In Pursuit of Profit
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A resource offered in partnership between The ASP Team and CFO Selections One commonality among our businesses at The ASP Team and CFO Selections is that we often talk to business leaders that aren’t sure which kind of accounting role they need. They typically understand the duties they would like the person to perform and the deliverables they expect to receive, but they aren’t sure what to call the role exactly. Without the proper title it makes it difficult to hire into the role or find an accounting services company to provide exactly what they need. Sometimes clients will come to us at The ASP Team saying that they need a “bookkeeper” as a catch-all phrase for someone doing any kind of accounting work but what they are really looking for is something more – an Accountant, Senior Accountant, or even Controller. Similarly, sometimes clients will come to us at CFO Selections saying that they need a “CFO” as a catch-all phrase for someone doing more advanced accounting work or leading an accounting team but what they actually need is something less – a Controller, Accounting Manager, or Senior Accountant. How do you know which you need? 4/15/2024 Artificial Intelligence Already Powers A/R and A/P – Are Budgeting and Forecasting Next Up?As accounting consultants, we have seen AI usage increase dramatically over the last five years across daily accounting activities throughout organizations of all sizes. So, where is AI most widely used in bookkeeping and accounting these days? When it comes to AI in accounting, A/R and A/P augmentation has proven to be the low hanging fruit. As accounting technology has grown more sophisticated machines have been tasked with doing these types of repetitive functions that have traditionally bogged organizations down with manual work. With A/R and A/P already being powered by AI, what can we expect next? Usually, we discuss more specifically focused accounting and bookkeeping topics to share in-depth industry knowledge with our readers. However, today we’re going back to the basics to answer a fundamental question: “What does an accounting services provider do?” Simply put, an accounting provider does less than full-time work. This work can be either ongoing part-time work or short-term work (which includes interim engagements and project-based work). What does that entail exactly? Research shows that today’s bookkeepers and accountants are making mistakes as their workloads have increased due to economic volatility and newly enacted regulations. The data also shows that the more capacity constrained accounting professionals are, the more likely they are to make data errors on manual work and miss issues when conducting regular reviews on accounting records. And while this certainly does not mean accounting professionals across the board are doing poor work, even the best accountants are feeling the pressure. As their time continues to be squeezed and their responsibilities expanded, good accountants are finding that they need to work even harder to maintain the top-notch work that they are doing. The result is an environment more conducive to burnout and errors regardless of the integrity and work ethic that they bring to the role. If your books are messy due to overworked bookkeeping and accounting staff or turnover in those roles, you need to be able to figure out what needs to be fixed, understand how to fix it, and take a proactive approach to avoid future accounting issues! Imagine the following scenario: You discover that your accountant has been embezzling funds by submitting personal expenses for reimbursement. Their fraudulent activity is discovered because your co-owner notices a steady rise in business expense reimbursements over the last six months and asks them about it but isn’t given an explanation that makes sense and decides to investigate. Your co-owner brings this information to you along with unequivocal supporting documentation to back it up. What do you do now? For those familiar with college athletics, March is known for the Division I college basketball championships. You may not, however, know how a few years ago the NCAA allowed student-athletes to change schools with no loss of eligibility by creating the “Transfer Portal.” When an athlete declares that they want to leave for another school, their name gets put in the Transfer Portal database. Voila, other coaches see this and say, “I want that center” or “I want that point guard” and reach out to them. What does this have to do with hiring accounting professionals? Well, the transfer portal concept is not just for college athletes. There’s also a career transfer portal – it’s what happens out there in the world of recruiting. Using an external recruiter is the best way to ensure you are accessing accounting employees that are in the transfer portal. At the end of last year, the popular accounting resource Accounting Today published an interview with 100 of accounting’s top minds where they asked the simple question, “What is the most important issue currently facing the accounting profession?” and recorded their responses. Their answers ranged across topics such as staffing shortages, independent audits, AI, financial reporting, private equity, and technological advancements. If you get a chance to read it, you should! There’s some great insight to glean. Since we employ a vast network of consulting accountants across Washington, Oregon, and Colorado, we asked our consultants to do something similar. However, instead of having them focus on what’s important right now, we asked them to be more forward-thinking in their responses. We posed the question, “What will be the most important topics in accounting this year?” These were some of their responses: Sometimes we have people ask us, “If I’m outsourcing my bookkeeping/accounting to an accounting firm, how do I know if my business is a priority to that company?” The chances are that if you’re asking this, you’ve felt like your business wasn’t the most important client in your accounting company’s portfolio of clients.
If you feel like your accounting company isn’t prioritizing your needs, you might be right! |
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4/22/2024