Articles
From our Business Experts
The Money Time Conundrum
Imagine this: you’re doing a client’s books and you discover a way to save them $4,000 (let’s say in A/R). You notice it and you spend about an hour setting up a report that highlights aged debtors over 30 days AND you put in place an auto-mailer that chases down debts effectively. What is this worth…
The market has changed: have you?
The market has changed; it’s true. If you are struggling at the keyboard, overloaded, feeling under-valued, delivering a bookkeeping service with yesterday’s skills and tools, take a good look around: it’s not the marketplace it once was. Stuff has changed..
Befriending the Robots
The term digital disruption is in common use these days, describing a phenomenon that not only threatens industries, but in some cases, actually destroys an industry. Think video outlets and music outlets. The question on the table is – as the graphic above implies – are robots going to destroy the bookkeeper role?..
The Art of Haggling
Haggling is good. Haggling can work. In some cultures an absence of haggling is considered rude, offensive (“you are not taking me seriously”). The challenge for accounting and bookkeeping professionals is that they don’t consider it as ‘professional.’ What could more relevant to a bookkeeper or accountant than talking (a.k.a. haggling) about money..
Help Your Customers Become More Profitable
Specialist bookkeepers who develop a niche for a particular industry are becoming increasingly savvy in ways they can add value to their clients while also building their fee income.
Consider the case of a bookkeeper with a specialised knowledge of the building and construction sector.
Cash Flow Management 101
Business owners know one thing: Cash is king! Without it, the business couldn’t survive. You need cash flow to run and grow a business. How can a business owner know they can meet their payroll or be able to purchase supplies or take care of all the other business activities that require money.
Today’s Enterprising Professional
What does an enterprising bookkeeping and accounting professional look like today? Busy? Multitasking? Yes. But more important is that they are customer-focused. Intuitively we all know what this means; at a more pragmatic level it means asking yourself some tough questions.
Learning to Play a New Instrument
How committed are you to learning a new skill? Not convinced that new skills are needed going forward? You may not want to retrain as a piano accordion player but learning new skills is looming as one of the major challenges facing accounting and bookkeeping professionals. After all, nobody wants to be the next Kodak, destined for the scrapheap.
Wind up the Specialist Inside You
Lawyers do it; general medical practitioners do it, accountants do it. And most bookkeepers do it too. They mostly are generalists. After all, an accountant does accounting and a bookkeeper does bookkeeping, right? You wind yourself up each day and off you go..
Are You Tech Ready?
Disruption hurts those who aren’t prepared for it. Fairfax didn’t understand the potentially disruptive effects of the internet when they were approached by the people behind SEEK to buy into their online jobs website. Their classified revenues were decimated. In the newspaper world all the power has shifted to the audience and media businesses who can’t get their heads around that simply won’t survive.
Are You Paying Yourself Enough?
Many people had clear and stated objectives for their businesses; if there were any personal goals they were almost always subordinated to the business objectives, for example, to put some money aside for a retirement fund. Most will find themselves trapped in a comforting narrative, which says “Later, when the business can afford it, I will put aside money towards super” .
Niche is the New Black
You know which clients you want to service but are ALL your clients worth serving?
It makes a lot of sense in professional firms and business to keep your clients and to create ‘lifetime’ clients. But it may pay to narrow your target market or niche.
Articles on Best Practice
The Money Time Conundrum
Imagine this: you’re doing a client’s books and you discover a way to save them $4,000 (let’s say in A/R). You notice it and you spend about an hour setting up a report that highlights aged debtors over 30 days AND you put in place an auto-mailer that chases down debts effectively. What is this worth…
The market has changed: have you?
The market has changed; it’s true. If you are struggling at the keyboard, overloaded, feeling under-valued, delivering a bookkeeping service with yesterday’s skills and tools, take a good look around: it’s not the marketplace it once was. Stuff has changed..
Befriending the Robots
The term digital disruption is in common use these days, describing a phenomenon that not only threatens industries, but in some cases, actually destroys an industry. Think video outlets and music outlets. The question on the table is – as the graphic above implies – are robots going to destroy the bookkeeper role?..
The Art of Haggling
Haggling is good. Haggling can work. In some cultures an absence of haggling is considered rude, offensive (“you are not taking me seriously”). The challenge for accounting and bookkeeping professionals is that they don’t consider it as ‘professional.’ What could more relevant to a bookkeeper or accountant than talking (a.k.a. haggling) about money..
Help Your Customers Become More Profitable
Specialist bookkeepers who develop a niche for a particular industry are becoming increasingly savvy in ways they can add value to their clients while also building their fee income.
Consider the case of a bookkeeper with a specialised knowledge of the building and construction sector.
Cash Flow Management 101
Business owners know one thing: Cash is king! Without it, the business couldn’t survive. You need cash flow to run and grow a business. How can a business owner know they can meet their payroll or be able to purchase supplies or take care of all the other business activities that require money.
Today’s Enterprising Professional
What does an enterprising bookkeeping and accounting professional look like today? Busy? Multitasking? Yes. But more important is that they are customer-focused. Intuitively we all know what this means; at a more pragmatic level it means asking yourself some tough questions.
Learning to Play a New Instrument
How committed are you to learning a new skill? Not convinced that new skills are needed going forward? You may not want to retrain as a piano accordion player but learning new skills is looming as one of the major challenges facing accounting and bookkeeping professionals. After all, nobody wants to be the next Kodak, destined for the scrapheap.
Wind up the Specialist Inside You
Lawyers do it; general medical practitioners do it, accountants do it. And most bookkeepers do it too. They mostly are generalists. After all, an accountant does accounting and a bookkeeper does bookkeeping, right? You wind yourself up each day and off you go..
Are You Tech Ready?
Disruption hurts those who aren’t prepared for it. Fairfax didn’t understand the potentially disruptive effects of the internet when they were approached by the people behind SEEK to buy into their online jobs website. Their classified revenues were decimated. In the newspaper world all the power has shifted to the audience and media businesses who can’t get their heads around that simply won’t survive.
Are You Paying Yourself Enough?
Many people had clear and stated objectives for their businesses; if there were any personal goals they were almost always subordinated to the business objectives, for example, to put some money aside for a retirement fund. Most will find themselves trapped in a comforting narrative, which says “Later, when the business can afford it, I will put aside money towards super” .
Niche is the New Black
You know which clients you want to service but are ALL your clients worth serving?
It makes a lot of sense in professional firms and business to keep your clients and to create ‘lifetime’ clients. But it may pay to narrow your target market or niche.
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