For Accountants, Growth Opportunities Outweigh Challenges

Cloud Solutions for Accountants

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Once tax season (thankfully) comes to a close, it’s

the perfect time for accountants to take a broader

view of their practice. They should think not only

about how they’re going to survive the next tax

season, but also about generating perennial revenue

streams beyond tax season.

A recent survey of 301 managing partners of small

accounting firms (firms with five or fewer equity

partners and a maximum of $10 million in annual

revenues) found that seven out of ten managing

partners expect it will be more difficult for their

firms to make money in 2016 than it was in 2015.

However, opportunities to make money may not

be so difficult to come by.

In this ebook, we’ll explore various

avenues open to accountants to grow

their practices, and show how the latest

advances in technology and processes

can point the way to sustainable, hassle-

free growth.

A recent survey of 301 managing partners

of small accounting firms found that seven out of ten managing partners expect it will

be more difficult for their firms to make money in 2016 than it was in 2015.

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Not All Clients Are Created Equal

While taking on additional clients is one viable option to increase

revenue, that strategy presents its own set of daunting challenges.

Identifying and marketing to new prospects takes a significant

investment of time and money. And once they are on board, new

clients continue to require an outsized level of hand-holding, from

data migration to software and communication issues. In fact, 82% of

companies agree that new customer acquisition is more expensive to

execute than retention, according to a 2015 eConsultancy report.

For most firms, a better option is to successfully deliver additional services to your existing

clients. Most accountants don’t know what additional services to offer, and many think they don’t have

the time to handle additional services. These accountants should start thinking immediately about

streamlining their internal processes to accommodate a larger volume of work, because significant

opportunities for offering additional services to their existing clients do exist.

Complement better technology with better ways of doing business

To make the most of your firm’s human and technology resources, you also need to revamp your

processes and the way you conduct business. One way to maximize the impact of these new resources

is to use client portals for exchanging documents. Client portals save you time and money, and

greatly streamline your workflow.

But the most important thing is to review your method of billing. If you’re still using hourly fees, it’s

time to change to a fixed-fee pricing model. And simple math will show you why.

One of the major outcomes of all the techniques discussed in this whitepaper is to help you perform

your client engagements faster and easier. But if you charge by hour, then you’ll make less money by

becoming more efficient! You certainly don’t want that. The only way to be truly rewarded for your

efficiency is to charge a fixed fee for most tax, accounting and payroll services.

A question we’re often asked is: how I move to a fixed fee model? It’s easy. Divide your average yearly

fee by 12, and that’s your starting point for a monthly fixed fee. Then you can adjust this fixed monthly

fee upward or downward depending on other factors, including additional services you might be

providing to some clients.

This method serves both you and your clients well. As mentioned, you make more money by becoming

more efficient. You also have a more evenly distributed revenue stream that helps you manage your

cash flow. And clients are happy to know upfront what their cost will be for your services. A fixed

monthly payment also helps them manage their cash flow.

New Client

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Highly Profitable Payroll (Really!)

A first step to growth: consider adding payroll services for your existing clients.

Since payroll is so highly intertwined with clients’ overall expenses and tax liabilities, it is a natural fit

for accountants to also manage this function for their clients.

If you haven’t considered offering payroll services because of the perceived notion that payroll is an

“all pain, no gain” service, consider that thousands of accountants have turned payroll into a virtually

painless, highly profitable service using professional, robust cloud-based payroll systems created

exclusively for accountants.

Payroll Center

Processing

E-Payments

Tax Forms

Collaboration

Integration

Payroll Relief ®

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Complete Accounting Services: Good for You AND Your Clients

A new survey by AccountantsWorld found that 25 percent of the small business owners surveyed said

they’d be interested in transferring more of their accounting work to their accountants. So, with one

out of every four small business owners open to an expanded relationship with their accountants, there

is no better time for firms to be reaching out to current or prospective clients to expand their slate of

services before the tax season crush.

The survey also found that when a small business

employs an internal bookkeeper, interest in outsourcing

accounting work increases to 45 percent. By encouraging

existing clients to expand the services they use, firms can

easily create more revenue streams for their practices

with minimal lift.

It is widely recognized that the primary source of wasted

time in accounting is dealing with the errors clients make.

Fortunately, accountants can now use a professional

accounting system that lets them work collaboratively

with their clients, and gives them the ability to customize

the system for each client. Clients only access the

functions they can perform, which enables accountants to drastically reduce client errors and regain

significant time.

Professional accounting systems also make it faster and easier to produce customizable financial

statements, and accountants can take advantage of time-saving features, such as bank feeds that

reduce the data entry time needed for the write-up work they perform for clients who write manual

checks.

