3 Ways to Help Your Small Business Clients

For example, Freshbooks or Billing Boss can handle the routine invoicing of
most service businesses, including recurring invoices, online payments and other
advanced features. These products can support this activity from a mobile phone.Why
would you want to complicate a business owner’s operations with unneeded
accounting software if all they really need to do is pay bills, send invoices
and collect money? Wouldn’t you rather have the services revenue and business
relationship of a write-up client than wasting the client’s time keying
transactions and wasting your time by resolving those transactions?

If the need is greater, perhaps a collaborative approach in accounting software
is your best option. For a flat fee, you can have an unlimited number of clients
on Accounting Relief and get the benefits of being able to work collaboratively
with the client, process transactions that are downloaded or keyed into the
system, and have immediate access to the needed data for the client’s
financials or tax returns.

Even stalwarts like Peachtree or QuickBooks can now be hosted to provide collaborative
capabilities that allow both you and your client to work online on the same
files or companies at the same time. Additional factors such as complexity of
inventory or how NFP reporting is handled may lead you to recommend a product
like Peachtree or MIP, or you may have specialized reporting for a vertical
industry that you have developed in the Intuit Statement Writer in QuickBooks.
If traditional in-house installation is needed, certainly one of these products
can allow the business to grow into the $5M-$10M range.

My key point and issue is that it helps your client and your image, and it
reduces the amount of unnecessary work that you have to do if you make the right
accounting software recommendation for the right reason. See the small business
accounting review that focuses on SaaS-based products on pages 54-62 of this
issue. You can also read The CPA Technology Advisor’s review
of on-premise small business accounting products from the April/May 2010 issue
at www.CPATechAdvisor.com/go/2738.

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT
The same thing is true when it comes to document management strategies for your
clients. You have to know enough about how to help a small business with their
documents and workflow to be able to make a reasonable recommendation. Part
of the issue may be that you do not have the documents in your practice automated
enough to understand how to make recommendations to your clients. Part of the
issue may be that you don’t believe this is an area that you should assist
with. However, if you have document management running in your practice with
tools like Office Tools Pro, Thomson Reuters’ FileCabinet CS, Doc.It or
CCH’s ProSystem fx Document, you probably have an understanding
of what the benefits of document management and portals are to the small business.

Unfortunately, these products are geared toward tax and accounting professionals
and aren’t particularly a good fit for industry or small business. However,
if you are using the AccountantsWorld document management product to run your
practice, you can actually make this capability available to your clients, as
well. Both you and the client benefit from using the same system. As well, products
like eFileCabinet, SmartVault or Cabinet NG may provide enough capability to
the small business to solve their initial document management needs. See the
review of document management products here, as well as Doug
Sleeter’s column. And keep a look out for the July
2010 issue where document storage products will be covered.

WORKFLOW
Finally, internal controls, fraud prevention and procedures are certainly areas
where most firms can be of some assistance. As workflow products become easier
to use or more universal, you may find a significant opportunity to help your
clients, as well. For example, Conexxus or XCM have workflow and sign-off capabilities
that can readily apply to internal audit departments. Even though you may be
familiar with XCM from a tax and accounting firm perspective, many new capabilities
have been added to support industry businesses. Internal audit departments report
that Conexxus gives much greater control over documentation and procedures and
can reduce the cost of interfacing to external audit teams in addition to reducing
the closing cycle times. These types of tools can make small businesses more
profitable by saving time and money. See our feature on workflow.

As you reflect on how to help your clients this year, consider the benefits
of assisting them with automating their accounting at the right level, adding
document management and applying workflow technology. Your clients will appreciate
and value your expertise even more for helping them become more efficient and
profitable than they do for keeping them out of trouble with your compliance
work. And as added side benefits, you will find the work more satisfying and
profitable, while potentially helping small businesses help our economy prosper.