Growing Opportunities in Accounting Practices

Smaller accounting practices have an inherent disadvantage of the fact that, most of them are personality driven businesses. This means, there is a limit to their growth opportunities. What is it, that they can do, to reduce their attention to non-core operations and concentrate on opportunities for growing their practice.

If you may have noticed, in spite of current economic condition, all companies still need to have their talent in place to snap-back successfully. Today finance and accounting workers are tasked with key ambitions like driving the direction of their company’s business process, hunt out with cost saving opportunities within the organization and advising management on decisions smashing profits and losses.

Still, today accounting has become a low margin substance service and also the tax preparation market is compressing. So, how should accountants grow their practices? That is why we have brought one of the great leaders in the accounting profession who will reveal the growth opportunities, by which we can improve our level and can touch the highest point of success. Dr.Chandra Bhansali, co-founder of the Accountants World has been serving the accounting industry since 1985 and is one among the many who is cloud computing solutions pioneers of the industry.

Dr.Chandra shares his experiences and says that the “do-it yourself” system of accounting and tax programs are the products of PC era. These kinds of software are stealing the opportunities of accountants and making the future of accountants, dimmer. But luckily new technological headways have created massive new opportunities to recover, but we should give enough importance to the major challenges that comes in today’s accounting. A few are listed here for you:

Time Spent on Non-productive Tasks

In accountancy we do all tasks on a regular basis but there are many non-productive tasks which just give nightmares to any person, like

  • Fixing client bookkeeping errors
  • Managing different versions of accounting software
  • Transferring data files back and forth
  • Preparation of fully customizable financials
  • Sending and receiving paperwork from clients

The above tasks show the typical process of managing accounts in desktop QuickBooks or any other Do-it yourself accounting system. But the best part is that these all tasks don’t even belong to core accounting. They are all routine non-productive tasks, so now we can say that you are offering what is perceived by your clients as a commodity matter. What could be worse than that? How can we heal this situation?

Today we have revolutionary new cloud technology that provides an elegant solution to the problem, and for that we are introducing a better model named Accountant-center model. This puts accountants back, at the center of client accounting where they belong, and enables you to work collaboratively with your clients so now let’s examine the inner workings of accountant-centric solution.

In the accountant-centric model, there is one unified cloud-based system that allows both you and your client access at any time using the Internet. There is nothing installed on your PC or on your client’s PCs, so you can work from any web-enabled computer device. You can also electronically download the bank statements, credit card statements etc, which reduces data entry significantly and makes write up work more profitable. Now let’s see how it makes opportunities for you.

Opportunity #1

Regain Control of Accounting and Strengthen Precious Client Relationship
If you want to capitalize on the massive growth opportunities presented by cloud, you must regain control of client relationships. Only accountant-centric solution like accounting power lets you accomplish that. Accountant-centric solutions are sold exclusively to you and you decide what access you want to give to your clients. Providers of accountant-centric solutions do not sell any of their product and services directly to your clients.

A Word of Caution

Don’t assume that if a solution is cloud-based, it would be an accountant-centric solution. Virtually all cloud solutions, with the exception of accounting power, are “do-it-yourself” solutions that are sold directly to your clients. By their basic premise, they diminish your client relationships. In accountant-centric solutions it helps you to strengthen your client bonds which are crucial for longer retention of your clients and growing your practice.

Opportunity #2

  • Make clients accounting 30-50% more profitable
  • Greatly minimizes client errors
  • Eliminates cumbersome file transfers
  • We all can work with the latest version
  • No travelling to client locations for bookkeeping
  • Easy sharing of documents
  • No risk of data loss

Opportunity #3

  • You can become an indispensable “virtual CFO”
  • Client snapshot and alerts
  • Provides client dashboard

Opportunity #4

  • Turning a “No-Gain, All –pain” service into a “No-pain, all-gain.
  • Accountant’s world’s payroll relief has completely automated payroll processing

Opportunity #5

  • The opportunity worth billions of dollars that accountants can’t afford to miss

#Summary

It is the perfect solution for complete cloud based practice system that provides virtually every accountant centric solution you need to run your practice at a highly affordable price, which even the smallest firm can afford.

Read E-Book: REMOTE STAFFING IS BETTER THAN OUTSOURCING

Social Media a Tool to Understand Trend and React for Accountants

Managers and social media team will listen to conversations taking place on social media and look for opportunities to participate and engage customers and prospects.

