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accountants and bookkeepers

Client Advisory Services 101: What are they? Why should you offer them?

In their broadest definition, Client Advisory Services (CAS) are services where a practitioner “develops findings, conclusions, and recommendations for client consideration and decision making.”

Speak to those accountants offering CAS and you’ll find a more practical description, usually along the lines of applying an accountant's deep knowledge about a client’s business to develop insights and strategies to create opportunities that help them grow.

If your accountant’s brain is confused by the breadth of those definitions, you’re not alone! Within that ambiguity lies opportunity. As their most trusted advisor, you are uniquely positioned to have a positive influence on the trajectory of your clients’ businesses. Yes, transaction processing is needed. Yes, compliance services are required. Those are simply foundational pieces. Your clients want and need more.

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Grow Your Firm With Client Advisory Services

Fuel your firm’s growth, increase revenue, and support your clients with CAS.

What do CAS include?

CAS include a wide array of services that depend on the specific needs of each client, including cash flow forecasting, budgeting, technology implementation, industry benchmarking, business valuations, and tax planning. Ultimately, advisory services are any form of advice regularly given to a client in relation to their business.

The list of potential services is as diverse as the specific needs of your client base. Whether it involves pricing, sales, hiring, or expansion, clients are looking for a professional who can explain future-looking forecasts, and help them use that knowledge in their business decisions.

Adding value for clients

Technological changes are upending the industry in many ways. What hasn’t changed is the level of trust small business owners place in their accountants. Through the pandemic, accounting professionals became therapists, coaches, and partners to their clients, helping them navigate the most significant economic downturn they’d ever known.

Clients look to their accountant for answers to questions ranging from how to pay an employee, how cash flow will affect a loan application, and even how to use accounting software. While technology can generate more data and often better information, your clients need you to help them understand that information and apply it in ways that make sense for their business.

Why is now the best time to consider adding CAS?

Working in accounting can be a rewarding endeavour, professionally and personally. If you’re anything like me, you find fulfilment in helping businesses thrive by keeping their financials in order.

Accounting firms have always provided valuable information to their clients through financial statements and tax returns. However, the assembling of this information is becoming more automated and commoditised by the day.

Next-generation accounting tools powered by machine learning are processing transactions and analysing data with greater efficiency, which is devaluing traditional bookkeeping and tax preparation services.

You don’t have to look any further than a recent investment by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos in an accounting startup called Pilot ($1.2 billion valuation) to understand that the field of accounting is in the midst of a sea change with far-reaching impacts on firms that serve SMB clients. You may already recognise this trend in subtle ways through conversations with prospective clients who are beginning to care less about how and more about how much.

Client Advisory Services 101: What are they? Why should you offer them?

How does offering CAS benefit firms?

A survey of Australian Small Businesses and their Advisors by Intuit QuickBooks found that many accounting firms are already providing some level of advisory services, from cash flow management to outsourced CFO services, or planning to in coming years.

The survey, published in the SMB Navigator Report, found that over half (52%) of Australia’s accounting practices are already offering strategic tax structuring and planning, with an additional 8% planning to. 

64% of practices are either already offering or planning to offer business performance reporting and forecasting, and 60% either already offer or are planning to offer business or strategic planning advice.

Advisory services offer the perfect opportunity to move from hourly billing to value-based pricing.

The SMB Navigator Report showed that business owners who view their accountant

as a key strategic partner – often driven by their ability to support the business owner’s emotional needs by reducing anxiety, stress, and creating clarity over financial results and decisions – are significantly more likely to feel like they’re receiving value for money. 

83% of businesses who see their accountant as a key strategic partner said they “definitely” feel they get value for money for the services their accountant provides.” 

The future of accounting firms is clear: Advisory services present a huge opportunity for accountants to develop deeper, more valuable, and profitable relationships with their clients. If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to prepare and launch these services.

Learn more about Client Advisory Services

Building your Client Advisory Services offering is about people, processes, and technology. Download our Grow Your Firm CAS eBook to learn more, or read more about these elements in our client advisory services series:

People

Processes

Firm operations


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