In Pursuit of Profit
Read our expert article below or sign up to get articles sent to your inbox.
(800) 931-6557
(800) 931-6557
 Think you won’t need interim accounting help this year? Think again!
It’s time to recognize the fact that your accountant probably won’t be around forever. With the trend of accounting professionals changing roles every 3-5 years and the current accounting exodus that the industry is facing, the odds of your current accountant staying in their role for the next 3 years is only moderately likely, the next 5 years are very unlikely, and the next 10 years is almost certainly not going to happen. That means you need to be prepared to utilize an interim accounting services company sooner rather than later. Don’t put off for next year what you should address this year!  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?  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!
Similarly, the beginning of the year brings excitement for business planning. Business leaders are filled with optimism over the idea of starting out the year right by getting their financial house in order so they can streamline and improve to avoid the pain points they dealt with in the year prior. But, then just like the people who decide they’re going to start working out and buy a treadmill only to let it collect dust, mangers and executives fall back into the same habits of “business as usual.”
However, employers can do their part to reduce the accounting exodus by recognizing the warning signs of accountant burnout and taking the right steps to find help. Companies that prioritize the needs of their accounting team can not only help keep accountants in the pipeline, but also increase their own revenue and profitability.
Find out what kind of red flags to be on the lookout for that indicate accounting team burnout, as well as how you can offer your accountants the support they need to thrive in their roles.
From our experience, clients seem to believe one of these perspectives wholeheartedly – there’s very little in between. And yet, neither is entirely right. On the one hand, if you never hear from your accountant, that’s a troubling sign because you can’t be sure what they’re even doing on behalf of your organization. This kind of communication gap removes accountability, creating the opportunity for underperformance, mistakes, and even fraud to occur. However, hearing from your accountant constantly means they are spending their time talking to you instead of doing the work you have hired them to do, which is problematic (not to mention wasteful). Neither is a desirable scenario!
No matter what the specific scenario is, they always come to us with the same two pain points: cost and fear of making a mistake.
Every decision-maker we talk to is juggling concerns around price (“How much will accounting services cost?” and “Is there room in the budget for outsourced accounting?”) and purchase anxiety (“How do I know what to look for in an accounting company?” and “What if I chose the wrong accounting provider?”) Unfortunately, sometimes we see these concerns derail the research process and the organization chooses to take the “I’ll do nothing for now” approach. Trust us when we say that is never the right solution! If you were at the point of looking for outsourced accounting and bookkeeping services, there was a reason why and that reason will not simply disappear because you feel overwhelmed by your options. If your team is stretched too thin to keep up, does not have the experience needed to do a good job, or has a new situation that they need help with (like an expansion or audit), you need to get someone in to help right away. So, let’s discuss what you should be on the lookout for and how to know when you find it:
In some cases, holding onto the role internally means hiring an in-house accountant, but at many small businesses, the alternative is simply tasking other employees with these kinds of functions. And, to no one’s surprise, the lucky person who gets the accounting work added to their to-do list tends to be the business owner.
 When you hear “outsourced accounting services” what comes to mind? Typically, business owners and managers think of times when they might utilize project-based accounting help or hire a short-term accountant to bridge a hiring gap. And while these are common times to use accountant consultants, they are by no means the only types of roles that these kinds of accountants play. Accountant consultants (also called fractional accountants) can fulfill a number of different roles to help drive organizations forward.
 Gig work can trace its origins to before the creation of the internet. However, over the last decade companies like Uber and Lyft have steadily led the push in the mass acceptance of the gig economy. In 2020 as lockdowns swept the nation, hundreds of thousands of new gig jobs became available virtually overnight thanks to Amazon, DoorDash, Grubhub, Instacart, and Shipt. The pandemic accelerated a shift that was already well on its way to becoming the next big trend in work. But the quickly burgeoning gig economy was not isolated to takeout and grocery delivery. Professional gig work also grew exponentially as workers were laid off and left their traditional office jobs to manage personal responsibilities. According to a Harvard Business Review article on Thriving in the Gig Economy, Approximately 150 million workers in North America and Western Europe have left the relatively stable confines of organizational life — sometimes by choice, sometimes not — to work as independent contractors. Some of this growth reflects the emergence of ride-hailing and task-oriented service platforms, but a recent report by McKinsey found that knowledge-intensive industries and creative occupations are the largest and fastest-growing segments of the freelance economy. |
SUBSCRIBE:DOWNLOAD:
DOWNLOAD:
Categories:
All
Archives:
June 2026
|
RSS Feed
6/10/2024