It’s important – and helpful – to conduct social listening to:

  1. Respond to complaints.
  2. Share compliments.
  3. Solve customer problems.
  4. Answer audience questions.
  5. Know what’s what.
  6. Crisis management.
  7. Competition monitoring.
  8. Trend spotting.
  9. Influencer discovery.

Here’s an example.
In 2013, actor James Gandolfini died. Shortly afterward, there was a great deal of media coverage about the $30 million estate tax mistake. If your firm specialized in estate planning at the time, it should have been talking about the services it offered. You may have shared whitepapers/checklist/tip sheets people could have used for estate-planning purposes.

I’m not saying to mention the mistake and cash in on the death; but rather to discuss the benefits of estate planning; what it means to be prepared; and how to find the right firm to help you leave the legacy you planned.

What and who should you monitor?

Here is a list of things you, or someone in your firm, should be monitoring, beginning with your own brand, the firm’s leaders, and those who may be in the community manager role at your firm (monitor both their professional and persona profiles).

  • Names of products or services without your brand or firm name
  • Slogans
  • Campaigns or advertising efforts (branded hashtags, characters from advertisements, etc.)
  • Top players in your firm
    • Your CEO/ C-Suite leaders
    • Founder(s)
    • Editors, journalists, etc.
    • Anyone with a potential media following.

Why should you monitor your firm?

  1. Not everyone will use your brand name when talking about you – don’t miss out on important feedback and insights into what people think about your products and services.
  2. Brand awareness. Why are or aren’t people associating your product with your brand?
  3. Evaluate effectiveness of marketing and advertising efforts. How is your messaging and positioning being received?
  4. Issues management. Your brand isn’t the only thing that might elicit attention. Keep tabs on top players to stay ahead of any potential trending story.

Your Competition

Yes, monitoring your top competition or the competition in a new market or client industry is important

  • to discover topics of interest;
  • to find potential, real-time leads and marketing opportunities;
  • to shape future marketing efforts; and
  • to see how you stack up against the competition to see how you can adjust your products, services or social media efforts.


Your Industry

Not only should someone be monitoring your industry, but also those of your clients. Industry monitoring, or listening, is important

  • to help you make strategic decisions in relation to marketing product and service improvements;
  • to stay on top of market trends;
  • to join the right conversations at the right time;
  • to stand out as an industry leader;
  • to identify people (leads) who are actively searching for your products/services; and
  • to find opportunities for real-time marketing.

Listening Tools

According to a Huffington Post article, here are top five, free social media listening tools for every brand:

Google Alerts: It’s a great way to see if any website is posting information about you, your brand, a product line, your clients, competition, etc. Simply enter the word/phrase/name/brand you want to monitor into this free tool to get alerts sent to an email address. You can also get instant alerts by tagging your search phrase “as it happens” in the “how often” category.

TweetDeck/Hootsuite: You can scan Twitter in real time, which is convenient for those who may not be using your hashtag or handle. This instant tool allows you to reply quickly.

Icerocket: This blog-searching tool also works well with Facebook, Twitter and Flickr (photo sharing tool).

Social Mention: This social media aggregator tool captures activity on a lot of social platforms, including YouTube and some photo sharing platforms. It’s a good tool to help determine sentiment (positive, negative, neutral comments about a topic/brand).

Topsy: This tool has a main focus for social media, multimedia and blogs. You don’t have to register, but you do have the option of creating an email alert (it ties into your Twitter or Facebook account).

Activity

  1. Visit one of these platforms.
  2. Enter a few search terms related to your topic.
  3. What responses do you get? Anything worthwhile?
  4. If so, write down the sources for future connection and listening.
  5. Which resource worked better for you?

Read E-Book: REMOTE STAFFING IS BETTER THAN OUTSOURCING

Reality of Cloud Based Accounting Software

When we talk about trends in accounting Application, it is clearly tempting to bring automation and data flow management these days, but there’s more to it than that.

Yes, we’re being driven to Accounting 2.0, where accountants are financial guides and yes, accounting firms are pushing for subscription revenue, which leads them right into the cloud. And yes, we’re doing more with less and saving time for clients. All of these things are true.

But the real interesting trend underlying all of this is the shift to cloud infrastructure. The cynic in me always says that this is due to revenue concerns.

You drop a desktop program in the cloud, add a handful of features, and turn your one-time $400 purchase into a $150 per-year recurring revenue stream. The reality is, the cloud is just better.

