Never Before As Important To Help Your Clients Measure Their Results" - Paul Barnaby

Greetings – we hope that you are well and looking after yourself as well as your clients.

Last Friday we conducted another of our “COVID-19 Survival Panel” webinars with keynote speakers Paul Barnaby, a Predictive Accounting Consultant, Australasian representative of Plan Guru and Amanda Gascoigne an Accounting Consultant who assists her accountant clients to achieve a better balance in their lives thus producing a win-win situation.

Paul Barnaby, opened his presentation with the statement “Never before as important to help your clients measure their results”!

• He explained that predictive accounting was projecting what your client’s business will look like in the future. It is a combination of the budgeting, cashflow and projected balance sheet functions to give business people an accurate picture as to what their business will look like in 1, 2 or 3 years' time.
• “It’s your job, as an accountant, to operate like the big corporates do and prepare three-way forecasts to assist your client to be able to visualise what the future might look like if they can implement the business planning strategies for their business".
• Paul recommended that accountants should be using a purpose-built tool to prepare the forecasts and not utilising a product like Excel, which he indicated was never designed for budgeting.
• Paul is the Australasian representative for Plan Guru, a company which produces a 3 in 1 budget process tool.
• The Plan Guru tool can help an “accountant look like a superstar” because of the assistance you can give your client to plan their future and then compare their actual results against the forecasts so that lessons can be learnt relative to the need to develop variable strategies to succeed in the marketplace.

“I’m passionate about practice owners earning what they are worth” said Amanda Gascoigne in her webinar presentation.

"Accountants need to plan their activities so that they can have a business/life balance" Amanda said.

Amanda’s presentation covered the following key points:

• Communicating with clients.
• One of the things that is really important and it has proved to be extremely important over the last couple of weeks is actually checking in with the clients that you have concerns about by telephone or video.
• Consider the ways that you can communicate with your clients – newsletters – SMS – social media – videos and then implement strategies to inform your clients and keep them up-to-date with the various initiatives instigated by the Australian, State and Territory governments.
• Amanda cautioned accountants from giving too much information away for free. Accountants spend a lot of time and effort in developing information and, while some items should be given to clients as promotional material, accountants need to be earning fees to pay for the firm’s overhead expenses and to survive in business.
• Many firms have found that it has been necessary to take the big step to embrace and adopt new technologies so that working from home can be undertaken in an efficient manner.
• It is also necessary to manage your workflow because there is still all of the work that normally has to be completed relative to taxation returns at this time of the year and this year we have the added drama of COVID-19 which is involved communicating with clients about the various programs that the government has introduced and then assisting clients to be ready to get back into full business operations as soon as the restrictions are lifted by the government.

You can link to the “COVID-19 Survival Panel” webinar featuring the presentations made by Paul Barnaby and Amanda Gascoigne by clicking here.

The government has also released the seven tests that will comprise the alternative tests for the determination of eligibility for the JobKeeper registration.  Details are included within the “Want To Know More”.

The next “COVID-19 Survival Panel” features:

• Ashley Evans, Partner AAA+ Financial Solutions, Townsville – North Queensland’s premier finance, mortgage broker and home loan specialists who will utilise his experience as a former bank manager to give you some insights into dealing with banks and other financial organisations on behalf of your clients.
• Priscilla Bea Smith, Partner of Cloud Nine Associates Pty Ltd – will discuss staff development strategies that you could implement to ensure that your firm is able to meet the challenges of the marketplace, once this crisis is over.

You can register for this complimentary webinar to be presented on Friday, 1st May 2020 at 12-noon AEST by clicking here.

I'd like to invite you to visit the ESS BIZTOOLS' website - Survival in Difficult Times - Learn More where you will be able to view a full summary of the Survival In Difficult Times Product Package, including the specific material that we have produced relative to COVID-19 coronavirus.

If you have any questions on any aspects of the assistance that ESS BIZTOOLS' products can provide for you to use to assist your clients to navigate through the “COVID-19 survival challenges”, please don't hesitate to contact us:

• Telephone 1800 232 088

We have prepared a more detailed summary of the key issues relative to the presentations by Paul Barnaby and Amanda Gascoigne in the “Want To Know More”.  Please click on the image below.

Stay safe!  If you have a friend or colleague who you think might find this article interesting, please feel free to pass it on to them.

Have a great day!