Your practice must operate efficiently internally before you can impart the same insights to clients. If your business is struggling with multiple software systems and poor-quality data, this is an opportunity to review this aspect of your practice and make some changes.
Here are four measures you can use to ensure your business is a well-oiled machine, especially at the end of the tax year.
Ensuring your firm is organised, efficient and using the latest software tools is the key to delivering great services for your clients. You can use the capacity you gain with an efficient and streamlined compliance workflow.
For many firms, growth may mean winning more work and clients, extending your services and expanding the team. For others, growth may be more holistic and consider work-life balance. Efficiency, driven by a streamlined compliance workflow, can help you achieve your goals.
This was the key message delivered by Shaye Thyer, head of accounting at Intuit QuickBooks, at the 2022 Get Connected event hosted by Intuit QuickBooks and Business Australia.
Ensuring your software platform supports your workflow helps to set up the business for meaningful engagement with your clients. But first, you need to understand your clients’ needs. The idea is to choose software that achieves a smooth workflow between your practice and the client’s business.
“The right platform delivers workflow efficiencies for your firm without trading off your clients’ right to choose a system that best suits their unique business needs. But it should be able to automatically draw in data from different cloud accounting platforms,” Thyer says.
For example, Intuit QuickBooks is a one-stop shop that helps accountants and bookkeepers to manage their business, run their clients’ accounts and meet their compliance obligations. QuickBooks Tax powered by LodgeiT imports data directly from QuickBooks Online, MYOB, Xero, Reckon and Excel to save time and minimise data entry.
“At Intuit QuickBooks, we won't ever ask you to sacrifice your clients’ platform needs just so you can be efficient in your compliance workflow or sacrifice efficiency in your compliance workflow to support your clients’ platform needs. You can achieve both,” she adds.
Achieving an efficient year-end can be tricky if your platforms only deliver efficiency for a single source of data or client cloud accounting platform. Best practice sees clients, with your expert consultation, choosing the cloud platforms to most efficiently run their businesses, with their bespoke needs. So, work towards reducing manual systems and using technology to bring capacity into workflows.
Cloud platforms should drive better quality data, with fewer mistakes and errors, for clients and your practice. “Imagine if bad data just wasn't a thing,” Thyer says. “That would be amazing.”
Bad data is often par for the course, especially where clients touch the information. So, focus on making your compliance workflow more efficient by collaborating with a highly skilled bookkeeper to manage data integrity for your clients year-round. Over time, this approach will take much of the hassle out of the end of tax year.
You need the right migration partner if you are ready to use a system that supports best practice in your accounting business. Empowering someone in your team to lead this transition is a great first step.
The right software platform will be able to assimilate the data you need without having to change systems or review data line by line during the migration process.
Working closely with clients helps to ensure your accounting business has access to great data, which is invaluable when it comes to tax time.
Partnering with a bookkeeper to help both the client and your practice access great data all year round is equally invaluable.
Intuit QuickBooks can transform your practice and allow you to offer a superior service to clients. Let us help you explore how tech can assist you to harness future success.
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