4 ways to improve your accounting firm’s productivity

Accounting firms are feeling the pinch more than ever when it comes to retaining and attracting staff. Wages are increasing causing margins to shrink even further. Without the right measures in place many firms will struggle to grow - or worse, remain viable.

To help, we’ve come up with four solutions to help improve your firm’s productivity and profitability.

1. Move to the cloud

   Cloud-based technology can increase your firm’s productivity in many ways. Moving to the cloud can reduce IT costs, provide extra data security, increase flexibility and overall, is an efficient collaborative storage space for all of your documents and files. Thanks to cloud tech, accountants now have the ability to interact with clients in a more efficient manner. The ability to access a document anywhere at any time, on any device, has enabled accountants to work closer with clients - achieving more productive outcomes. Moving to the cloud has also resulted in firms increasing turnaround times and capacity without jeopardising the quality of the service delivered to each client.

2. Understand the importance of standard workflows - and use them

   Standard workflows are a sequence of processes that specifically outline how to do a task from start to finish and are essential to business growth. If you were to hire a new employee, would you be able to provide them with a document outlining what they are required to do and how to do it from start to finish? Or would you have your team train them from the processes they have stored in their head? If this is the case, how will you ensure that all processes are being followed correctly 100% of the time? With no defined workflows and processes, the margin for error increases dramatically. It may seem simple but having workflows in place will dramatically increase efficiencies in your firm. They will also streamline your business processes and when it’s time to hire new employees, training will be a breeze.

3. Nurture existing client relationships

   Did you know that new client acquisition is five times more expensive than retaining existing business? If you want to scale and grow your accounting firm, stay in-touch with clients, get to know them and build long-term, mutually beneficial relationships. Getting to know your clients will enable you to identify other areas you can support - resulting in more billable hours. Not only that, it will build a positive reputation for your firm. 92% of people trust referrals from family and friends over anything else (Big Commerce). So in addition to identifying new opportunities within your existing client base - you may also pick up some referral business in the process.

4. Be smarter with resourcing

   In Australia’s costly and highly regulated workforce, accounting firms are finding it difficult to find the right person for the right job - at the right price. Outsourcing is a smart resourcing strategy available to businesses of all sizes. It’s a process that gives businesses access to a larger talent pool of employees - increasing the chance of finding the right person for the job. Not only that, the process of hiring an offshore team member is significantly less intensive and expensive than if you were to recruit locally. With the combination of offshore and onshore employees, your firm has the opportunity to increase productivity and profitability as well as increase cost savings.

If you want to learn about the potential benefits of outsourcing and the impact it can have on your firm, watch this short video blog.