to achieve, as you may think.

Our ESS BIZTOOLS Business Advisory Services package has been designed to fast-track the way your firm can diversify into the advisory space.

We’ve already done the backroom work and research for you.

All the necessary forms and documents needed to start offering additional services to your clients in a highly professional way have been created for you.

Of course, everything is available electronically and can be rebranded in Microsoft Word as part of your own workflow.

We’ve also developed a communications package to help you promote these new advisory services to your clients.

This offering includes our monthly newsletter, “Business Plus”, which contains proven, practical examples of Business Advisory Services in action. You can turn the newsletter around with your own company name and logo and send it out to your clients to get them thinking about the possibilities.

There are also 32 pre-prepared webinars available on a range of Business Advisory Services, that you can make use of to get your staff members up to speed on all the details.

If this has sparked your interest to the possibilities of offering new Business Advisory Services and what they can do for your practice, visit our website, www.essbiztools.com.au where you can review the information packages that we’re currently providing to accountants all over Australia.

ESS BIZTOOLS’ Podcast – “The State of the Accounting Industry in Australia” Peter Towers, Managing Director of ESS BIZTOOLS and Amanda Gascoigne, Director, Amanda Gascoigne Consulting. You can listen to the podcast recording by clicking here.

You can also view our free webinars:

Why not register for our upcoming webinar: “Predictive Accounting – Your Clients Need These Services.”

A complimentary copy of our article “Why Your Accounting Firm Must Begin to Offer Strategic Business Advisory Services to Clients” can be downloaded by clicking here.

ESS BIZTOOLS new SME client offering includes our “Innovative Product Packages” which have been developed to support accountants, like you, as you begin to diversify your operations.

View the details of our “PREPARATION PACKAGE” or our “STARTER PACKAGE.” Just click here or go to our website www.essbiztools.com.au

If you’d like to start using our Business Advisory Services packages, please complete our Subscription Form. You will find it on our website under “Subscribe – Sign Up Here”.

Then in “Grouped Product Packages” you will have two choices:

BUSINESS ADVISORY SERVICES STARTER PACKAGE
$197 per month including GST

BUSINESS ADVISORY SERVICES PREPARATION PACKAGE
$129 per month including GST

If you would like to know how your accountancy firm can introduce Business Advisory Services and start generating additional revenue, go to our homepage and click on “Free Strategy and Demonstration Session”.

If you’d prefer to discuss your options in person, that’s fine too.

Please call us on 1800 232 088 and arrange a no obligation Zoom meeting to talk over the strategies that could benefit for your firm.

Stay safe! Have a great week.