Go Beyond Compliance: Transform Reports Into Revenue
Accountants Minute 414
As client expectations continue to rise, the accounting and bookkeeping profession is experiencing a shift – from historical compliance to forward-looking, value-driven advisory.
The question is: Is your firm ready?
At ESS BIZTOOLS, we’ve developed a suite of practical, easy-to-implement tools designed specifically for accountants, bookkeepers, and business advisors who want to deliver more value, more often. If you're ready to go beyond the tax return, here’s how you can utilise some of our key products to enhance your advisory offerings and build stronger, more profitable client relationships.
Business Health Checks – Start the Conversation
Our Business Health Check templates provide a structured framework to review your SME client’s key financial ratios, operational performance, and risk indicators.
✅ Introduce the health check as part of your monthly or quarterly review process.
✅ Use the structured questionnaire to assess performance across liquidity, solvency, profitability, efficiency, and growth metrics.
✅ Highlight red flags and improvement opportunities to initiate advisory discussions – such as restructuring debt, improving cash flow, or reviewing pricing strategies.
✅ Package it into a Business Review Session for regular clients or offer it as a value-add to new prospects.
Business Evaluation Workshops – Practical Insights, Real Outcomes
The Business Evaluation Workshop is a structured one-on-one advisory process that gives SME clients a deeper understanding of their business – and a clear roadmap for improvement. These workshops are designed to uncover critical issues, align strategy and set priorities that lead to measurable outcomes.
Each Business Evaluation Workshop is delivered in a personal one-on-one format, allowing for tailored insights and client-specific strategies. The comprehensive review includes:
✅ Financial Review: Analyse profitability, key ratios, and financial performance drivers.
✅ Cashflow Review: Identify cashflow challenges and opportunities to improve liquidity.
✅ Market and Customer Review: Examine customer segments, market positioning, and competitive advantages.
✅ Performance Analysis: Assess KPIs and benchmarks to evaluate business health.
✅ Business Operations Review: Review systems, processes, team capability, and resource utilisation.
Plus, our subscribers receive resources to utilise with their SME clients such as:
✅ Survival in Difficult Times SME Workbook: a practical guide to navigating uncertainty.
✅ Business Evaluation for SMEs: an in-depth analysis tailored to the client’s current situation.
✅ How Well Do You Know Your Business? Checklist: a self-assessment tool to spark discussion and discovery.
Work program tools include:
✅ Work Programme/Budget/Quotation Form: outlines the scope and investment for the engagement.
✅ Work Programme Timetable: sets expectations and timelines for deliverables.
✅ Proposal Document: formalises your recommendations and next steps.
✅ Assignment Control Form: ensures tasks and responsibilities are clearly assigned.
✅ Report – Business Evaluation Workshop: a detailed summary of findings and insights.
✅ Action Plan: a step-by-step roadmap developed with the client to implement improvements.
Offer Business Evaluation Workshops as a standalone advisory service or bundle them into a broader strategy or growth packages. They’re ideal for clients experiencing change, facing challenges, or looking to grow. Use the workshop outcomes to deepen your advisory relationship, build recurring engagements, and demonstrate your firm’s value far beyond compliance.
52-Week Business Enhancement System – Become Your Client’s Virtual CFO
This tool provides a structured, week-by-week system for delivering strategic and financial advisory services. It includes daily, weekly, and monthly templates to track KPIs, cash flow, sales trends, and action items.
✅ Set up a standing weekly meeting (30–60 minutes) with the client’s leadership team.
✅ Use daily sales data and weekly performance/profitability reports and cash flow reports to guide immediate decisions.
✅ Review monthly performance using pre-built reporting templates and compare outcomes to targets.
✅ Help your client stay accountable with rolling action plans and regular benchmarking check-ins.
✅ Position your firm as their “Virtual CFO” and charge accordingly with monthly retainer-based pricing.
Business Benchmarking – Spot Trends Before They Become Problems
Our benchmarking guidelines offer suggestions of the key metrics (gross profit, net profit, expenses, wages, inventory turnover, etc) for your clients that can be compared against national and industry averages.
✅ Integrate discussions on benchmarking analysis into monthly or quarterly reviews.
✅ Use the analysis reports to clearly show where the business is underperforming – or outperforming – its peers.
✅ Identify specific areas (eg wages too high, inventory turning too slowly) and develop tailored strategies to correct them.
✅ Position the benchmarking analysis as an early warning system for financial stress or as a validation tool for funding applications.
Turn Tools Into Transformation
These tools are more than just templates – they’re the foundation for a transformation in the way you work with SME clients.
They help you ask better questions.
They allow you to deliver insights backed by data.
They enable you to offer solutions that create lasting change.
With ESS BIZTOOLS, you don’t need to spend hundreds of hours developing systems – we’ve done the heavy lifting so you can get started right away.
Ready to Deliver Advisory Services That Truly Make a Difference?
Whether you're just starting to offer advisory or looking to scale up, these tools can help you confidently move from compliance to a trusted advisor role – and charge for the value you deliver.
EXPLORE ESS BIZTOOLS AND SUBSCRIBE HERE
Visit our website – www.essbiztools.com.au – to discover the detailed overview of the services provided by ESS BIZTOOLS. You are also welcome to contact us on 0418 190 181 or email .
Free Webinar by ESS BIZTOOLS
Real-Time Results: Turning Reports into Action
📅 Thursday 17 July 2025
🕚 11:00 AM AEST
💻 Live and Complimentary
In this webinar, you’ll learn how to deliver fast, insightful financial interpretations using business health checks, valuations, performance metrics, and benchmarking tools.
Discover how to turn daily, weekly, and monthly data into actionable advice that helps SME clients improve profitability, spot issues early, and stay on track for long-term growth. If you're ready to offer more than compliance, this is your chance to lead with insight.
Help your clients make smarter decisions – faster.
ESS BIZTOOLS Podcast
In this episode of Accountants Minute Podcast, Peter Towers, Founder and Managing Director of ESS BIZTOOLS, explores how accountants, bookkeepers and business advisors can offer powerful value to SME clients through capital raising advisory services.
Peter explains the immense opportunity in helping SMEs raise funds through Crowd-Sourced Funding (CSF) Equity Raising and Early-Stage Innovation Company (ESIC) status. These services not only help clients grow without debt but also open new revenue channels for your firm – such as virtual CFO roles and strategic advisory board positions.
You’ll gain insight into:
✅ How to guide clients through the CSF and ESIC processes
✅ Eligibility rules, documentation requirements, and ATO/ASIC compliance
✅ Why most CSF applications are rejected – and how to help your clients avoid that fate
✅ How your firm can differentiate and grow with these services
CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO OUR PODCAST
Listen to more Accountants Minute Podcast episodes here
Want to know more?
Visit www.essbiztools.com.au.
If you would like to have a discussion about how this concept of virtual CFO services can be supplied by Australian accounting firms please ring our Managing Director, Peter Towers, on 0418 190 181 and we will arrange a complimentary 45-minute Zoom meeting to discuss your firm’s position and to give you our advice.
We believe that this is the blueprint for the delivery of an enhanced range of services by Australian Accounting and Bookkeeping firms to assist SME businesses to add value to their businesses and to assist accountants and bookkeepers not only to attract but to retain outstanding talent who want to be involved in the delivery of “real accounting services”.
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