Maximising the use of technology in your practice - making the complex, simple

acca the world's most forward-thinking professional accountancy body hi everyone thank you very much for joining us my name is darren glanville i'm the country manager for fathom here in the uk uh we're really thrilled to be joining uh you as acca members to talk this morning about making the complex simple uh the the shift and the drive towards providing a really high quality advisory services joining me on this webinar today is a father muser cheryl sharp from ping pig financials and like many of you cheryl was once at that stage where she was thinking of starting her own practice um entered into that and has developed a really cool practice off the back of it um delivering exceptional services to our clients and one of the things we want to unpack today is is what are some of the challenges some of the myths around that for you as acca members so without further ado cheryl thank you very much for joining me this morning great to see you yeah thank you for inviting me it's great to be here so think back to when you were you were first setting up pink pig um what were your what were your reasons for doing it and what were you some of your initial barriers or your thought process around some of the barriers that were there yeah so i initially set up pink pig because i needed something um to work around my children and back then there was very little flexible working there was no working in school hours and things like that so i decided to take the plunge and just set up on my own um it was very scary i had had some experience i've been in a practice but just doing the financial side so i'd never had anything to do with management accounts or any of the advisory type of things i literally was that typical accountant old school accountant sitting there number crunching all the time but i knew from day one that that's not what i wanted to be um and i knew i wanted to be more of a partnership and i wanted to work with our clients rather than just for them and just give them these reports that made no sense whatsoever so yeah very early on i knew that was what i wanted to do but i just didn't know how um and yeah i just initially i really struggled with actually working out how to do this and yeah what do i need to do basically um and it wasn't until i met fathom i think it was at a zerocon that i met one of the team and saw the reports and saw the flexibility but also the fact that they were like beautiful reports they they weren't just numbers they were visuals there was graphs there was charts and it actually brought everything to life and that's when i started using by them to basically bring everything to life and start conversations with clients um and it went down really really well awesome i think one of the things i often come across when i speak to practitioners like yourself is you know is is is advisory something that i need to do um and i think one of the things that we also if we rewind back from that i think you just covered it off in your um in your little opening statement there you know many people will be working currently in practice training getting their qualifications working within a practice and for a lot of them they will only have exposure to to the normal do i say compliance activities um annual accounts about returns tax returns audits um and that's that's vitally important and i think but it is it's not really when i speak to people it's not really what they became an accountant for um what they became an accountant for was because they they really wanted to invest in people they wanted to to make a difference to inspire that change and have that intent of of really driving businesses forward um and i hear many people talking about the fact that they think compliance is dead and it's more it's more about advisory and i disagree that personally i think it's you have to have a solid base of the skills that you have and you've learned within practice you have to understand how to do accounts and tax returns that's vital um and that's the bread and butter for many practices but for some practices i think it is about you know making a conscious decision that you can offer those services um and again advisor is a very broad term yeah um you know from one end you've got simple dare say simple management accounts going right the way through to m a and corporate finance and a whole raft of other things so it's a it's a very broad spectrum but i do think especially within the current um current economic climate there's been no better time for accountants and practitioners to really start to embed these services certainly around cash flow and forecasting certainly around budgeting right now looking at that scenario planning and also providing people um with more up-to-date information as opposed to a year and a set of statutory accounts and look at look at monthly and quarterly management reporting for for the clients what are some of the challenges so when you when you set up ping pig obviously it was you you you set up the business you were working solo for a long period of time how did you find that transition to coming out of an employment status into um working for yourself and how long was it was it quite quick before you realized that these were the services your clients were looking for um or was it more of a point of difference for you yeah it was it was a case of when i set up the practice i was delivering what i knew so therefore i was attracting clients that wanted what i knew because that's all i knew and that's what i was talking about and that's kind of what i was doing so i found that i had a very compliance heavy quietly basically because that's all they wanted they didn't really know there was another way so for me we had a couple clients that actually wanted the additional information they'd come from other accountants and they'd have that so it kind of helped me to start introducing it and i think it was more case of i started having just general conversations with clients and saying like how you doing how you're finding things and just generally kind of also understanding where they was trying to go to so what they wanted out of their business and i felt that i was naturally then without knowing it advising yeah um but not on an informal basis not with a report necessarily but just in general advising and then i was like well actually this advising thing isn't that bad it's not that difficult and then it was just a case of