Cloud-based professional accounting systems can also help accountants offer

complete accounting services faster and easier by making it possible for

accountants’ staff to do what clients’ staff or their external bookkeepers

currently do – only faster, easier and more accurately and without leaving

the office.

As a bonus, cloud-based professional accounting solutions

include analytical tools to monitor client key performance

indicators (KPIs) and cash flow with minimal effort. These value-

added services provide additional sources of increased profits while

strengthening client relationships.

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Cloud Solutions for Accountants

The Big Picture

Knowing that additional ways of raising the bottom

line exist, the next step is to find the resources

needed to add those services. The trick for

accountants to offer additional services without

adding any staff is to focus on streamlining. By

reducing the time spent on existing services and

finding ways to provide additional services with

minimal time and effort, adding services without

adding staff becomes possible. The right professional

cloud solutions can help you accomplish both.

These systems make it possible for accountants to

generate significant additional revenue by offering

payroll and complete accounting services without

adding any stress to their staff. In fact, streamlining

work flow and eliminating redundancies and

unnecessary work actually increases staff satisfaction.

Your clients are looking for you to offer them the additional services they need - services that you can easily offer. What are you waiting for?

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Take the Next Step

Now that you’ve been introduced to a range of ways to grow your bottom line, it’s time to learn how to

implement these ways into your practice.

PAYROLL RELIEF®

HIGHEST RATING 5 YEARS

Practice Advisor CPA

PRACTICE RELIEFSM

Practice Advisor CPA

ACCOUNTING POWER®

Practice Advisor CPA

WEBSITE RELIEFSM

Practice Advisor CPA

Visit AccountantsWorld.com/APower to learn more about Accounting Power

The award-winning Accounting Power solution from AccountantsWorld integrates a powerful

professional accounting system with a comprehensive bookkeeping system in one unifi ed cloud-

based accounting solution. Learn how it puts accountants like you back in full control of client

accounting, and can help you perform your accounting engagements 20-30% faster than your

current solution – guaranteed.

Schedule a one-on-one growth consultation

Call 888-999-1366 to schedule a personal demonstration of AccountantsWorld’s flagship solutions for professional accounting and payroll processing. A Practice Development Consultant will answer any questions you have, and detail how Accounting Power and Payroll Relief can help accelerate your firm’s growth and boost client satisfaction.

Visit PayrollRelief.com to learn more about Payroll Relief

The key to more profi table payroll: full automation. The award-winning Payroll Relief system can

perform direct deposit, tax payment, tax-form e-fi ling, and child support-related tasks automatically,

on time, with 100% guaranteed accuracy. And you get all this power for a very modest investment...

as little as 45¢ per paycheck. The result: a no-hassle, high-margin payroll service.

PAYROLL RELIEF®

HIGHEST RATING 5 YEARS

Practice Advisor CPA

PRACTICE RELIEFSM

Practice Advisor CPA

ACCOUNTING POWER®

Practice Advisor CPA

WEBSITE RELIEFSM

Practice Advisor CPA

www.AccountantsWorld.com

Thank You for Reading Our Ebook

About AccountantsWorld

Many accountants don’t realize that major corporations have used

technology to penetrate deep into your core tax, accounting and

payroll services.

At AccountantsWorld, we use technology for a very different

purpose.

For over 15 years, we’ve been committed to using cloud technology

to create new opportunities for practicing accountants like you, and

to help you reclaim lost ground so you can better serve your clients

and raise your bottom line.

We created the first-ever cloud-based payroll solution,

Payroll Relief, to help accountants easily offer highly

profitable payroll services to their clients.

Then we created Accounting Power, the first cloud-

based professional system to put you, the accountant,

back in control of client accounting.

We now offer a fully integrated suite of highly

acclaimed solutions for professional accounting,

bookkeeping, payroll, document management,

client portals and more.

Using our pioneering cloud solutions, you can tailor your services to

best meet the individual needs of each of your clients, increase your

firm’s productivity, better serve your clients, and raise your bottom

line.

And unlike other service providers, AccountantsWorld has made an

unwavering commitment to accountants. We never compete with

you, or sell our products or services directly to your clients.

Learn more about how AccountantsWorld can help your practice

thrive at AccountantsWorld.com

PAYROLL RELIEF®

HIGHEST RATING 5 YEARS

Practice Advisor CPA

PRACTICE RELIEFSM

Practice Advisor CPA

ACCOUNTING POWER®

Practice Advisor CPA

WEBSITE RELIEFSM

Practice Advisor CPA