094 Should Accountants Help Clients With Operations Software?

Should we stick our noses into how our clients pick their tech stack to run their business? How to manage health insurance when you go out on your own, when to first pick up a practice management system, FP&A products. Oh, a lot of hot questions. Come on in, it's Q and A Wednesday. Running through some questions. Thank you as always for the questions. Chucking in the comments. It is my source of truth for what people actually want to talk about and the only thing that keeps me railing on and on about AI endlessly. Herman, in the YouTube comments I found myself pondering. In your cast practice, did you ever take on the role of tool matchmaker or tool implementer? Did you help clients incorporate tools like ClickUp or did you take over the process completely, turning client touchpoints into more of an informative or report based interaction? If so, I'd love to hear about those adventures. Uh, yeah, I. So I've shared. I think we did an episode on how to sell app advisory to your clients. Probably two different flavors of app management around clients. There was the stuff that we interfaced with, um, that was either tools that we were the only ones that we used, or we shared those tools with the client and then there was the tools that the client ran. And we were very opinionated on the stuff that we worked with and over time got more and more opinionated. And to a certain degree we didn't even give them a choice often, oftentimes, if it was something we were doing a lot of heavy lifting in, generally we would mandate specific tools for bill pay and you know, obviously the accounting ledger and stuff like that. But even that wasn't just totally like a one size fits all solution. Oftentimes they had special needs, like special requirements for the ways that they worked. And so we would still work with them and find something that was suited specifically for what they needed. And the more specific we got in the clients that we served, the easier that became. And so when it came to the back office, to the accounting department and down, yes, we were super involved in that decision making in most cases, mandating a lot of that stuff. But I think what Herman's more getting at is on the other end of the spectrum and the tools that they use to run their business, you know, we didn't initially, we kind of stuck to our own space and we're like, well, this is the stuff that we really know. Well, we're just gonna play. Here you go and do your thing. But we actually realized over time that this was a real source of strength for our team. Like Especially if you compare what you do running an accounting practice to the expertise that most business owners have. Most small business owners are technicians. They have some sort of expertise, be it design or, you know, running a retail shop or something like that. They have this technician style expertise that generally doesn't align with building a perfect tech stack or something like that. Right. Or getting your business to a place where it's like operationally running super smooth. And especially when it came to tech and how we built systems around tech, in most cases, we actually had a lot to offer. And those could be especially meaningful conversations because usually they were like very high leverage opportunities. So in general, to be totally honest, I shied away from a lot of advisory work within our practice because for me it was a difficult thing to scale. So we were always balancing. How is fulfillment going to scale if we offer this service? I could for sure do advisory for clients and we could charge a lot of money for it. But ultimately that wasn't the direction I was headed. I wasn't headed in the direction of more overseeing the systems and the strategy of the firm itself. I could absolutely generate more revenue by doing advisory, but that wasn't really what I wanted to do and wasn't chief among the firm's needs at the time. And so because we never found ourselves at a place of like having an abundance of people who could really confidently do advisory, we generally shied away from it. We kind of did controllership, kind of controllership complexity level stuff. And down which part of that? Honestly, there is a lot of advisory in disguise. We don't realize it, but we are every day making decisions, recommendations based on the experience that we're getting with all the clients that we work with. And that is super valuable advisory. The way my firm was headed, we'd had some really sharp people that came to work with me where they were only going to be challenged in what they were doing for so long. And that next step was probably leaning into bigger ticket advisory. As we had nailed down down the specific type of client we were gonna work with. When we found that specificity, investing in advisory resources for the team got a lot easier. And so we did some sort of biz ops side advisory around tech, but didn't do a massive amount because it was kind of like this secondary thing where like, yeah, wouldn't it be nice if we had the team to do that? And so we did a kind of ad hoc here and there. But I will say, when it comes to the expertise that you have, particularly around connecting systems and getting to flow like, well between systems. Oftentimes we undersell just how much of a