bookkeeping in bunny slippers – Page 4

January 18, 2013

QuickBooks Accountant Niche Practice Specialties: Tools for Accountants Working With Contractors

QuickBooks Niche Practice Specialties:

Tools for Accountants Working With Contractors

For accounting and bookkeeping in a small business, Intuit QuickBooks is still the “go to” solution. QuickBooks has functionality needed by most businesses, and some editions of QuickBooks offer more in-depth process support for specific industries and business types. Accountants and bookkeepers working with QuickBooks may rely on essential bookkeeping and reporting features to get basic accounting done, but supporting the processes and offering the functionality business owners and managers need – processes and functions which are specific to the business type and how it operates – is essential to developing a solid business management and reporting system.

Accounting and bookkeeping professionals can be instrumental in developing these systems for their clients, and can use the data collected within these solutions to provide more detailed reporting and actionable advice relating to business activities and trends. Creating a niche practice and specialty means knowing how to address the needs of the niche client and having the tools to make it happen, so accounting professionals working with QuickBooks clients should seek to leverage the Intuit partner network of developers and QuickBooks-connected solutions and extensions to orient their services to the needs of specific industries and client business types.

The most obvious example of applying an industry-specific orientation of QuickBooks is to use the Premier Industry offering of QuickBooks desktop edition. With the Premier Industry editions, additional functionality and reporting for specific industries is addressed directly within the application. Industry editions exist for non-profit, manufacturing, and contractors, among others. A lot of practitioners have met the additional needs of their business clients by using these industry-specific editions.

With QuickBooks Premier Contractor edition, for example, businesses can go beyond general accounting and address specific needs of a contractor or construction business, including tracking and reporting on job costs and profitability, handling estimates and change orders, and billing clients by time and materials, job phase, or percentage completion. Accountants and bookkeepers working with construction businesses can help their clients more accurately and efficiently address the unique requirements of this type of business by offering the user functionality which is relevant to their daily tasks, such as making deposits, entering and tracking bills, and reporting on the progress and status of jobs.

Contractors may also have unique payroll reporting requirements, most of which are not adequately addressed within the QuickBooks solution directly. It is in this area of compliance and complex reporting where the accounting professional may be of particular value, ensuring that these additional business requirements are met and that the data is complete, accurate and timely.

By utilizing the Intuit partner-developed application from Sunburst Software Solutions to extend the functionality of QuickBooks, contractors and the accountants who support them are able to create comprehensive and accurate prevailing wage payroll reports, including the most frequently required WH-347 Payroll Certification Form and the WH-348 Statement of Compliance Form. Further, the solution also provides reporting for nearly all municipal, state, and federal paper forms required in each state. The solution even includes electronic certified payroll submission, compatible with LCPtracker, Hill International {formerly TRS Consultants}, Elation Systems, and other agencies.

QuickBooks has the framework for holding information about customers and jobs, tracks estimates, progress invoicing from current accounts receivable and work complete, and a means to accurately record and track retainage payable and/or receivable. To complete the requirement for AIA billing and other construction business-specific needs, Sunburst CAPS application for QuickBooks holds additional project information, architect information, retainage method data, and billing forms to print in linked records. CAPS also provides a mechanism for percentage of completion calculations with full accounting for stored materials. The information is then merged together from both programs to generate the final billings – ready for signature, notarization, and mailing.

Addressing this additional level of complexity and compliance for contractors is a critical element, and an essential benefit, of working with accounting professionals who understand the needs of construction businesses and employ the tools and applications to meet those needs well. It is through specialization, and knowing how to address the unique requirements of (and to capitalize on the opportunities presented in) the client industry and business, that accountants and bookkeepers will demonstrate and retain their value in today’s challenging economy.

Make Sense?

Read more about using QuickBooks to serve a niche or specialty practice – Not-For-Profit and Retail
Read more about the pressure on accounting professionals to deliver more value and intelligence to their client businesses

January 14, 2013October 28, 2015

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

I grew up in a small town in Oregon where my parents ran a “business accounting office”. Many of the businesses in and around town were my dad’s clients, and we all got to know each other pretty well. Dad, you see, wasn’t simply the accountant, and the people working for him weren’t just bookkeepers. Dad was the business advisor, purchasing negotiator, collections agent, and anything else the client needed that he could provide. He fought for lower worker’s compensation insurance rates, got better prices on truck tires, and in general helped his clients with just about every aspect of running their businesses, including getting more customers and managing growth.

I had always believed that this approach, a consultative approach where the professional was intimately familiar with the business and proactively worked from inside the organization, was what all accounting professionals did. This proved to not necessarily be the case. Over the years, I have found that many accounting professionals focus primarily on the historic reporting of activities in the business, rather than actively helping to improve client business operations and performance on a daily basis.

