{"id":100828,"date":"2022-08-14t15:00:04","date_gmt":"2022-08-14t19:00:04","guid":{"rendered":"\/\/www.g005e.com\/?p=100828"},"modified":"2024-08-07t23:10:43","modified_gmt":"2024-08-08t03:10:43","slug":"cut-cost-by-three-quarters-with-cas-yes-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"\/\/www.g005e.com\/2022\/08\/14\/cut-cost-by-three-quarters-with-cas-yes-please\/","title":{"rendered":"cut cost by three quarters with cas? yes, please"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/a>it\u2019s not just about the cloud.<\/strong><\/p>\n by hitendra patil<\/i> in the desktop days, write-up, bookkeeping and accounting processes were perceived more as \u201cdata-entry\u201d work. the price clients were willing to pay for data entry put so much pressure on fees that many firms found it is not worth the hassle.<\/p>\n more: <\/b>why you can be a virtual cfo<\/a> | can you identify real cas prospects?<\/a> | 8 ways to create your cas practice<\/a> | do you value your cas value?<\/a> other services such as tax preparation, financial statements preparation, etc. brought in higher per-hour dollars than write-up, bookkeeping and accounting work could. such work got more and more \u201coutsourced\u201d by accounting firms to bookkeeping firms, freelancer bookkeepers and \u201cprocessing\u201d firms operated by non-cpas\/non-accountants. it was (and it still is) a collective experience of professional accountants to find the books to be messy, which required significant effort to \u201cclean the mess\u201d to make the books accurate and compliant. clients thought that by doing the data entry themselves, they saved money. but having accountants fix the messy books cost them money in any case. such routine, mundane work more often than not disillusioned staff doing that work, and they would leave looking for more meaningful work that could give them satisfactory progress in their careers. accountants faced a typical, recurring challenge of lack of consistency and continuity in the accounting work because books continued to be messy. all of this further accentuated the perception among professional accountants that there is less money to be earned by doing such work. reviewing client-prepared books, after the fact, for corrections and for preparing financial statements left little time and opportunity for offering any worthwhile, timely advice. it all turned into a professionwide belief that data-intensive work is better not to be done by professional accountants. in any case, clients could buy off-the-shelf accounting software (and use it as a business software to run their businesses).<\/p>\n cloud, integration, automation, years of accounting transactions knowledge, and rules programmed by accounting software companies change all<\/strong> of that. but the belief ingrained for years is not easy to change. over the last 5-7 years, aicpa, the thought leaders in the profession and even technology companies catering to the accounting profession have invested significant resources to make accountants aware of the immense opportunities that client accounting services brings to them. technological advances have infused considerable profit margins by automating many of the \u201clow-value-low-profit\u201d data-intensive processes that are the necessary part of the accounting work.<\/p>\n someone has to do that work. earlier, it was done more by people and hence more costly to do. now a lot of that work gets done by intelligent technology \u2013 at literally a fraction of the costs that clients paid in the desktop years.<\/p>\n once the leadership at your firm crunches the numbers to relate to this opportunity to profit from cas, it is still an arduous task to attempt to change the perceptions around such services.<\/p>\n cas is not<\/strong> just write-up and bookkeeping. it is much more than that.<\/p>\n some firms in the $3 million to 10 million annual revenue segment that i spoke with believed that cas is more of a bookkeeping game, and their resources are more costly than the fees it can bring in. so very challenging to change the belief!<\/p>\n at the same time, i spoke with many firms of similar sizes, smaller and bigger, that have recognized the cas opportunity. almost all of such firms that understand cas are technology-savvy firms that have embraced the cloud.<\/p>\n it is not<\/strong> just about cloud, though.<\/p>\n cloud technology is just a facilitator, a catalyst, a platform \u2013 based on which you enhance your firm\u2019s processes.<\/p>\n i had a client who was putting his specialist, niche-specific accounting processes to good work, for his clients and<\/strong> for his firm\u2019s revenue and profit growth. and he wasn\u2019t allowing clients to lead the accounting processes. he was not willing to follow clients\u2019 procedures \u2013 which he knew couldn\u2019t be professional accounting processes as his clients were not professional accountants.<\/p>\n cas is a lot about your firm\u2019s specialist, professional accounting processes.<\/p>\n i created a \u201cprofitability growth calculator\u201d to identify the effect of just one technology integration and automation feature \u2013 bank feeds integrated with the accounting software \u2013 to compute the impact on the profitability of accounting firms. i got multiple accountants to share with me the time they were taking to process the client\u2019s write-up work manually \u2013 and the total cost thereof. after implementing bank feeds, the processing cost came down by as much as 75 percent. it not only added to the profitability of each assignment, but it freed up the time of existing staff to review the work and correct when needed. the firms that implement such technological features can handle 2-3 times more number of clients, within their existing resources. the overall combined impact of just one technological feature that was not available in the desktop era on the firm\u2019s revenue and profitability is simply mind-boggling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\nclient accounting services: the definitive success guide<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n
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\nthe perception that such work is \u201clow-value-low-profit\u201d got stronger and stronger, despite some practitioners vouching that \u201cif you control the books, you control the clients.\u201d it was practically inconvenient \u2013 and expensive \u2013 for accountants to travel to clients\u2019 offices to \u201cdo the accounting.\u201d that led to people at businesses who were not professionally trained as accountants to do the data entry into accounting software and believe that they did the \u201caccounting.\u201d<\/p>\n