contributor we can be operationally to a business and that's actually massively valuable stuff. It's the sort of thing where you help them through that change and then like they are getting value from that until the end of time. Like it is a step change in the productive capacity of that business. I can tell you one thing I struggled with though. It's definitely one of those situations where you're like, well I'm an accountant, like what am I gonna do? Like doing this like tech advising with them and we kinda end up having these self limiting thoughts about what should we be doing and not be doing. And oftentimes I think that's the reason why we don't lean into that stuff further when we've probably got some helpful stuff to contribute. Thanks for the question Herman. Just found your podcast but I have nine plus years in public and two or three years in corporate accounting. I have my CPA license. Feel like I'm in a good spot to move out on my own. One problem, healthcare coverage. How would you tackle this hurdle? I have a family with two small children and would need to n this down before I think of moving forward. Any advice would be welcome. Same like so this year I just went out on my own. I got three kids, 2, 4 and 6. Got a spouse, probably shouldn't say the age and my solution is to absolutely pay out the no's. Healthcare is a big blocker. I know for a lot of folks in general. I previously like I was in a small business so the plans that I had access to then are largely the same as the plans that I had access to now. The even tougher situation I think is when you're working for a bigger firm or a bigger group that has their own plans that you really can't just go out and match. But usually it is a cost thing and so like that's a very real cost you have to take into account when you go out on your own. I'll be totally honest though. Like we have been able to get coverage that's totally good enough. Like it's not like it in no way is it has at no point felt like I wasn't able to get access to good enough coverage for our needs. Now everybody's needs are very different but that hasn't been a barrier so much for us as much as just the cost burden having to pay for that. And it is freaking expensive. Definitely something you want to have a plan for ahead of time. But for me and I'm fortunate in our situation. For us, it was no bigger barrier than just a cost thing that we had to plan for. So I would say do some research, definitely build that into what you need. My recommendation generally if you're thinking about doing this is like, don't just go do it cold turkey. Start a side hustle. Learn what you enjoy and what you don't enjoy before you maybe drop that main gig. But as you're building that business on the side, just make sure that by the time you're going out on your own, like that's something that you've planned for and do it. Invest in yourself. Go out and do that thing on your own. Or at least give it a try to see if you love it. Most people I talk to do not go on to regret it. This episode is sponsored in part by the fine folks at Cloud Accountant Staffing. Do you hire accountants? Bless your little heart. Not the best part of the job in my opinion. Not something I ever enjoyed. Well listen, you can build your accounting dream team with talented offshore accountants in the Philippines that work 100% full time for your firm. Their accountants aren't freelancing or contracting for multiple firms. They're all yours. They work exclusively for you and are incentivized to stay with you and your team long term. They're not gonna get swiped. Cloud account staffing is 100% dedicated to the accounting industry and founded by a former accounting firm owner that understands your business, knows your pain points. They had to hire some accountants and they said you know what, we're gonna build our own pipeline in the Philippines, gonna pull in some super talented people and then open that up to other firms. Basically that's the story. I've been talking a lot about staffing, building more resilient staffing pipelines for your firms. I had staff in the Philippines like totally red pilled me to like oh geez. Like we need to globalize the way that we get our work done. Check these folks out. Link in the show description cloudaccountantstaffing.com hey. This episode is sponsored in part by Canopy, the practice management system. Canopy unlocks the firm that you always wanted. Think about it. Think about it. Close your eyes. Lean back in that chair. What is the firm that you always wanted? Oh wait. Canopy unlocks it. And they do this by unclunking accounting firms with an end to end solution that makes your tech stack feel a little less stacky. Putting our customers first with world class user experience, support, education and innovation rooted in customer feedback, working and working well anywhere and for any size or type of firm, wherever you are now and wherever you're going, multiplying your efforts so your practice requires less proverbial midnight oil. You know, Sidebar if you go to the conferences, Canopy's got like they always do some like really good little like sort of, you know, the stuff that they use to like trick you into coming to the booth. Well, this year they've had like Legos out there. Maybe, maybe a double down on the midnight oil thing. You know, maybe like give away a little. Little, you know, little actual midnight oil. I guess it would need to burn too, but that one's free. I think it's a good idea delighting your clients with a modern, easy to use portal that helps you get the info you need when you need it. That is Canopy. Check out the link in the show notes to learn more. Okay, Practice Management systems this was shree re in a YouTube comment. Shree Re hi Jason, I'm offering bookkeeping, tax and financial services. Just started, but I'm wondering when is the right time to use a practice management system to keep these services organized? Plan to use QBO for bookkeeping and Drake for tax and Mango seems to integrate with both. Is it ideal to wait for a certain amount of clients before moving forward with the practice management system? Please advise. Good question. My advice is it is always the right time to pick up a practice management system because there are really important core things like being able to build requests into like a client portal sort of thing where if I need 10 things from a client I could email the client for those 10 things. But that doesn't scale. So when you are supporting 10 clients, you're now asking 10 sets of 10 clients for 10 things and they give you half the things and you end up spending half of your time going back and refiguring out what do I need? What do I already have? And then you have to like manually send them those reminders because a huge part of the job is asking people to provide you with the info. And this is a great example of where I Practice management system from day one is worth its weight in gold and actually impacts how you build your systems. So my fear is giving anyone the advice to go out and start on a spreadsheet is that they're building some systems that don't lean into the best of what practice management systems have to offer. And then the more inertia you have and kind of the status quo, honestly, the harder it is to change. So there are practice management Systems that I don't know are, quote unquote, expensive. There are ones that are cheaper. I think they are absolutely worth the investment because they will save you a tremendous amount of time in the grand scheme of things. Honestly, with practice management systems these days, we're talking about for a new firm owner paying somewhere between $20 and $100 a month for that platform. And it's very early, very hard, especially early on, to adequately value your time. I think most people chronically undervalue what their time is worth, and before you know it, you're spending a huge amount of time on really inane things that are not valuable. It is. Personally, I think it is a huge source of. I think what I feel like has led me to be successful the last few years is my ability to delegate, my ability to be aware of the things where I'm like, there's probably somebody else that could do this and this is not the most viable thing or the highest leverage thing that I can do right now. To me, a practice management system, like helps you with just that. It helps you with the menial stuff. It helps eliminate the work that is required to do the work. Right. Like, that's what you don't want to waste your time on is figuring out what do I work on next, what do I do? I have all the things that I need so that I can go do this next thing. So my recommendation would be absolutely do it from day one. Do some due diligence on a bunch of tools to figure out what the right one is for you. I would say don't get lured in by integrations. Integrations can be a big time trap and can be really compelling through like a sales and marketing lens. But first and foremost, pick the best tool for what you do. Integrations aside, that'd be my best advice. And good for you going out and doing it, man. That's awesome. Good job. Okay, FP and A Working on Cass Tech stack and looking at different FP and A software. What's your take on the S tier? The best of the best of FP&A tools or is Excel probably fine? At a glance, Live Flow or Sift analytics seem like best bets, but was wondering what you thought. We did an episode specifically on reporting tools on this podcast. So it was do accountants really need reporting tools? And I went deeper on my thoughts on when they're useful and when they're just maybe razzle dazzle and not that useful. In terms of what is S tier for you? Like, I know that this is a total cop out. But people do FP and A wildly different ways. FP&A for one client, the best version of FP&A for one client, maybe like three KPIs you're tracking every month and that's it. And they're not capable of doing anything more than that. For another client, it may be a really big fancy 20 page report with all these visuals and the client's absolutely going to pour over those. So obviously those are two very different things. I will say in general, as accountants, we do FP and A in a way that is impressive to us. That is not always a way that will resonate with the people that you support. So on the one hand, if there is a tool that's genuinely helping you to come to better insights, whether the client ever sees it or not, that's worthwhile. That's a good investment usually. So if that's a tool that will let you get to something that is like a more profound understanding of what's going on, that's great. If the only purpose of the tool is reporting to present