According to one source, describing the differences between a CFO and an accountant: “CFOs are focused on working inside the business helping it generate wealth – ensuring proper capitalization, fostering the right banking relationships, addressing compliance issues – focusing on the company as a whole. Often CPAs tend to be more focused on specific tasks. Is the year-end audit done? Is the tax return done? …While both are vital to a business, a distinction we see is that the CPA’s dominant focus is historical – looking back to prepare tax returns and financial statements. The CFO, though, needs to be a forward-looking, integral part of the management team”.

It has become a reality that many accounting professionals are somewhat disconnected from their clients, a result perhaps of removing themselves from daily bookkeeping and other tasks. Recognizing the disconnect, many firms are now taking steps towards rebuilding those intimate client relationships by offering services which address more operational and strategic aspects of the business. These firms are offering “CFO Services” to their clients in addition to the standard offerings of financial statement and tax preparation. They have recognized the need become closer to the client business, delving deeper into the intricacies of the operation in order to find areas where improvements may be made and necessary controls instituted.

Accounting professionals seeking to increase the value of the services offered to clients should give strong consideration to what the client recognizes as valuable. Historic reporting is necessary, but finding ways to fund budgets, controlling expenses, helping to guide cash investments and taking steps to improve profitability are how a consultative accounting professional delivers real value to the client, building up the basis for long-lived and mutually beneficial business relationships like the ones my father once built.

Make Sense?

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet J

Small Business Owner to Accountant: Make Accounting Valuable to ME

January 7, 2013August 9, 2013

Dashboard Reporting Tools: Gauging Accounting Relevance

Dashboard reporting tools can be of great assistance when accounting professionals want to help their clients understand how the business is performing. In most cases, these tools do a good job of showing owners the details of the profit and loss or cash flow reports, presenting the information in a way that non-accountants can understand. Many accounting professionals have turned to these reporting solutions to increase the value of the accounting work performed. After all, if the client can’t really understand the P&L and the Balance Sheet, then the reports won’t do them much good.

While simplified graphical reporting solutions are beneficial to the business, providing more insight into historical business performance, they don’t do much for the client on a daily basis if the accounting data isn’t up to date. Accounting professionals should recognize that these dynamic reporting solutions, tools which can provide business owners with real-time information on business activities and performance, can go a long way towards increasing the relevance of the accountant’s involvement in the client business.

Accounting professionals today are fighting battles on several fronts, and remaining relevant to the client is one of them. This isn’t too surprising, given that many accounting professionals see their clients only at year-end when the tax return needs to be prepared. In some cases, the business owner doesn’t even remember the name of their accountant – they just know they went there last year at tax time. This arm’s length relationship between the accounting professional and the business clients leaves a lot of opportunity on the table for both parties.

When accounting professionals aren’t closely involved with their clients, they risk losing the client to a more attentive, consultative professional. Many firms believe that the low profitability of bookkeeping and processing daily work for clients means that they should focus only on “higher level” opportunities, yet business owners will tend to seek advice from those who work with them on a regular basis, and who understand the issues that challenge growth and profitability.

Accounting professionals who recognize the value of providing regular bookkeeping services to their clients also recognize the value of working closer with the client, providing useful and actionable information rather than historic data long after-the-fact. These professionals are more likely to reap the rewards of “higher level” engagement opportunities from the client, because they help to identify the need and are able to support it with real data and insight earned through regular involvement with the business.

Make Sense?

Read more about how accountants need business intelligence, too
Read more about how there’s no fear and loathing in accounting
Read more about Data Warriors: accounting in the cloud

January 2, 2013

CooperMann 2012 in review

2012 Was an interesting year, to say the least. Not that it wasn’t a good year, but it certainly brought its share of challenges as well as opportunities. At CooperMann.com, we attempted to reflect upon these challenges and opportunities, discussing how they impact our views on accounting and technology and business in general.

While the economy continued to struggle and churn, business owners found that reducing operating costs and creating sustainability in the business were initiatives they could no longer afford to minimally address. As advancements in technology and the growing popularity of cloud computing models resulted in a number of solutions to help businesses meet those cost and continuity issues, they also introduced new and different challenges for accounting and finance professionals seeking to reinforce their relevance and value to the business. They say that the only constant is change, so we should expect no fewer challenges (or opportunities!) in the new year.

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet

As for CooperMann.com, here’s how we did in 2012, our inaugural year

600 people reached the top of Mt. Everest in 2012. This blog got about 10,000 views in the latter part of 2012. If every person who reached the top of Mt. Everest viewed this blog, it would have taken 17 years to get that many views.

The busiest day of the year was October 2nd: The most popular post that day was

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

Attractions in 2012

These are the posts that got the most views on CooperMann in 2012.