like well how do i then make it formal and make an actual service out of it and get paid for it basically because that's at the end of the day we just want to be paid for what we do um so i think that was the harder bit and then it was then going back to the rest of the client base that didn't necessarily see advisories a separate thing and then trying to change their viewpoints so we started off by introducing annual reviews where we have that chance to have that talk with them find out what they wanted and how to go about it and um how we can support the best to get there and that's the point where we said right well actually you need this and that's when not all of them they're not all going to jump at it but the ones that are a bit more ambitious i say or a bit more inquisitive wanted that information so they'd then be like oh yeah okay let's give this a go um and then we introduced quarterly reporting as standard as a conversation starter so just a really basic call to liverpool that we put together using fathom um a little bit around because we were repricing the bookkeeping quarterly so the reviews we wanted to incorporate that but also make it useful for them so we'd give a little bit of tax estimations and things and then from there we found that clients would buy and they'd want to know more and they'd start asking questions and then from there we'd be able to upsell to management reports and full information and then start having even better conversations so it's been a real evolved process really it's not just happened overnight it's taken well i'm eight and a half years in and i say we've been delivering our full proper management accounts for probably about a year or two now um but we've used that process to kind of get it in the forefront and now we talk more about the advisory staff yeah than we do the compliance yeah but just to circle back on your thing about compliance is that it's not dead we all need to do compliance and good record keeping is the foundation absolutely when you get your accounts done and then from the accounts and the good record keeping then you can do all the cool fun stuff and that is where the money is basically because that's where you're going to really shine and show your worth to your clients it's interesting isn't it when we look at it and break it down that way that you know clients need advice need compliance services but they don't value them um and what they do value is the advisory which is the bit that isn't being given because and i think it's really interesting to touch on that but when we strip it back to technology you know the the rise of software over the last 10 years um moving away from desktop to the cloud with tools like xero and dext and others and even ourselves you know that's just empowered you it's giving you those those vehicles those those enablers for you to process that data more efficiently with dex being the the pre-accounting um capture data capture point pushing that into zero bank feeds coming through having all of that information up to date the books completed at you know as close to the month end as possible as you say and having those processes in place to then provide really meaningful management information i think when you couple the technology with the fact that it's such a low barrier to entry now for people setting up their practices they they don't need office space this this was true before the pandemic let alone now where we see people um downsizing but you know you've done that you've done that from your home you you've built the practice um i think it's it's amazing to do that but it's very true what you say about the the the process of doing that it's interesting it's taken you kind of eight years i'm not saying it takes that but not every one of your clients would would value that i think the important thing for a lot of practices is segmenting who the clients are that really value this isn't it um otherwise we're just throwing stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks and i think you know we did a session with the guys from the acca that we talked about the the data versus insight pyramid where lots of firms are pushing reports out but they're just kind of throwing them to clients and saying well here's a report for you what do you think in the hope that that's going to sell that report and it's falling on deaf ears where what you've done is you've had a much more systemized approach to it and i think the other thing as well is you've recognized early on that you need to recruit a good team around you to be able to do that you've done that internally but equally that could apply externally with offshoring or outsourcing yeah i i think the key is you need that team because you can't do it all on your own no matter how much we like to think mostly for men women you just can't do it on your own you need that team and you need the team to be bought into what you're trying to do as well because if they're not brought in they're not gonna deliver um and i put together all these processes but we review it as a team and the team give me all their input what they're seeing because at the end of the day i don't do very much if any of the client delivery anymore so i don't see what they see so their input is more valuable to me than my thoughts because i could be way off the mark so um getting out of the team majorly important yeah a huge point i think we have to you have to have alignment you have to empower them to do that um as you say you're not there on the day-to-day with that um but equally it's it's it's very interesting isn't it when you start to look at how you systemize that and interestingly one of the points you made at the beginning was people almost think they have to sell these services they don't it's it's just a conversation as you say where are you now where do you want to get to and how do we get you there um and it's interesting i see that more and more with the conversations that we have with our partners um especially now is is you know looking at the rise of inflation and and looking at you know if our staff wanted a 10 increase in salary could we afford that how are we going to fund that what does that mean to our pricing does our pricing have to go up and all of those questions we we have that opportunity through the annual client review at least to do that i also know that you're you're very big advocates of the gap as well in terms of the process that they they go through um and i i've seen it work with those