something to that client, then that's probably pretty client specific. The ones that enjoy the razzle dazzle and are impressed by it and actually use it, great. Like go make a bigger investment in a cool fancy reporting platform. The ones that don't, honestly a spreadsheet or a spreadsheet connector. You mention live flow. Those are usually like totally adequate for getting the information together in a really basic format. Kind of two schools of thought. Either you kind of work organically with that client and start with a really basic set of KPIs. Those develop over time and that is how you work through an fpa, engaged FP and a engagement. Other school of thought is you have this very opinionated approach to how you're going to do FP&A. And this usually only works when you're working with a very specific type of client. And maybe part of that is like benchmarking and all of that, but you've got these templatized reports and you kind of go through this FP and a process the same way with all of your clients. Something like that. A dedicated FP and a tool is going to be really handy for that's something that will, you know, actually connect with a whole bunch of QuickBooks files and handle benchmarking and stuff like that. But if you're on the more basic end of the spectrum or if you're just getting started, don't overthink it. Sometimes the big complex tool can actually create more work for you. And it takes some of the focus frankly off of like the client conversation, which is sort of the most meaningful aspect of that engagement in my opinion. Good question. Any specific applications on FP&A for y'? All? Or maybe you got it wrong. Like I did have any advice? Please drop that in the comments. This episode, believe it or not, it is sponsored in part by the fine folks at firm360. You know what's better than anything else? Because you can't. You don't know how to make sense of this ad, right? Like how do I know this better than any other tool that I'm using? How do I cut through the fluff? I'll tell you what's the ultimate validation social proof. When your friends like yo, that stuff's for real. It's the best. That's what I look for, right? So let me show you some social proof on firm360 who has a shocking, shocking number of five star reviews. How about this one from Kelly? Great project management software that allows seamless communication with coworkers and clients. Think about that. Do you have seams right now? Are there seams in your communication? I bet there are. How about Brandon? This one in June of 23. Wow. We just an amazing company to do business with. With their firm management software and assistance we have streamlined more of our processes and become more efficient and profitable. Every other firm management software we researched and demoed seem to be lacking for accountants until we found firm 360. Which is not surprising since accountants are the ones who founded the company. True story Cherith. And know the needs of accounting firms. Every month we get updates and in the year we've been with them, they've adapted and evolved their software as well as they listen to their customers. Okay, Brandon, why don't you do the ad read? That's it. That's the end of the ad read. That was better than anything I had written. Learn more about Firm360 and the link in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part by Copilot. Modern accounting firms, let me tell you, they run on Copilot. Differentiate your firm with a secure portal that gives your clients a one stop shop to upload files, sign contracts, send messages, access dashboards, all that and more. You know what your clients don't enjoy is hopping all around to all your different tools logging into this magic, magic. You know what I'm saying? Magic email linking into this other doodad. And every little thing they pop into, it's got a different vibe. They're not sure Did I just get this from my accountant or somebody who doesn't mean me? Well, let me tell you, gang, that is where Copilot comes in clutch. Because you can put all that stuff in one place. They sign into a single place. That's the only place you're ever gonna ask them to go. And it's a consistent experience. They know they're getting that stuff from you. They're not getting bamboozled by. By somebody that's posing as you. That's why Copilot was built from the ground up to be not just a portal system, but a platform to build whatever you want on top of it. So you've got a single streamlined client interface that does everything, everything you need to do. Learn more about Copilot. Check out the link in the show notes. AI tools. Oh, buckle up. Here's a question. Something I'd like to know from you, and you can also make a YouTube video about it, is if you were to walk into an accounting firm today, what AI tools would you implement to help improve efficiency and save time, slash, make tasks easier? If I kick down the door of your accounting firm and Kool Aid man right in, the first thing I'd asked about wouldn't be AI stuff. There's a lot more kind of core elements to running a firm that need to be optimized. And today none of those core fundamental workflow elements in my mind are like super AI heavy. There's a lot of products for sure investing in AI and AI are, you know, somehow involved in that product. But I'm not going to like run around with my