Using shared resources does three things – probably more than three, but people love three, so here we are – to benefit accounting Application users:

  1. It speeds up processing and opens up new reporting tools. By calling up the power of an AWS or an Azure, you’re able to accomplish all sorts of tasks that your 2006 Lenovo is going to struggle with. You can use character recognition on receipts, tap third-party resources in seconds, and keep backup ?les that live on despite local drive failures. Putting accounting in the cloud gives you access to raw power.
  2. The cloud brings technology together like spiked punch at prom. Banks are easier to work with, third party add-ons are easier to integrate, and you can use mobile devices to give clients access on the go. This is a winner in my book, but it can make you miserable. Clients can now reach in to wreck things from anywhere in the United States, ask you to look at their books in the middle of the night, and try to fix it themselves. I think the overall value of connectedness is positive, but there are some cons to overcome.
  3. Finally, the cloud gives accounting Application vendors the chance to make data beautiful again. You may never notice this, but the way we design Application for online use used to be driven by database size constraints. To overcome these, Application vendors would create workarounds, build weird parallel databases, or have one system in Phoenix and another in Des Moines. Today’s technology allows us to build well-structured, easily accessible, and quickly manipulated (see point 1) databases. This happens so far behind the scenes that you’d never know it, but the work being done today is going to change the way accounting Application works over the next five years. In fact, it’s already begun.
  4. Automation and Data Flow. Layered on top of all this beautiful infrastructure are the two trends we touched on at the start of this whole thing – automation and data flow. The biggest trends in accounting Application boil down to how we can manage data with even less input.

Optical character recognition (OCR) is changing the way businesses record expenses, allowing them to simply take pictures of their receipts. This is technology that’s existed for years, but with more access to massive banks of processing power, it can happen in a fraction of the time it traditionally took. The tectonic shift of all the data we generate is also undergoing automation. We talk about removing double-entry issues to cut down on errors, but let’s be honest – this is data that was sometimes being entered into five different places anyway. Manual entry is the bane of clean data and we’re basically eradicating it from the process.

We’re going to continue spending less time capturing data, less time inputting it, and less time moving it from its origination point to its destination. It’s all going to happen on the back of the cloud infrastructure that we’re building.

Concluding Thoughts

The quality of the products moving to the cloud need to step it up. A lagging, buggy, and generally infuriating user experience can’t be the norm. Hideous facades are overshadowing lots of fantastic options and that has to end. If we’re going to jump into the world of cloud-based accounting, tapping into the power and accessibility it provides, we have to make the experience for accountants more positive than it currently is. I also think the tech war is going to slow in the next few years and the real user experience war is going to kick off. Then, we’ll start to see more stories of real success.

Read E-Book: REMOTE STAFFING IS BETTER THAN OUTSOURCING

Hiring Guide: How to Hire and Manage Remote Employees

Remote staff can be massive assets, who can provide reasonable support in a wide range of positions in small and mid-size accounting firms. By keeping costs down without sacrificing the quality, companies around the globe have been able to redefine the place of work environment and grasp nontraditional models in new and creative ways.

Finding and hiring the right remote employees can be similar to that of a local one, but a little differently as the interview, tests and all other procedures are carried out online. That’s another story however. When you require to pull the right employee, hire only the best, and keep a team of remote employees energized and joyful, these tips will help ensure you’re heading the right way.

Find the Right Fit for Your Company

Finding talent remains a huge challenge for many small and mid-size accounting firms. Reviewing applications, interviewing candidates and negotiating salaries, all take precious time away from a your existing obligations, which may end up hurting the business in the long run. That’s why more and more firms are partnering with staffing agencies, which take a lot of the time and effort out of the talent search by providing their own workers for open roles.

Fast hiring.

The job market has improved considerably over the past several years, and candidates now have an upper hand. This means the hiring process is longer and more difficult than in years past.  “Great talent becomes harder to find, and it becomes extremely time-consuming for firms reviewing resumes and conduct interviews, all while still being responsible for their day-to-day operations,”

“Turning to a trusted staffing partner can save time and money. A staffing firm can prescreen and qualify candidates to ensure you always interview those candidates who are a fit for the role.”

Accounting firms are trying to be more productive and only have staff when they are absolutely needed. Here’s where Entigrity Remote staffing comes into play and allows you to hire staff as per your requirement, even if it is temporary, part-time, hourly or simply project based.

Test Skills if Needed

Remote team members have allowed accounting firms to recruit from a larger talent pool instead of being limited to the geographic locations where their offices are located. The hiring process is similar to hiring any in-house employee. You will have candidates’ resume and you can shortlist candidates according to specifications. At a convenient time you a video interview can be arranged where you can personally meet the candidate online and ask questions. These assessments can cover an extensive variety of topics, including software skills for programs like QuickBooks Online and Xero, accounting principles, journal entries, financial statement generation and analysis, and more. Once you are satisfied with employee skills, you can hire.

