Virtual advice is the future for accountants

Virtual Advice is the future for Accountants and Bookkeepers…

@Invizbiz

Helen Goodman FCCA is #notyourordinaryaccountant, with 20 years experience as a management accountant in the corporate world. Helen now runs a successful cloud integration business to identify, implement, train and provide ongoing support to small business looking for cloud solutions. Specialising in Health & Wellness, Family Trades, Professional Services and Inventory Management. Invisible Business Solutions was one of the first Authorised Cloud Intregrators to be recognised by Xero.

In the last 10 years the technology available to accountants and bookkeepers has evolved way beyond what many of us could have ever imagined! And as take up continues within accounting firms, maybe it really is time to look at the future of accounting – Xero seems to think so anyway. We’ve all been hearing on the grapevine (for the last few years) that AI will be the end of accountants and bookkeepers... I think it’s now clear it won’t be the end... but it will certainly mean CHANGE...

Cloud based solutions have

automated the boring mundane data entry, and as we have seen it’s more efficient and more accurate. This has meant that the role of bookkeepers and accountants has had to change and now the professions has to look at other ways to offer small business valuable services.

If you attended last year’s Xerocon in Melbourne, they made it very clear that this change was coming and accountants needed to listen! Yet so many accountants still just prepare tax returns, track historical information to meet the legal & statutory requirements. So why are so many ignoring the massive opportunity that exists to provide small business with so much valuable information? Who knows, maybe I’ll ask a few when I’m at the Bookkeeping and Accounting show in Sydney in March, but for now I believe the simple answer is because Accountants and Bookkeepers are so busy ‘doing’, that they haven’t looked up to see the opportunities they are quite literally staring them in the face! Opportunities like:

Becoming an advisor to small business on niche apps, for example if a Bookkeeper focused on Trades, becoming an expert ServiceM8, Tradify or WorkflowMAX The opportunity to provide consulting and virtual CFO services assisting small business to understand their financial and non-financial KPI’s and make better business decisions as a result. To provide support for AI Solutions in other areas of business, for example assisting business with automated marketing workflows, CRM management or job management solutions. Each element of the business effects the financials, why shouldn’t the accountant or bookkeeper provide the value of their experience in these areas as well?

Or is it simply that although they see the opportunity, it’s not in their current skill set? And they are not sure what to do about that? Well I know for a fact there are options out there, you just need to know where to look (insert a Cloud Integrator here!).

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants commissioned a research study into the future of the industry called— Professional Accountants – The Future Drivers of Change and Future Skills. This research has explored the important changes that have occurred and are expected to be encountered by the year 2025.

The research found among other things that in the future Accountants will increasingly need to be educated in digital technology (including cloud computing and use of big data), globalization (outsourcing of accounting services), and evolving regulations (tax regulation, new forms of corporate reporting, integrated reporting regulation etc).

The ACCA report also revealed that knowledge of digital technologies is the key competency area where professional accountants have

skill gaps. At present, they found accountants lack knowledge in transformation of new disclosure regulations, new forms of disclosures, and importantly I believe in the awareness of the interconnectedness of financial and non-financial reporting. They also found Professional Accountants will need the skills to provide more all-inclusive corporate reporting, which tells less about the numbers and more about the story of the business, and that is where the Virtual Advisor role is born.

But how do Accountants, Bookkeepers and their firms change into this new Virtual Advisor role?

They need new skills and in a number of areas, including;

1. In communication, to be able to advise small business; 2. In training in the App options to enable them to set up and to deliver education to the business so they can effectively use the new technology; 3. In other business processes such as marketing, sales and job management.

These are not skills that many Accountant and Bookkeepers currently hold, or that the Accounting training teaches… so what to do?…The short term solution is collaboration with cloud integrators, who have these skills and are ready to assist. The longer-term solution is training,

Check out approvalmax.com acquisition of new skills, and attracting a different type of person to the Accounting and Bookkeeping profession.

How Universities and Professional Associations change their curriculum will take time, but just so you don’t get left behind - take up the short term solution and find a cloud integrator by one of the following methods:

1. Xero.com at www.xero.com/ au/partner-programs/cloudintegrators/directory/

2. Ask your Xero Account Manager for a recommendation or 3. Check out your preferred App

Directory of Partners 4. Simply Google Authorised Cloud