magic wand and start sprinkling AI on things and have a massive impact. So the first thing I would come in and discuss is like, we talked about automated requests and there's kind of a core infrastructure that a firm needs to have. And when I say firm, I'm talking usually 100 employee and under 10 million and under type of firm. There's a common kind of infrastructure that firm needs to have that most don't have these days that they aren't leaning into. I would start there, but there is for sure some pretty tasty AI frosting for that cake right now. The biggest impact ones for me, honestly, number one, is probably AI meeting transcripts. So we did another episode on the pod. Just basically let me convince you why you need to start recording your client meetings right now. Most of us don't record any of the live discussions that we have with clients. And this is akin to like throwing away giant email chains and like having A company policy of just those things being ephemeral and deleting them, which would be wild. Like, you would never do that. Yet we don't capture all of the super, super valuable context that's in those meetings. And there's a bunch of reasons why it's uncomfortable. Maybe there's concerns around data privacy and all that stuff. But imagine today how nice it would be if you had a transcript of all those client meetings from the last three years and they were searchable. If your colleagues had meetings with them, you could see, did the client ever discuss this or that. Like, that stuff's really valuable context. And the tools that we have to make use of that context, like chatting with transcripts and asking, hey, did they bring up that rental property? Or has this rental property ever been discussed with this client across any of my colleagues or myself? That's really valuable. And so the tools that we're getting to see into that context are getting better really fast right now. But you're gonna be kicking yourself if 12 months from now, your practice management system implements that functionality, that searchability, and you don't have the recordings and the transcripts from the last 12 months. So AI meeting transcripts are the biggest thing for me right now. I would say the second biggest thing right now is AI as marketing. There's definitely a lot of shilly, like, unfortunate AI marketing and a lot of hype, some of which won't play out. But the reality is AI is a huge marketing wave. It will absolutely displace people. It already is displacing people and impact the ways that people work. I'm not seeing that in our profession in a huge, huge way yet. But if you work with a bunch of clients who are impacted by that, that's equally troublesome. Like, if AI doesn't displace the things you do in your firm, if it displaces the things that your clients do, you're in just as much a deep water. So with how big all of this kind of marketing hype is right now, honestly, as I've shared the past few weeks, I think it's a great opportunity to start having AI discussions about the ways that your clients work and say, like, hey, here's a prompt that I made that can save you some time doing XYZ when you're looking to get in front of more people and you go to industry conferences, you go to talk on podcasts within the space, you don't have to be an expert on AI. Like, and this is where really it's kind of Self limiting. All you have to do is share what you've learned, share your journey, share that one cool thing that you did or those three cool ways that you've used it with your clients. You're not holding yourself out as an expert, you're just sharing ideas. And ultimately, like, that's how I try to always approach my content. Is sharing a bunch of ideas from all the really smart people I network with. Does it make you smarter in the end? Absolutely. But we self limit when we're like, well, I'm not an AI expert, so why should I be talking about this? I'll let you in on a secret. The AI experts right now don't have the domain expertise. So you can either sit on your hands and wait for like an AI expert to learn all things accounting and tax or taxidermy or whatever your clients do. You can wait for an AI expert to learn all that, or you can apply your expertise to what you know about it and try to be kind of the glue that can connect those two things. So my second most exciting AI application today is AI for marketing. Third is AI for personal productivity. We all have these fiddly little nuanced things that we have to do, tasks we do for the firm, for clients, and all of that that are just one off things. And no tool is ever going to be built to like tackle that one fiddly little nuance thing that you do. Right. Well, how are you ever going to automate those one off things then? That is where the value of learning ChatGPT and getting better at prompt engineering and all that stuff comes into play. And as decision makers, I think we're usually the first ones to learn this stuff. And then we're like, when's the right time to turn my team onto this stuff? When I think the best version of this is one that is kind of proliferated throughout your firm. You have a firm policy of the right and the wrong ways to use ChatGPT because there's absolutely wrong ways to use it. But that doesn't need to preclude people from using it in good ways. So my third biggest tip would be just getting