guys before and i'm very much of the same opinion i think every business should have three things a business plan a forecast and at least some form of quarterly accountability and meeting to hold them accountable and i know you subscribe to that as well but it is interesting when you start to break it down into those components that businesses need that business plan we need to understand the vision what's important to them the emotive because let's face it that's the stuff that's driving them and getting them going forward how can we interplay with that and get them the outcomes that they want um so that's that's really interesting i think what the other thing is across the industry we we tend to see people talking a lot about this but not executing very well um and i think when we look at firms like yours and alex's and graham and you know others those aca acca members who are really executing on this exceptionally well we see a very interesting thing in terms of growth and profitability around those firms as well so that's that's another interesting point for me but i do think it comes back to other elements as well in part that process is that you've recognized that you can't be the bottleneck in that process either no and that is a trap did you find that in the early days yeah definitely um i think because i because of my background i've been very independent and i do it all myself so i've struggled with delegation massively and it's been a massive learning journey for me and although i knew i wanted to release myself from the day to day so the girls can run it all it was a case of thing like oh well where do i see what do i do although i know i've got loads of stuff i need to do still to run the business it's not as the business grows there's more of that stuff to do it was yeah it's been a massive learning curve for me to work out where i need to be involved where i don't need to be involved and i think the fact is i sat down with the girls and i just had that conversation with them i had that um transparency that's what i don't know for the transparency and i said to him look i'm gonna get this wrong i'm gonna get it wrong you're gonna get it wrong but we just gotta learn from it and i've said to them i've said look you have full permission to tell me to butt out when i need to that's it and you also have full permission to bring me in when you need to i said it's and it's just a trial and error thing i mean we're still going through it now we're still trying and everything what actually works and what doesn't work um and i think as you evolve and your team gets bigger you're always going to be doing a bit of that anyway um but it's just yeah i've never been one to be scared to put my hands up and say look yeah i'm feeling a bit out of place here i don't know what i'm doing or i don't know and there's always somebody even if it's not someone in your team there's already somebody that can help you with that and obviously we've had a lot of help from your team from anthony and shivani and yourself as well obviously and we've had it with other suppliers as well we've had a lot of help from them and it is just about taking all those learnings but not necessarily doing everything you're told to do but finding your way and your interpretation of that and i think that's where we've i've taken loads from loads of different people made it their own um and now the girls are evolving that further how they want it which yes makes me quite proud really i think you should be i think you touched on something there which i think you've not been afraid to do and that's be iterative in your process you haven't seeked to make it perfect from day one no you can't you can't be perfect from day one it's version one yeah and you build on that yeah absolutely that's that's that's and and i think for us we we've seen both sides of that that camp where people have kind of got well if i if i if i only just and you you know the model it's it's that kind of the be do have model if if i have the the best report if i put it out to my most most complex client and it works for that client then it will work for everybody but actually there's a huge chunk of clients you've just leapfrogged and forgotten about and ignored because you could actually be doing something for them yeah and i think sorry part of that as well is our need as the counters to be perfect because we've been drummed into us the accounts need to be perfect which obviously they do but then we've taken that into all areas and everything needs to be perfect and we're not going to do it until it is perfect but then you're not doing it and i've done it perfect any time in this scenario exactly yeah and that's yeah i definitely fell into that early days so that's why now we just launched 78 we're launching because we can build on that yeah and we we have that ourselves in the in the in the software space we we have this thing called mvp minimum viable product and you launch that and you you take feedback and you iterate on that and you put version two out and you take feedback on that and you continuously do that so it's great to see that those type of processes are being adopted as you deploy service lines around that i think the question for us ultimately and from probably many of the listeners how have questions reacted and what would what were the steps that you took to to slowly kind of integrate that into your service lines and what would your recommendations be for for people listening um i think what we've done especially recently what we've done when we've had um things that we want to launch um i mean we've just launched probably a couple of months back a new type of reporting and the girls put it all together and then we went out to a couple of clients where they'd expressed the need for it and we also chose a couple of clients who we're very close to and we are big advocates of us so we know they're going to be a bit more receptive necessarily a bit more engaging um because we want both viewpoints we we don't want just the clients that think they should have everything for nothing but you want the viewpoint of the ones that actually say they want it but also the ones that value what we do already so you can get a conflicting view so we did that recently um and it was really good so we had some really good feedback which we was then able to tweak and then we launched and i think that's the way of doing it and then segment your client base so who who do we feel either needs it but may need a bit more of a nudge to actually take it on and those who we know have expressed a wish for it already so i think the other thing we do when we um start working on new services and new things is we talk to our clients as part of the annual reviews and go oh yeah we have got something coming that would um help with that do you want to go on the wait list yes we put them on the wait list then when we're ready to start trialing they can be the guinea pigs um and then we get the feedback and the testimonials as well because at the end of the day you want some social proof before you go live as well so yeah they're the steps that we take at the moment i'm sure there's plenty of other ways of doing it but that's what we've found works there's so many different ways of doing it i think there's there's no that there's no right or wrong way you you generally find your own feet around what works well for you your team and your clients i think you you are correct though i think you do have to segment your clients exceptionally well um and i also feel that with any within any firm no matter irrespective of size um there are always those top 10 to 20 of your clients that i think you should be doing this for as a matter of course yeah anyway there's probably 10 to 20 at the bottom that will never value it never engage with you so it's pointless even trying them yeah we're still but i think there is that kind of 60 to 80 sitting in the middle as you said that needs that occasional reminder that nudge that you know yes we we offer these services and you could benefit from this and they probably need to hear it seven times and i think you're very true around what you say around the social proof if you get those early wins you can then use that to to justify and your clients will sell it so much better than we ever can and they see they see the value more than what we do because it's value to them and that's what i think sometimes we forget it's the value to them not to us not what we think it's them yeah so when they actually tell us what the value is it's gold no absolutely i think for us what we want to see within our platform is that we can take that data from the general ledger from xero or other data sources and we no i i used to say this when i was in practice myself not everyone understands double entry bookkeeping and not everyone understands to be another balance sheet and i've seen people like people's eyes glaze over when we've presented it and we've shown them a visual report and they've just gone wow that's stunning it's suddenly everything's very clear they can see the cash flow waterfall chart so they can see things that in a much more clearer way in terms of where the money's going where the money's coming in we can start to open up conversations around um some scenarios that they want we you know how many staff do you want to take on this year what are you going to pay them um using the business roadmap and the micro forecasts and even through to kpis and again kpis can be very individual for those for those verticals that you're working in um but to just to see people's eyes just light up when they see that is great for us and we've done that in a matter of seconds what have been the big have there been is probably the first question have there been any standout moments with your clients that have just kind of solidified for them you know what this just having that management information or um you know presented to him in every way are there some of those stand out moments for you yeah i think as you say a lot of clients don't go into business to look at numbers so presenting it in the different ways really does help them but we've also found that bringing it back dominant write down but without being patronizing obviously yes but even just something saying something simple right well they don't understand a profit margin they don't get it so just i think one of the things we said to a client was like every pound you get 32p of it is your profit yeah and then all of a sudden that clicked yeah and it's just like wow she just said to me she said i've been in business for however many years no one's made me understand that i get it now yeah it is bringing it back to those simple terms but also bringing it back to their goals as well so we've adapted our management reports now so we highlight their goals we highlight their wins um that's awesome that we can also then say right okay the numbers haven't been so great this month but look what you have achieved um focus then on the wins and even if it is just they're strengthening their team they've invested heavily in their team so their net profit is down but their sales are up but it's pointing those sort of things out to them because they're not going to get that from a report so it's putting that human element into it i think that's that that that to me is the underpinning thing for all of this is that the technology is great and it enables us to do this and it automates a lot of the process but it doesn't you can't automate that interaction and who would think that you've now gone from being someone who has has traditionally done compliance into beca i would i would go past the trusted advisor name and actually say your embedded partner now because you're now an accountability partner if you're embedding goals and and and wins and giving them those clients on the back you've gone further than beyond that yeah that's interesting that's that's that's amazing that's really good thank you for sharing that how how typically have you priced these services and and what's the reaction been to that price has there been much much pushback on that um i'm still not 100 sure we've got the price in right um initially when i priced it i priced it stupidly low um and then there is actually go proposal that helps with it because i don't think they do it quite the same anymore but i was quite early on and we used to be able to throw in some example pricing yes so i looked at theirs looked at mine and started off in the middle and from there we got up a little bit more um and we base it on the turnover because obviously the more turnover the more involved the more in depth and generally the higher the turnover the more um i don't know what the right word is but the more ambitious they are the more they want to know the information it's just generally what we found i know that's probably a bit um no it makes sense i think you naturally have those clients who are more lifestyle and those that are more