AIMS Accountants for Business
AIMS Accountants for Business
You’re more than an accountant to the businesses you work with.
When you set up an accountancy practice and start working with clients, they’ll expect you to sort out things like self-assessments and they’ll want tax advice to help save money.
Your clients will realise very quickly that you add value in other ways that they probably didn’t think of immediately. What we mean by that is you’ll probably become their business advisor, mentor and coach, alongside fulfilling your technical duties as an accountant. Below are 3 reasons you’re more than just an accountant when you work with SMEs.
This is obvious, but worth stressing. One of your main responsibilities as an accountant is to help businesses save money by giving them sound tax advice. But as an accountant, you add loads of value by also advising businesses on their budgets and spending for example.
As a business’ accountant, you’ll have full visibility of cashflow which puts you in a position to be able to advise them on things like marketing spend and recruitment. If you can see that a business is spending too much on a specific form of marketing and not getting much from it, you’ll probably advise them to change their tactics. Similarly, you’ll know whether a business should be hiring more staff or not, which makes you an advisor on recruitment as well as budgets and tax.
In short, your visibility of your clients’ finances puts you in the privileged position to be able to suggest routes for growth and to be able to spot spending mistakes. You’re an accountant and a business advisor.
Government legislation of MTD has forced accountants and businesses to adopt new technologies. And for the better! Submitting tax returns digitally and using software to speed up financial reporting means less mistakes and less work.
Businesses that are already using technology to produce their accounts will tell you that they’ll never look back. Going forward, instead of just number crunching, you’ll have much more time to interpret your clients’ accounts which will put you in the position to be able to suggest meaningful changes that you might otherwise have not had the time to think about.
When your clients see how much more efficient accounts production is using software, it will inspire them to use technology to change other businesses processes. All of this will make your clients more efficient and you’ll be the catalyst for these changes.
These 2 reasons will help you retain clients for longer because you’ll become one of the most trusted people in the business. SMEs will realise that without you, they probably wouldn’t experience growth in the same way.
You’re not just an accountant, you’re much more to the directors you work with.