How Will You Manage Your Remote Employee/Staff?

Online Communication

Using cloud technology Remote employees can be able to access software and tools. When you choose cloud accounting versus a regular in-house team, this can often mean a change to traditional communication practices. Remote employees have access to tech support, HR, and other company resources. You can manage your remote staff using communication tools include face time as well; using Skype and similar apps for team meetings can bring a remotely working employee into the loop.

Working with cloud accounting can be a great way to save time and work securely, providing a better alternative for teams on a budget.

Establish Time Tracking

While hiring remote staff, you can actually track your staff’s performance using good monitoring and time tracking software. Accurately monitoring the time your team spends working on client projects, on internal tasks and on non- business related things can assist you gain a greater understanding of exactly what is happening every day.

Remote worker’s workflow management and time tracking also offer those who manage remote or distributed team’s peace of mind and security as all work is tracked and documented through software and performance indicators.

Benefits of working with virtual/remote team

With cloud accounting services, utilizing a remote team for your bookkeeping and accounting gives you access to a full team with years of experience that specializes in your exact business for less than the cost of a full time or part-time in-house employees. Specific benefits also include:

  • You don’t have to spend as much after training the employees
  • Recourses can be scaled up or down in the case of requirements
  • No cost of benefits, taxes, payroll, etc.
  • It’s least expensive
  • Least risks of attrition
  • Don’t have to compromise to outsource/vendor’s terms.

You will also gain an experience team of people who have different experiences and backgrounds to manage your stuff.

Similar to find on-site local bookkeeper, finding the right virtual team for your business can also be a challenge. You need to find a responsive and reliable staffing company that can give you the specific care and service your business requires.

Read E-Book: 10 BEST PRACTICES OF WORKING WITH REMOTE STAFF

Turn Data into Analytics: The Accounting Firms Perspective for Better Decision making

Everyone is discussing analytics nowadays. As we accumulate more information about our clients, we have to discover approaches to transform that info into bits of knowledge that drive more grounded basic leadership.

The discussion used to be about enormous data. That was a discourse about how to legitimately store the huge amounts of client demographics and trends assaulting the enterprise. If you haven’t figured that out yet, take a step back and do some big data research.

However, expecting you’ve made figuring out where your info is and how to get to it, you now need to recognize what to do with it. The accounting firms that influence the best utilization of their data to will win the day, while those that depend on manual procedures and Excel spreadsheets will fall behind.

Here are some tips on how accounting firms can most efficiently move from data to insight to decision.

Make the time

With so many daily tasks already making up your routine, finding time for analytics can be difficult. But the end result is worth it.

if you asked any firm owner if they’d like to make the switch, they would say ‘yes’ but they just can’t get enough extra time in their days to make it happen. To find extra time to offer a different service line, practice owners have to reduce the time spent on data and compliance, and that happens with process and technology.

Get the right software

With the amount of data accessible to today’s accounting firms, analytics can’t be done accurately without the proper software in place. Softwares like Hubdoc, Receipt Bank, and Xero are specially designed to help accounting managers find the secrets hiding within their data and transform those into circumstances their rivals may have missed.

“Using tools like Hubdoc and Receipt Bank processes can auto-post these exchanges into Xero. “Hubdoc goes one bit more distant, actually fetching your documents from banks and vendors, even posting the latter directly into Xero as well.”

If necessary, offload to a third party

Controlling and utilizing your own analytics software may be too tall an order, especially for small and mid-sized accounting firms. In this case, it makes sense to offload the work to a third party. Give them access to the data, then let them crunch the numbers and come back with analytics that will drive smarter decisions.

Some analytics partners accounting firms can work with include:

Oracle NetSuite

Workday Financial Memo

SEI Archway

Data Information investigation is an IT buzzword, not an accounting one. Be that as it may, the process is highly technical, it still applies to accounting firms. Each industry is hopping on the investigation fleeting trend, and yours should be no different– and in the event that you slack, you’ll fall behind your associates. Take the time, make the investment, and reap the benefits.

