What is happening out there?
Business Advisory Services Update
The latest episode of the ESS BIZTOOLS Business Advisory Services Podcast featured Andrew Geddes, the well-known Accounting Industry Guru. Along with Peter Towers, they had a discussion on “changing from compliance dominance to business advisory services”.
The major influence at the moment is the inability of accounting firms to hire experienced accountants. The labour market is very tight and accountants are saying they want to do interesting work. That is leading to a situation where partners are working long hours, which then leads to the following questions:
- Are you working too many hours?
- Are you caught in a compliance trap?
- Are your smaller clients not willing to pay more?
- Why can’t you get experienced people?
- Is this a real problem? Or, is it your own making?
If you’re not enjoying your profession at the moment, there are some things that you can do and changes that you can make to rectify them. In fact, a number of Andrew’s clients are doing just that and are very happy with the results.
You need to decide that if you’re going to go into Business Advisory Service, and the types of services you will provide.
There is a natural extension of what a compliance accountant does, to assist SMEs to improve their bookkeeping and their internal accounting and reporting.
You could then move on to the preparation of budgets and assist clients to interpret the actual business performance, compared to the budgets in a monthly meeting.
You might be able to prepare business valuations for some clients.
You can help clients to identify a few areas of their business that require improvement, on a quarterly basis.
If your clients are looking for additional funding, you could advise them of government grants for which they might be eligible to apply, or you could supply them with details of the capital raising opportunities that are available for small companies.
ESS BIZTOOLS has product packages to assist accountants to implement each of these services.
We will discuss these further at our complimentary webinar, to be held on Wednesday 31 May 2023. Click here to register.
For more information, visit our website – www.essbiztools.com.au.
