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accountants and bookkeepers

Increasing workflow efficiency for tax advisors

By Jimmy Nguyen

Published on August 2, 2022

With the new financial year well on its way, ensuring your business is compliant with all tax regulations can feel a little daunting. New legislation, new compliance processes, and macroeconomic changes all make being a tax advisor, accountant, or agent especially challenging today. As a seasoned millennial tax accountant–turned–business owner, with a knack for stacking apps, I believe that more – not less - automation is the key to happier clients and a more productive staff. QuickBooks has helped to organise finances for myself and for my clients.

Stop putting off getting your finances in order, it’s easy with QuickBooks!

Our first stop: QuickBooks Online. A simple-to-use but powerful cloud accounting platform built for small businesses, bookkeepers, and accountants alike. My team and I at DKM Accounting have been raving fans of the software ever since their launch in the early 2010s. With growing features now catering towards advisors, QuickBooks Online is definitely beginning to show its teeth amongst its competitors. From reporting functions including advanced cash flow analysis, to BAS and tax preparation tools, its suite of features are a welcomed support to our practice.

Work smarter, rather than harder

There was a time when I used to look at a cabinet of workpapers and client files and thought, “Wow, I have to get through all that.” Though there was something disciplined about holding a stack of manila folders or flipping through hardcovers of tax legislation, it was, more than anything else, simply time consuming.

Today, I much prefer to work smarter rather than harder. So when trade shows, expos, ads, and billboards started showcasing wave after wave of cloud-based apps meant to increase efficiency and firm productivity, I jumped into the water.

QuickBooks Online has succeeded in building tools meant to assist bookkeepers, BAS agents, and tax agents in their ongoing obligations with their clients. Both the Prep for Taxes, and BAS prep present great workflow and reconciliation tools for the filing of activity statements and tax returns. QuickBooks also has an intuitive inbuilt communication system that allows you to request any and all documents directly from your client so they can instantly upload anything you need.

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State of tax compliance work, and moving forward into the year

With the phase two of Single Touch Payroll (STP) well in effect, along with the government’s commitment to harnessing technology surrounding accounting software developers; the role of the advisor, accountant, and BAS/Tax agent has become much more granular and compliance-oriented.

This means accountants and advisors may be expected to improve their cloud accounting abilities with particular focus on the creation, implementation, and management of an accounting ecosystem to ensure that the flow of data accurately represents their client’s business operations.

Luckily, QuickBooks Online operates as a powerful hub for a plethora of external payment systems, inventory management, and asset register integrations, that provide for accurate reporting and the consolidation of data. With many QuickBooks partners offering easy to connect APIs, advisors will find it easy to connect and manage the web of apps needed to service their clients.

In light of these changes, it’s becoming even more crucial that accountants and advisors take advantage of software solutions that remove the burden of tax filing. QuickBooks makes all stages of finances and taxes easier, allowing for more efficient service and better communication between advisors and clients. The QuickBooks workflow and reconciliation tools for the filing of activity statements and tax returns, plus the inbuilt communication system, simplify and quicken the process.

As a financial advisor, my job is to help my clients organise their finances and build for a better future. The QuickBooks tools minimise the paperwork and busywork, and help me stay organised and focused on my clients. QuickBooks makes my life, and the life of my clients easier —and that’s a win-win for all parties!

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