Read E-Book: 10 BEST PRACTICES OF WORKING WITH REMOTE STAFF

Cloud-based Accounting Software Backed by Cloud-Based Staffing – A Game Changer

Cloud Accounting software - Entigrity



Today, Accounting Firms have numerous tasks much more complex and interdependent than ever before. Smart accounting firms, moving with the times, have adopted several technologies such as Cloud-based Accounting Software. With the advent of always-on Internet and decent computing prowess, local software installations are now things of past. To begin with, as compared to any locally installed and deployed accounting software, any Cloud-based accounting software is much easier and secure to use and deploy.

Not just large accounting biggies but several small- to mid- sized accounting firms too have made the switch from local to cloud, given the numerous benefits and conveniences of having Cloud-based Accounting Software. Recent upgrades in computing technology makes a positive difference in the way accounting firms operate.

So by virtue of cloud technology, nowadays, working from within office premises is not a necessity or compulsion. Cloud technology offers various methods, protocols, and options for having access to all necessary to be worked upon, for example the luxury of accessing all your files and documents stored at one centralized spot. This flexibility allows anyone to work from anywhere provided they have the right device and internet connectivity. Moreover, you can even have an experienced and renowned an onshore or offshore cloud-based staffing solution provider, who undertakes and works for your accounting firm using Cloud-based accounting software for all functions and services.

Speaking about any on-shore cloud-based staffing solution providers, it is worthy to mention their availability around your local region of business operations making it more convenient to communicate and meet in person with your requirements and processes for exchanging ideas and expectations with greater clarity. They are easily reachable during your working hours, and easier to communicate with, given the familiarity of language and mannerisms. Just like your in-house employees will know and understand accounting and tax laws, financial systems, and compliances and implications much better, on-shore cloud-based staffing solution providers too all well-versed and updated with all recent changes and amendments to all legal legislatures at any given point of time.

However, with offshore cloud-based staff, you face lesser compliance hassles in terms of hiring employees, setting up business premises medicals and health benefits, etc. Furthermore, in most cases, there are more options of talented resource available at your disposal to choose from when selecting employees who will work for you, in a remote staffing firm. In fact, a majority of cases describe having candidates who are more qualified and with greater years of relevant experience relevant to accounting, taxes, and financial systems than locally available candidates. With modern tools, methods, and mediums available for bridging the communication gap using audio and video calling capabilities, monitoring and reporting daily work-performance activities is far more simpler and faster than before with offshore remote staff! Your remote staff executes daily tasks and job work with comparatively greater precision and efficiency as well as fills in time sheets in the exact same manner any local employee would!

Additionally, there are comparatively lesser costs, time spent, and hassles when having an offshore remote staff involved than recruiting a local expert for your firm. There are also lesser costs involved in training and setting up infrastructure for each locally hired employee. For the cost of hiring one personnel for your firm, you can have an almost small team working for you with a remote staffing solution provider! Having a larger team, works in your favor having much more work done for a fraction of the costs having local employees. Having saved up costs in all pre-business activities, you can redirect all resources — time, efforts, and money — to other activities like planning, marketing, forecasting, etc.! Consequently, this is what the game changer is!

Considering all the various benefits of having an on-shore or an offshore workforce at your disposal, there are numerous security concerns regarding your prestigious, confidential business data. However, with a trustworthy remote staffing solutions provider, cloud based off-shore staffing solution promises to be a significantly beneficial, safe & secure option for leveraging your business capabilities and growth options in the near future!

In fact, a majority of cases describe having candidates who are more qualified and with greater years of relevant experience relevant to accounting, taxes, and financial systems than locally available candidates. With modern tools, methods, and mediums available for bridging the communication gap using audio and video calling capabilities, monitoring and reporting daily work-performance activities is far more simpler and faster than before with offshore remote staff! Your remote staff executes daily tasks and job work with comparatively greater precision and efficiency as well as fills in time sheets in the exact same manner any local employee would!

Additionally, there are comparatively lesser costs, time spent, and hassles when having an offshore remote staff involved than recruiting a local expert for your firm. There are also lesser costs involved in training and setting up infrastructure for each locally hired employee. For the cost of hiring one personnel for your firm, you can have an almost small team working for you with a remote staffing solution provider! Having a larger team, works in your favor having much more work done for a fraction of the costs having local employees. Having saved up costs in all pre-business activities, you can redirect all resources — time, efforts, and money — to other activities like planning, marketing, forecasting, etc.! Consequently, this is what the game changer is!

Considering all the various benefits of having an on-shore or an offshore workforce at your disposal, there are numerous security concerns regarding your prestigious, confidential business data. However, with a trustworthy remote staffing solutions provider, cloud based off-shore staffing solution promises to be a significantly beneficial, safe & secure option for leveraging your business capabilities and growth options in the near future!

Read E-Book: 10 BEST PRACTICES OF WORKING WITH REMOTE STAFF

5 Keys Skills Helpful for Budding Accountants Outgrow Their Peers

In today’s fast-evolving accounting industry, accounting and finance professionals must possess razor-sharp analytical abilities, impeccable interpersonal skills, and a thorough understanding of industry-standard accounting software applications. Simply having these skillsets doesn’t empower you for surging ahead of competing peers from your accounting industry. Recognizing skills, leading to success in accounting, not only increase your job satisfaction but also simplify it in building towards your long-term career goals. So, how do you know if your career graph is steering towards the top of the pile, or is detoured to get the short end of the stick? We’ve penned down a few tips for helping you develop the necessary finance skills that will put you in a leading position for a promising career in finance.

1. Financial Management Skills:

Organizations are looking for employees proficient at lateral thinking, with ability to analyze scenarios, and draw suitable conclusions at the spur of the moment! Suitable candidates who are looking for a successful career in finance must demonstrate their analytical abilities with real-world problems, and results-driven efforts. It is undeniable that financial reporting skills are a requisite with areas such as super-forecasting. Along with, acute sense of budgeting, all aspects of business valuation, among a host of other financial management skills are a fundamental must-know for aspirants from the financial accounting industry. With all such foundation skillsets, one cannot begin their journey on the stormy seas of accounting and financial industry.

2. Analytical ability

Today, it is a daunting task to find candidates with financial analysis skills. Organizations are looking employees who can implement lateral thinking, the ability to analyze situations, and predict suitable conclusions. It becomes imperative for any financial accounting professional to have a keen learning and foresight into assessment, evaluation, planning of various aspects of business finance functions which lend the business its power to keep running; day in, day out. Without any analytical evaluation, no crucial plans and decisions can be taken by the organizations’ management board. Moreover, simply having knowledge of how stuff works isn’t enough. You need to also observe patterns and occurrences, analyze the results, and forecast any problems. This should be stringently followed with any fallback plans, means and methods, and probable course of actions to resolve such impending situations.

3. Organizational Skills:

Accounting professionals are important people. They manage a lot of financial data, which means that they generally are held responsible for, and need to stay sharp with all financial concepts and procedures thoroughly. This is only possible if you have an organized and structured approach to all your daily work routine and the way you manage your clients’ financial data. To be a good accountant you must have a system to keep track of any portfolios you handle, the transactions you oversee, and any important dates and deadlines you have scheduled for — for ensuring that you fulfill all of your duties to the best of your abilities. Use software tools like calendars, alphabetized folders, day planners, color-coded post-it notes, and highlighters, along with software, which helps you stay highly organized.

4. Information Technology Skills

The advancement in technology has encouraged the procedure of digitization. The rise of cloud storage has additionally conveyed rapid changes as to how reports are managed, and cloud-based capacity and portal application to store critical documents have turned out to be prominent. In addition, most leading accounting software has evolved significantly with advanced capabilities and become easy to use, reliable, versatile, and also allows enhanced integration with online services. In the future, an accountant or financial professional will need to emphasize his role as ‘trusted advisor’ for all such software applications as all confidential client data is processed, stored, and managed in digital format. Any software eventually delivers is efficiency, with a specific end goal to create the fundamental capacity, and resources to deliver that new role. Thus, financial professionals with the right IT skills to leverage new financial systems are the new requisite criteria in growing accounting organizations. Accounting professionals who can demonstrate knowledge and proficiency in predictive analytics, accounts payable automation, SAP accounting software or Oracle will find themselves in-demand.

5. General Business Skills:

Over and above the basic skillsets, which define a candidate fit for accounting business, several general skills do take precedence when an employer decides to finalize the person for the role in his organization. Having good time-management skills go hand-in-hand in with strong organizational capabilities. An accountant must also know how to budget your time, assign priorities, and execute numerous tasks in parallel. Meeting deadlines and continually re-prioritizing your task list according to the urgency of the situations goes a long way in taking you far. Well-developed interpersonal skills useful for networking, written communication, working as a team, client interaction, etc. are some of the personal skills that give an edge over your competition. Being honest and unflinching integrity are the most valued characteristics in the professional world. Nonetheless, someone who takes the initiative, mentors and teaches subordinates, and takes confidence, patience, and the ability to delegate chores and tasks with the confidence to see them completed, go to make a good leader for the organization.

The makings of a successful professional involve understanding your industry well, knowing the workings of your business organization thoroughly, and your personal strengths and weaknesses inside-out to maximize their application for achieving desired results. That said, a successful professional is one who understands what to act, when to act, and how to act.

Read E-Book: 10 BEST PRACTICES OF WORKING WITH REMOTE STAFF

Top 5 Issues faces by CPA and Accounting Firms and Their Solutions

With the fast-changing scenario in the accounting industry, firms now encounter issues every single day. In 2017 a PCPS survey conducted by AICPA over CPAs and Accounting firms, indicated that staffing is a major challenge; so much so that the issues arising out out staffing is a speedbreaker to every other progress coming your way. Below are 5 issues that were identified common to everyone.

  • Finding and retaining qualified staff
  • Greater Client Expectations
  • Attracting and retaining clients
  • Advancement of Technology
  • Workflow and efficiency

Let’s go through each and also have an idea how they can be overcome.

1. Finding and retaining qualified staff

Talent acquisition and retention are becoming the single biggest challenge to many accounting firms. Unfortunately, accounting firms find it hard to find the right staff who is qualified as well as experienced. Most of the leaders are approaching retirement and the need for new talent is in high demand. Growing hiring cost, salaries, compliances and benefits cost like insurance, payroll tax, professional training, etc. only make things more difficult.

Solution To get rid of this headache Remote Staffing is the best solution. In Remote Staff, Hiring process remains exactly the same as Hiring In-Office Staff. When you hire a remote staff, you don’t need to pay any employment benefits, insurance policy, pay for a bigger office space, tax and more. 

2. Greater Client Anticipations

Years ago accounting firms and CPAs were only seen as services providers for tax and accounting. But now, clients recognize them as consultants, advisors, and partners. Their clients’ expectations are not limited to just tax compliance or accounting needs; now they expect you to play the role of a consultant or a CFO or an advisor where you will work alongside their business and play a pivotal role in helping them make better decisions for business future.
 

Solution This is not a challenge, instead it is an opportunity, provided following things are taken care of:

  • Hiring quality talent
  • Establishing internal processes which help deliver high-quality work
  • Continuously analyzing and reviewing the needs of clients
  • Also, keeping up with changes and complexity of tax laws is necessary.

3. Attracting and retaining clients Marketing and communication today play a very critical role in the operations of an accounting firm. As said earlier, the client expectations are changing, hence the communication and marketing strategy also needs to be changed accordingly. Gone are the days when accounting firms acquired new clients only through referrals and there was limited marketing. So how will you overcome this limited marketing strategy to getting more clients?

Solution As we grew gradually over 25-30 years, today social media like LinkedIn, Twitter, emails, content marketing, websites are various avenues which allow you to communicate and reach to attract your potential clients, provided they are appropriately used as tools of marketing and communication. Apart from that, there are other conventional avenues that still work, for example, referrals, participation in networking events or community meetings and similar programs. Asking for referrals from current clients is also still one to do it of course. It is great to be progressive and focus on your company’s core capabilities but being able to offer advanced value services to your business clients brings better results too.

4. Advancement of Technology Technological advances could be a challenge to them who are neutral or moving away from it. On the other hand, it is fruitful to them who live playing with it. The evolution from traditional to modern procedures are a concern for most accounting firms as they struggle to cope up with changing technology and automation to meet clients’ expectations. Nearly more than 50% of the surveyed CPAs accepted adopting new technology issues as a personal and among top challenges for their firms.

Solution Finding the right accounting software for your firm, more usage of secure cloud-based services and efficient workflow management systems are the keys to achieving better business goals. In the era of new technology, simply using the right software at the right time can cut the workload by 50%. The human resource can have their workload distributed. The latest technology allows firms to persist in a tech world.

5. Workflow and efficiency A carefully organized workflow is the most common element to begin managing firm-wide proficiency. Efficiency refers to how well we use technology and resources; it is measurable. Progresses to efficiency cannot be accepted without meaningful measurement. Solution The best way to expand efficiency is to identify the metrics used in the training today to measure activity you wish to improve before you change how you do something. With efficiency measurements, the number of resources necessary to accomplish work that can be measured and later compared to results. To keep up with the accelerating bound of conversion and complexity, CPAs must become more ample, tech-savvy, and proactive to preserve their competitive edge.

How Entigrity can help? Entigrity Remote Staffing has worked with over 500 accounting firms across United States and Canada. Our unique remote staffing model has helped them hire experienced and qualified staff at 75% less salaries and contributed to overall firms’ profit. Besides the technology friendly systems have eased down the communication and overall operation.

Entigrity Ladies Day Out On International Women’s Day

International women’s day is a celebration of all the societal, literary and political achievements by women worldwide. It was first observed on Feb 28th in 1909, but the date March 8th was formally declared to be the day in 1910. Today it’s not country, group or organization it’s about women collectively everywhere.

From grassroots activism to worldwide action, we are entering an exciting period of history where the world expects balance. The theme for this year’s women’s day is #BalanceForBetter, with regards to the greater global push for professional and social equality. Its objective is to achieve a sense of balance in companies and elsewhere, right from the grassroots level to the boardrooms.

Although a huge gender divide still exists where women are under-represented in the field of science, technology, engineering, politics, business, etc but we actually need their ideas, insights and experiences to  meet world’s needs and truly leave no one behind. A good sign is that there is great involvement of women in healthcare, education and very importantly accounting.

Speaking of accounting, in 1977 28% of women graduated with an accounting degree, while in 2011, that number raised up to 53% of graduating accountants being female and is expecting a 13 percent increase by 2022, providing an additional 166,700 job opportunities for certified public accountants.

As a policy Entigrity Remote Staffing practices and enforces complete gender equality & parity and absolutely no tolerance for discrimination or biases. We really appreciate the talent, skills and experience our women bring and also the dedication and responsibility they exhibit when it comes to delivering great quality work.

As the day belongs to women, it certainly calls for celebration, ladies from Entigrity had an all girls’ day out where they gathered for a theme (and team) lunch amidst talks and frolic. Coming to work was however absolutely not optional due to the ongoing tax season, which must be a very respectable mention here as no lady called it a day off. We highly honor your willingness to finish the work at hand before trying any other thing.

In a call to balance the world better in terms of gender, we must understand that gender balance is not a women’s issue, it’s a business issue; it is essential for economies and communities to thrive.

With that note, we just hope that more and more women trust Entigrity as a preferred  organization to pursue their careers. Also we equally applaud our women clients & we are proud of their work ethics & achievements. Thanks for your trust & support.

It’s rightly said though,“Think equal, build smart, innovate for change”.

#BalanceforBetter

Entigrity Remote Staffing gets BBB Accreditation

This week, Entigrity Remote Staffing (Entigrity Solutions LLC) announced its recent Accreditation by the Better Business Bureau. As a BBB Accredited Business, Entigrity is dedicated to promoting trust in the marketplace and has received an A+ rating. Its Accreditation will help people understand who the organization is and the core values it believes in. You can check out Entigrity’s BBB reliability report by visiting http://www.bbb.org

BBB Accreditation Standards represent standards for business accreditation in the United States and Canada. The BBB certification is given as a result of highly ethical behavior such as transparent business practices, protection of personal information, honest advertising, and unwavering integrity. As a leader in advancing marketplace trust, BBB sets high ethical standards for business conduct.

We are proud to be a BBB Accredited Business,” said Shawn, President of Entigrity Solutions LLC. “In today’s world, it is imperative that our customers know how seriously we take our commitment to excellence and good customer service. Our achieving BBB Accreditation exemplifies that goal.”

In an effort to improve and enhance customer service to more than 500 clients nationwide, Entigrity is easily a leading remote service provider to the folks in accounting industry. Employees at Entigrity are trained with these standards in mind; in fact the policies are introduced to them as part of induction program and every new employee signs up on the condition to comply by the policies.

I am glad that Entigrity received accreditation. Our continued commitment towards our client centric approach has paid off.” said Valay, Head of Operations (India). He also added,”It will increase our trustworthiness further into the community.

About the Better Business Bureau: As a private, non-profit organization, the purpose of the Better Business Bureau is to promote an ethical marketplace. BBB helps resolve buyer/seller complaints by means of conciliation, mediation and arbitration. BBB also reviews advertising claims, online business practices and charitable organizations. BBB develops and issues reports on business and nonprofit organizations besides encouraging people to check out a company or charity before making a purchase or donation.

About Entigrity: Entigrity Remote Staffing is headquartered in New York. We are a leading remote staffing services provider to CPA firms, Accounting Practices, Accounting Firms, Enrolled Agents, Accountants & Tax Professionals, CFOs & Controllers and Recruitment & Staffing Companies. We help them hire qualified and experienced remote staff at economic costs and save up to 75% on labor costs. Entigrity Remote Staffing is working with over 500 CPAs and public accounting firms nationwide.

Read E-Book: 10 BEST PRACTICES OF WORKING WITH REMOTE STAFF