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

2 Is This The End Of ERP?

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

4 Working With the Right Numbers: Financial Data Analysis Requires Accurate Financial Data

5 Not Everybody’s Accounting Online: Outsourced Bookkeeping and Accounting for “Offline” Clients

Top 3 Favorite posts for 2012

One-Write System Revolutionizes Accounting: These guys had the right idea, they just didn’t have the cloud.

The race to find the “secret sauce” of hosted application services for small business

Accounting Professionals: It’s Good To Be Sticky

Where in the world is CooperMann viewed?

CMC2012-countries

What’s coming up for 2013? Keep watching CooperMann.com and BuildingUP.biz to stay on top of current issues and trends in accounting and business technology.

December 13, 2012March 26, 2019

Small Business Owner to Accountant: Make Accounting Valuable to ME

Accounting services should be useful to a business owner, providing valuable insight into the business performance and activity. Accounting professionals believe their services have value, but find it difficult to express that value when selling their services to prospective clients.

The problem is that most professional accounting firms believe that what they sell is accounting: accounting services, tax preparation, audits, etc. While this may be the essential list of functions they perform on behalf of business clients, accounting, per se, is not what the professional should be selling – at least, not if they want business owners to buy.

You see, accounting is dumb and boring – a necessary evil of doing business for most business owners. Accounting is what happens to paperwork at the end of the month. Business owners don’t want to know about accounting. They want to be able to sleep at night. Business owners want to be able to know what they need to do to keep the business moving along. They don’t want to have to check the bank account balance every morning. Business owners simply want to know what they need to do to get the results they’re looking to achieve.

Accounting professionals – don’t talk to your clients about how great your accounting is, or about debits and credits. They don’t know and don’t want to know. Good accounting is expected from you; it isn’t a selling feature. Talk to your clients about the picture the data paints about their business, and about how you can help them to meet their needs and help them achieve their goals. That’s a value proposition that says something.

Make Sense?

Joanie Mann Bunny Feet J

*Note: this short article is the result of a recent conversation with my good friend and a consummate professional, Penny Breslin of MoneyPenny LLC. Penny and I both work with a lot of accounting professionals and the “song remains the same” no matter where we look. Accounting pros continue to be challenged in communicating the value of their services to business clients, and it’s all because they continue to talk about accounting (thinking anyone cares). Go figure.

December 7, 2012January 3, 2018

Accounting Professionals Should Help Business Clients Help Themselves

Accounting professionals are being challenged as the perceived value of the services they traditionally provide to business owners is diminishing.

Where the accounting professional was once viewed as valuable and integral player in the development of periodic business financial reports and the preparation of the annual tax return, many small business owners are now realizing that this post-facto activity delivers limited value to them on a daily basis.

These business owners are more frequently turning to cloud solutions and online application services to provide them with constant access to the information they believe will help them manage their daily operations, and are often implementing the solutions without the knowledge or participation of their public accounting professionals.

Access to real time banking information allows a business owner to see activities relating to deposits and payments, yet fails to reflect pending receipts and payments. Anyone familiar with managing a checkbook understands this reality, and so do many small business owners, so they find ways to keep track of those undeposited funds and near-term receivables, as well as the outstanding checks for bills paid.

With a small business, cash is king, and managing the cash flow is often the greatest daily concern of the small business owner.

After the fact reporting and an annual tax return, no matter how accurately and professionally prepared, will not help the business owner manage their cash right now.

Business owners are seeking to obtain more frequent and in-depth information about their businesses, and are taking steps to obtain it.

Accounting professionals serving these clients, while facing shrinking profit margins on current offerings, are not stepping in to take advantage of the opportunity to regain their position as the adviser and consultant to the business client.

As a result, business owners are getting their “business intelligence” from other sources, even further diminishing the value of the accounting professional’s involvement.

Accounting professionals must recognize that highly useful and valuable tools exist now to help small business owners understand their businesses better, and which provide a level of education and guidance to help them make the various decisions they may face.

Rather than viewing these solutions as competitive to the value of the accounting professional, accountants should embrace and adopt the use of these tools with their clients, and evolve the professional practice to helping ensure that the information presented in those solutions is always up-to-date and accurate.

By using these solutions to help educate the client as to the variety of situations which may arise in the business, the accountant significantly increases their opportunity to identify new areas of service where they may deliver a higher level of tangible and ongoing value to the client.

Make Sense?

QuickBooks Niche Practice Specialties:

Tools for Accountants Working With Contractors

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

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Dashboard Reporting Tools: Gauging Accounting Relevance

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CooperMann 2012 in review

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Accounting professionals are being challenged as the perceived value of the services they traditionally provide to business owners is diminishing.

With a small business, cash is king, and managing the cash flow is often the greatest daily concern of the small business owner.

Accounting professionals must recognize that highly useful and valuable tools exist now to help small business owners understand their businesses better, and which provide a level of education and guidance to help them make the various decisions they may face.

Share this: