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CPA
Leadership Report |
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CPA Leadership Report is made possible by the generous support of the sponsoring companies. |
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Promoting Continuous Improvement in CPA Firm Leadership. |
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Back in the Driver's Seat! Dr. Chandra Bhansali - President and Co-Founder, AccountantsWorld |
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Accountants may not realize it, but for the past few decades, they have lost control over client engagements. Payroll service bureaus have taken away the payroll business. Off-the-shelf tax software has chipped away at tax prep revenues. And accountants have surrendered control of the client accounting process to developers of G/L programs that ignore the crucial role of accountants. While barely any functionality is built into G/L programs to help accountants with the functions they perform—write-up, trial balance, advanced financial analysis and reporting; small business users have full access to all the features of the software. With little or no accounting knowledge, most clients end up making costly, time consuming blunders that accountants must then fix. Today’s G/L programs have proven hazardous to the accountant’s financial health. Clients think they have performed most of the work accountants used to do before, resulting in fee resistance and erosion. Meanwhile, accountants end up spending significant amounts of time fixing client errors, working around the idiosyncrasies of client G/L systems, correcting client mistakes, importing data from many different incompatible systems and even re-keying trial balance data. A new breed of Accountant-Centric solutions will put an end to the accountant’s dilemma. Accountant-Centric solutions will reestablish the accountant’s control over client engagements and create significant new revenue opportunities for accountants.
The Internet
now makes this Accountant-Centric revolution possible. Hallmarks of
Accountant-Centric solutions
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However, accountants will have the ability to configure Accountant-Centric applications selectively for each client as needed. Not only will clients have access only to those functions they have been given permission, they will typically not even see the other non-available functions. The Accountant-Centric application will transform the concept of Collaborative Client Engagements into reality.
Accountant-Centric applications will change the way accountants perform client engagements forever, creating an unprecedented productivity boost for both clients and accountants. For example, by tailoring Accountant-Centric applications to match the resources and technical sophistication of each client to achieve optimal performance, accountants will then be able to assign more routine work to clients working under their supervision. Accountants will then perform activities for their clients that are more valuable and more profitable. This “AC” world will save clients time and money while helping accountants raise the bottom line. Accountant-Centric solutions will also help accountants regain the business they have lost to competing forces like payroll services. By utilizing the capabilities of powerful Accountant-Centric payroll solutions that rival payroll service bureaus, accountants will be able to offer payroll services profitably to both existing and new clients. Accountant-Centric solutions are the next frontier that will put accountants back in the driver’s seat. The accounting firm of the “not too distant future” will profit from some remarkable innovations of Accountant-Centric solutions that will have a profound lasting impact.
For progressive accounting firms, the future is just around the corner. |
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