tools into the hands of people because they will amaze you at the things you can do with apps. And it's kind of in line with how I talk about. Like, you have so much more to gain by sharing your ideas with others and then reciprocating and learning from them than to just like shut yourself in a room and somehow get to some ultimate answer. Like, that's just not gonna happen. So when it comes to finding awesome use cases for AI, like share that stuff. Like I've got a whole video series of three videos on my main YouTube channel now that is beginner to expert at getting accountants up to speed. And ChatGPT, it's like 45 minutes long and you're gonna know more than 99% of accountants. But just getting it into the hands of people for like personal productivity applications, those fiddly little one off things you have to do. That's probably my third favorite AI application right now. Let's do one more. It's getting hot. Hi Jason, I loved your recent video explaining how to craft your offer. My services slot in around 6k per year. How would I price that initial offer compared to the ongoing services? So that is a no brainer for new leads. So cliff Notes version of something I've been hammering on for the last three weeks. I prefer building an accounting firm around a compelling offer that solves a painful pain point for the type of client that is like my perfect ideal client where the problems I solve are really painful. So they pay me really well to do my work. When you hold your firm out rather than just saying oh, we're an accounting firm and we do all the same services as everybody else, instead have an offer there that is very specific to a problem that they have and how you can solve that, you then use that offer as kind of your diagnostic. Like you learn about that company. Like are they everything that they say that they are? Is the owner a jerk to work with? But when you solve that painful problem for them, they are pumped and they now can't imagine having anybody else do their accounting and or tax work. And so then when you convert them to ongoing services, you can do it at 50% higher rates at 2x the rate. Now question here is how do you price that initial offer relative to ongoing services? And I don't know that there's really a right answer here. In fact, I don't know that those two are even necessarily really related. There's maybe a risk if you're like giving it away too cheap that you will actually attract the people that just want a deal and they just want the cheap stuff and they come to you because of that. So there may be a risk of going too cheap there. But again, the solution to underselling your services is greater specificity, specifically calling out the very specific person that it is for so that when they see it, they will pay a lot more for it because it is so tailored to them, but bigger than how you price that initial offer is how that initial offer impacts the ongoing price that they will pay you. So are you going to make money on this initial offer? Honestly, I don't care. It doesn't really matter. Because what you want is for this client, this person to be an ongoing client for the next four years and to onboard them at a 20% higher price because you dazzled them in this initial offer or a 50% higher price or a hundred percent higher price. That is where you make your money, right? So that is not you having to increase this price aggressively on a client year over year. It is them coming in the door paying you more than the clients who pay you. Now. That's the value of the initial offer. So I wouldn't get too fixated on what the price of that initial offer is. The real opportunity is how that initial offer impacts the ongoing price that that person is willing to pay you to engage them to do accounting, to do tax on an ongoing basis. I did a main channel video on how do you build that kind of really attractive offer that will pull more people into your firm, a more specific type of client, and ultimately solve a more painful problem for them? Because that is what people pay for is the clients on your list that don't wanna pay you as much as they do and then complain and all that. It's because the problems you're solving for them just aren't painful enough for them. If those problems are super painful, they will throw money at you, right? And so that's what we're trying to find is the really painful stuff where people will just throw their money you to solve that for them. You build an offer around that. So it's really attractive. But then because they're dazzled by how you cared for them over the course of doing that offer, you can now onboard them to ongoing services at a much higher price. And this dramatically impacts the profitability of your entire firm because that additional price is going straight to your bottom line. So I'd say don't get too fixated on what the price is for that initial deal. Think more about how it impacts the ongoing price that they'll pay. Hey, that's it for Q and A Wednesday. You got questions? Keep chucking them in the comments if you disagree with any of this. If you have your own thoughts on the questions, please share. That's kind of how all this stuff happens. We get smarter together the more we engage and share and learn this stuff kind of, I don't know, day to day. So thanks for coming and hanging. I'll see you tomorrow.