accounting professional – Page 7 – Cooper Mann Consulting

May 27, 2014March 5, 2018

QuickBooks online, or QuickBooks Online? Use Software on the web without using Web-based software

There is a trend among software makers these days to more fully leverage the “power of the web”, and why wouldn’t they? The Internet has become the way businesses and users get and stay connected, and has become a foundation for how business gets done. Remote and mobile access to information and applications has become an expectation of users, as social computing models have encouraged them to remain connected on all of their devices and from any location. Online describes a working model that many businesses strive for, and software makers are seeking to capitalize on the trend.

The belief that software should no longer be installed and run from a local device has been adopted by some of the largest software vendors in the market, which would lead many users to expect that this is the important trend to follow. Being encouraged to ditch their desktop software products and transition to using the web-based or SaaS alternative, users who have grown to trust their software products are now facing new buying decisions. Any time a customer is forced to make a buying decision – like moving from a desktop product to a SaaS solution – there is a potential that the customer will go with a different vendor and leave the product line altogether. Yet this is exactly what is happening with small business applications, and specifically with the tried-and true QuickBooks products – the solutions which had become the cornerstone of small business finance.

Where QuickBooks Pro, Premier and Enterprise desktop editions were the favored and trusted small business accounting solutions, Intuit is now on a wholesale push to get users transitioned to the QuickBooks Online edition. In doing so, they’ve opened up the door for new competitors, because they’re forcing their QuickBooks users to make a new buying decision. Assuming that customers will adopt the QuickBooks Online solution simply because it’s “QuickBooks” was perhaps a poor assumption on the part of Intuit. Particularly by naming the product “QuickBooks”, Intuit invested the trust and long-standing recognition of the brand and product line into the online edition, and the user base and market has not been amused. “It may be called QuickBooks, but it’s not the QuickBooks I want” says one customer. Apparently, the QuickBooks Online edition is not what many experienced QuickBooks desktop users are looking for in a new version of the product.

Desktop QuickBooks users don’t have to move to the Online edition just to get the benefits of the cloud with their beloved QB. The hosting and cloud service providers I work with help businesses run the QuickBooks desktop products as online service. We deliver fully managed applications and data, allowing users to access their QuickBooks desktop products online and from a variety of devices just as if they were web-based. Gaining the benefits of anytime/anywhere access with the added advantage of not changing software is a direction many users are electing to go. While the price of a hosted solution may not be as low as a QuickBooks Online subscription, it is generally far less than a subscription to Salesforce.com, for example. Isn’t the business financial data at least as valuable as CRM? The price isn’t unreasonable, and the benefits of online/remote access, managed IT, protected data, and an ability to take your ball and go home if you like are huge. Grab your data file, install QuickBooks on your PC, and you’re back in action. Can’t do that with most SaaS solutions, can you? It’s only do-able with desktop software, which you can run in the cloud with a hosting provider or run on your own PC.

Assuming that all software will ultimately run online could be a big a mistake. As technology advances and new capabilities introduce new complexities, the “heavy lifting” shifts from the center to the end points and back again. While there may be a trend towards SaaS and leveraging the power of a remote system, the reality is that our devices – desktops and laptops, tablets and phablets and phones – are all getting more powerful. Many SaaS applications and remote access technologies rely upon (and find ways to push more resource utilization to) the local device. Video processes more quickly, input and output devices are more easily recognized, and the storage on the device is faster and easier to access. A lot of work happens on the local device, and it will continue to be this way as the devices continue to get smarter and more powerful. “There’s an app for that” for a reason: apps on the device work well and give users the functionality necessary to get things done efficiently.

SaaS is not all that’s out there – much of the software businesses know and love is still available the way they want it. QuickBooks users need to know they can get their QuickBooks online without having to use QuickBooks Online. The desktop is not dead, and it won’t be for a long time. Desktop software isn’t dead either; it’s just being pushed to the background as software companies attempt to wrap their arms firmly, with subscription based business models, around their respective customer bases.

Make sense?

April 29, 2014December 7, 2017

The CPA for Small Business: Proactive, Responsive, and Helps Paint a Beautiful Picture

I once read an article written by Doug Sleeter which describing the findings of a published report titled What SMBs Want from Their CPA. The report was a summary of results from a study conducted by The Sleeter Group, and was intended to help accounting professionals understand the factors in the market which influence business use of professional accounting services. While adoption and use of technology was not named as the top item on the list, capabilities which can be rendered only if such adoption occurs were. In short, it’s not the technology that clients demand, but the level of service that professionals can only deliver by embracing advancements in technology and applying them to the client engagement.

The report and article placed a specific focus on trends relating to technology adoption and use in the professional practice, and establishes a foundation for firms to understand why technology is and always has been a key factor in the success of the CPA-client relationship. It’s not that the accounting professional must become a skilled technologist and promote high technology to the client. Rather, the success factor rests with the firm’s motivation to implement technologies and tools which will improve their ability to deliver more (and more valuable) service to the client in a more direct and timely manner.

The survey’s two critical questions posed to small business owners who use the services of a CPA were 1. What factors played a role in your decision to leave your former CPA?, and 2. What types of services would you like to receive from your CPA? Both questions are pretty straightforward, and the top responses from surveyed SMBs were equally unambiguous.

To the first question (factors playing into a decision to leave former CPA), the top two answers indicated that reactive and/or unresponsive are the problems which ultimately cause a small business owner to change accounting professionals. The top response was “Former CPA didn’t give proactive advice, only reactive”. The close second response was “Former CPA had poor responsiveness”.

Unfortunately, these responses more than accurately describe many professional firms and their approach to client service. These firms are perfectly content with waiting for clients to deliver after-the-fact information, delivering reports long after their relevance has past, and providing no sense of urgency in helping clients address business issues facing them here and now. These firms are content to work with their write-up and trial balance solutions, depreciation and amortization and tax products – and give little consideration to how they could adjust their operation to a better, more relevant and rapid delivery of service and insight to the client.

The second question, “What services do SMBs want from their CPAs?”, was met with the same responses professionals have been hearing for years; small business owners need help with business planning and business strategy and they wish the help would come from their CPA. It is surprising how many accounting professionals list business planning and strategy among the services they promote on their websites, and then just sit back and wait for clients to ask. Communication with clients remains relegated to annual reminders for tax information, or maybe slightly more frequent notes about other tax or compliance work to be done. It may be a bit unfair to place all the blame on the professional. Regulatory and reporting impacts on business are increasing and are increasingly complicated. Many professionals find it challenging enough simply to keep up with changes relating to the services they currently and regularly provide.

This is where practitioners should seriously take notice, and accept that the ability to meet changing market and customer demands is by intelligently leveraging technology to accomplish what people and process cannot do alone.

It takes information technology to speed up the bookkeeping, accounting and reporting processes; technology is required to help turn information into useful and relevant data;
technology facilitates the faster collection of information from and the delivery of information to clients;
technology is applied to reflecting numbers as pictures and helping users visualize the meaning of the data, and
technology enables the collection and analysis of “big data”, which leads to AI advancements and greater intelligence delivered through the applications businesses use.

The Sleeter Group report clearly demonstrated that small business owners continue to need and want more than just tax returns and post-facto reports from their accounting professionals, and that the lack of attention in these areas pose a direct threat to the small business/CPA relationship. Professionals can remove the threat by working closer with their small business clients, applying technology and process controls to get better information in a more timely manner, and returning the result with greater insight. Be proactive and be responsive, and apply the necessary technologies and business philosophy to get there before the client base looks for satisfaction elsewhere.

I’ve said before that small business owners don’t care about the numbers, they care about the picture the numbers paint, and they care about getting to a place where the picture is absolutely beautiful. With the right tools in place, their CPA can help guide them there.

jmbunnyfeet Make Sense?

December 20, 2013

Accounting, Technology and Small Business – The Best of 2013 from CooperMann

It has been an eventful year, hasn’t it? With the NSA lurking about collecting data, innovative new approaches to information and identity theft emerging almost daily, and complete turmoil in the IT services industry challenging trusted sales and distribution models, most of us have simply become numb to the noise. Information technology is evolving at an increasingly rapid pace and the way people and businesses interact with and use technology is being forced to change along with it. It’s starting to become almost, weirdly, natural.

Much of this change can be attributed to “The Cloud”, which is not a thing or a place. Cloud has become the term which applies to just about anything having anything to do with the Internet. For technology “purists”, cloud means something fairly specific, but for normal people (no offense to the nerds and geeks, but you know what I mean), cloud applies to pretty much anything accessible via the Internet. Photos back up to “the cloud”; music gets stored in “the cloud”, websites are hosted in “the cloud”; businesses run their applications in “the cloud”, and you can do darned near anything you need (or want) to with a phone. The cloud could be some guy’s server in his basement, or it could be a sophisticated network of systems housed in secure facilities around the globe. They both qualify, sort of. The point is that mobility, Internet services, subscription access to technology, and social computing are changing how people view technology – resulting with changes not simply in how IT is purchased, but in how IT is used and applied to daily life.

There are, however, some things that do not change even if the working environment does. The accounting profession, for example, is undergoing a great deal of change, and much of it fueled by the advancements in technology and social computing. But accounting fundamentals – the “truth of debits and credits” and the good old accounting equation – remain. The basics of running a business are also unchanged, even as methods of doing business evolve and globalization of markets continues. Business fundamentals – fiscal responsibility, cash and growth management, and focus on value and sustainability – are as necessary now as every before.

With all this change and IT “advancement”, there have certainly been impacts to how and where we work. But the more things change, the more they remain the same. Good business generates goodwill and more business – that doesn’t change – and bad news still tends to spread faster than good news (much faster, given social platforms that are designed to spread the word far and wide). And when it comes down to the fundamentals – the basic and essential foundations supporting building, operating, and accounting for business – we generally find that they remain constant even as the environment in which they exist experiences change.

Make Sense?

Here are the top 20 ranked posts for 2013 from CooperMann.com

Posts by category – with Accounting Professionals, QuickBooks Hosting, QuickBooks Software, and Small Business being the top categories with ranking articles.

ACCOUNTING PROFESSIONALS

Small Business Owner to Accountant: Make Accounting Valuable to ME

Accounting Professionals, You’re right – your clients don’t care about the numbers.

The Language of Accounting: Disconnect between Accountants and Bookkeepers

Why Accountants and Bookkeepers Use the Cloud

Bookkeeping and Benchmarks – Getting the Numbers Right

In Bookkeeping, Accounting, and Information Technology: The Value of Outsourcing

Re-defining the role of the accountant, or going back to the good old days?

The Collaborative Online Model for Small Business Accounting Professionals

Remote access to client bookkeeping comes in many forms because clients come in many forms

QUICKBOOKS AND BUSINESS APPLICATION HOSTING

What Small Businesses Need To Know about QuickBooks and the Cloud

Intuit Introduces Changes to Authorized Commercial Host for QuickBooks Program, Introduces QuickBooks Enterprise Rental Licensing

Hosting All My Applications in the Cloud

Intuit Hosting Program for QuickBooks Website Goes Live

Cloud Computing for Small Business: It’s All About 3 Apps

QuickBooks Hosting: New Program Tier Announced for QuickBooks Hosting Providers

Managed Applications, Cloudpaging, and a New Flavor of Hosted QuickBooks

QUICKBOOKS SOFTWARE

Changing How We See Software: QuickBooks 2013 interface frustrates power users

SMALL BUSINESS

4 Rules of Thumb for Business Success

4 Rules for Building Service Customer Loyalty

December 12, 2013January 8, 2018

4 Rules of Thumb for Fiscally Fit Business

Most folks who start a new business go in to it with a rather naïve belief that a good idea, product, service and/or group of people can be successful just because their idea, product, service or people are good. Unfortunately, that isn’t’t the reality of starting up and running a business. Regardless of how great and innovative the idea is, the business only works if it is sustainable and profitable. Otherwise, it was just a great idea. For many entrepreneurs, developing an understanding of the financial underpinnings of running a company isn’t the most exciting of ideas. The compulsion is to outsource the responsibility to someone else like an accountant or financial advisor. While I completely and utterly agree that every business owner should work closely with their accounting professional and financial advisor, I also know that those very same business owners will get more value from their advisors if they have a common language to speak (business finance) and are working toward a common goal. The goal is fiscal fitness – the creation of a sustainable and profitable business. Just as physical fitness supports a healthy body, fiscal fitness supports a healthy business.

The successful business operating in this economy adheres closely to 4 main beliefs, rules of thumb perhaps, relating to fiscal management and fitness and which are generally communicated in detail using the language of business finance.

Rule 1. Plan before you start. Then plan some more. Starting a business isn’t like going to college; you’re supposed to know what you’re going to do BEFORE you start up rather than paying to explore the options. It is also very important to recognize that the plan may require some adjustments as you go along (“No plan survives contact with the enemy”), taking care to not equate focus with intractability. This plan should also include the “exit strategy”, which is really a plan for what the owner wants to ultimately get out of the effort. It could be a plan to sell out for gobs of money, to leave a legacy for the children, or maybe just to have an awesome quality of life and do what they love at the same time. Knowing what it will take to get in, get it done, and get out the way you want is all part of the plan.

Rule 2. Keep a close eye on the numbers. No, not all of them, but the really important ones. Some of these numbers have to do with the relationships between price, volume and cost. This is the stuff a business owner needs to know like the back of their hand – hairs and all. Not every business will focus on the same key numbers (mostly, but there are certainly variations), but every business owner should know what to look for. And they should be looking very frequently so things don’t get out of whack before corrections can be made.

Rule 3. Manage the cash, manage the growth, and know how one impacts the other. Cash flow and growth are priorities number 1 and 1 in business but they aren’t the same thing. Consider that reducing prices (and profits) to get more sales may work as long as the volume of sales supports the effort and generates the cash. Without the extra sales revenue to rely on, reducing profits could result in devastation (maybe sticking with the prices the way they are and not pushing for fast growth is a better idea).

Rule 4. If you must borrow, be informed and do it smartly. There are a lot of different options for borrowing money for the business, just as there are a lot of different reasons to do it. There is a great deal of research available which describes the benefits of borrowers being educated in basic financial literacy, with better financial decision-making being among those benefits. Looking for financing is kind of like choosing between the apple and the candy bar: one may promote the fitness you’re looking for while the other does not (but it looks sweet!). It’s nice to have the foundation to support knowing which one you should choose.

Building and maintaining a fit business requires an understanding of how the business works – how and why it makes and spends money, what makes it profitable and what it takes to create and support growth. While outside advisors may be available to help, the best performance is achieved when the business owner masters the essential skills required to run and grow a fiscally fit and sustainable business.

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet

Make Sense?

Measure, Manage and Succeed. It’s all about knowing how to speak the language of finance

November 11, 2013

Lawyer Immunity from Delivering Customer Value is No More

All indications are that business and revenue growth for law firms is no longer a function of head count. As with other professional service providers, lawyers are experiencing increased competition from a variety of new sources, and client demands and needs are changing as society adopts and embraces technology, social computing, and self-service solutions. The problem is that many partners and firm leaders don’t really know what do to about it, and are attempting to fuel continued growth of revenues and profitability while essentially maintaining status quo.

Looking to reduce costs and pushing for more billable hours is standard fare among firm managers, yet the results to be gained from these efforts have pretty much reached their maximum potential. You can only cut so much, and you can only work your people so hard. Unfortunately, many partners and managers simply look away from the problem and continue along the path that has been successful in the past. But growth has slowed, revenues have not grown as expected, and firms are literally being forced to adjust to market forces or go out of business. It’s just too competitive and the pace of change is too rapid. There is no immunity for lawyers in this changing market – service quality and value must improve.

Instead of taking the legacy approach of hiring more people so they can bill for more hours, successful firms are taking a few queues from other professional service providers and are recognizing that individualized client service, consistently high-quality and timely service, and service priced commensurate with the value delivered are at least parts of the solution.

There is quite a lot that law firms and accounting firms have in common, particularly when it comes to the fact that most of these entities are viewed – perhaps rightly so – as being “old school”, with a managing partner or board with intractable views and grey hair. Lawyers, like accountants, are inherently wary of new-fangled concepts and wild ideas. They’re a cautious bunch, and tend to be resistant to change. Yet accounting professionals are beginning to embrace new tools and new ideas when it comes to delivering service and value, and forward-thinking law firms are following suit.

For successful firms, the focus is on the client and the value delivered – on internal process improvements and a better value proposition for the customer – not on the billable hour. Yes, there are investments required. The firm must invest time most of all. It takes time to get everyone educated about issues the firm is facing in the changing marketplace. Unless everyone knows what they’re up against, there will be continued resistance to new ideas and concepts. It also takes time with clients to understand their needs, which is the essential element to delivering service valuable to them. And it takes time to develop and nurture a long-term vision, recognizing that the vision may change as conditions change, and that regular monitoring and adjustment may be necessary.

Investing time and consideration in these areas is the key to delivering customer (and shareholder) value. The result is satisfied and loyal clients, repeat business and increased growth and profitability. Rather than viewing this brave new world as a challenge to the firm’s traditional model, it should be viewed as the opportunity to deliver new and greater value to the firm’s customers.

Make Sense?

Read more about providing Client Solutions, not just Professional Service
Read more about Taking a Holistic Approach to Cloud-Enabling Your Law Firm
Read more about using the cloud to extend “connectedness” beyond traditional boundaries

October 28, 2013

New York or Las Vegas? It doesn’t matter if you can work online.

The 10th annual Accounting Solutions Conference, held by The Sleeter Group, is being held in Las Vegas on November 3-6. By all accounts, it’s looking like the conference will again bring together some of the best and brightest in accounting and business technologies.

The annual “Sleeter Conference” event is among the best opportunities accounting and bookkeeping professionals have to explore and learn about the technologies, service models, client management tools and other elements involved in delivering accounting, bookkeeping and consulting services to small business clients. With the introduction of so many new ideas and solutions designed for small businesses and their accountants, it is no wonder that professionals look to this conference to help make sense of it all.

With the right strategy and through the innovative and efficient use of technology, people and processes, even the smallest of organizations can compete with the big boys. Accounting professionals, pro bookkeepers, and small business consultants and advisors are not simply participants in the financial processes of these small organizations – they are the influencers and implementors of the solutions and methodologies which will generate the positive impact in the client business. Information technology -mobile access solutions and innovative tools for working together – makes it possible to deliver these benefits to clients, whether they’re in Vegas or the Big Apple. Come to the conference and hear all about it.

While you’re there, stop by the Uni-Data Skyline Cloud Services booth and check out some of the new stuff that’s going on in the QuickBooks and general application hosting world. It’s pretty cool! I give it 5 bunnies.