entrepreneurial they are very much growth driven exactly so yes we've gone through that we priced the farms separately because with all of our pricing strategy we've always priced all the software separately so they know what they're paying for software and they know what they're paying for us so we charge we charge on fathom um and all the software's at rrp or maybe slightly lower depending on how how we partner with the client and the suppliers um but generally as a rule of thumb i would say whatever your hourly rate is work out how long you take to to do the work and then use that i know we don't want to price hourly because it's coming away from that but i just use that as a rough guide and then just think about what is the what is the value to the client we've gone and asked clients before and said how much would you expect to pay and it's quite funny really you get a range um i think breathing practice i know exactly what you're talking about with that we had we had people say you should charge more yeah yeah we've got a few clients that are always telling us to charge more um but they just they just feel that they're getting exceptional value from them exactly and then you've got the other end of clients going well i think this should be included and it should be free and it's just like no chance no pricing is always a very interesting subject but i think you're right you have to find that balance point where services is is on the side of the value creation and the the it's it's that it's not tipping the other way and i think it's something that's always evolving as well your price should never be your price you should always be re-evaluating it and looking at it and changing it and increasing or decreasing as you see but i don't think you ever get price insulted yeah yeah no great what's what's your what's your favorite part of fathom as a user oh see if you've asked me probably a few months ago i'd have said the graphs and the report and the way that we can adjust it and customize the reports but having recently been playing around with the budgeting and the micro forecast for my own practice oh it's a tough one yeah i do love the micro forecasts because you can play around and really look at scenarios and how things are going to be effective and plan which is at the end of the day you want a plan and you want to do it in the right way but i will come back to the fact that i do love the customization and even just putting in that customized front page clients love it we personalize it with their logos they're branded and they feel that we've actually taken that extra time to do it for them so it's not just a bland boring report at the end of the day and it is i think that's the thing is when you start talking about customization and all of what you have people tend to think it takes hours to pull these this type of information along it doesn't it's literally done in minutes yeah we've got templates set up and can for now and we just change it over to their branding throw it into further and it's done and then the rest of it we just chop and change to each client so what would your what would your piece of advice be for someone who's an acca member now uh maybe get qualified going through qualifications those are the audiences watches this and they're thinking about starting their practice what would your your three pieces of advice be for them um first of all think about what you want out of it what do you want to be known as what sort of practice do you want to be um because that will then help you to work out your service offering and who to partner with and who to do it second of all he's never going to be perfect so just do it um and i think the other one as well is what are your goals personally what do you want to achieve out of your practice what hours do you want to work and things like that because again that will also um determine how you offer the services and whether you have a team of your own or you outsource an admin you always need an admin even if you don't think you do you do so yeah that's probably number one three but there you go so yeah cheryl i totally agree with you um you know i think when when i speak to practices it's it's very much think about you know put your oxygen mask on first think about the type of practice you want the clients you want to work with you may want to work with a smaller number of clients but charge them slightly higher fees um many practices i've spoken to have started off by you know when we come out of employment into our own practices it's very much about getting any client at any cost and sometimes that has a negative effect down the line um so really think about that what are the service lines you want to work with what are the vertical markets you want to work with and where you feel you can add value um i think the wonderful thing about data is that if you choose your verticals very carefully you can have two bites at the cherry one is that you can provide really good high quality management information scenario planning forecasts and all of the stuff that we've just spent the last 40 minutes talking about but i also think that if you specialize and you do niche then you have the added benefit of being able to get aggregated data and start to look at ranking and benchmarking and that adds another layer of value to the clients that you want because we all know the clients love to compare themselves against each other if that company is doing well what are they doing or what are you doing with them that's making them so profitable and what can i learn from that so i think there's a good opportunity there marketing your team is is exceptional building the right team around you as i say whether it's internal or external be confident with your pricing is probably the best way of putting that and um i think one of the things i've learnt over the last 12 years working with some great partners like you and others is there's such an air of collaboration you know we're not in competition there are plenty of other acco members who are willing to help and give you advice and tips and tricks what they've learned so reach out to your to your peers within the acca community as well you know i think people would be slightly surprised to see just how much help and assistance is out there i think you you would agree with me on that definitely some of my best friends are other accountants yeah i spent lots of time with them but it can be a lonely place called it i mean oh yeah we put on that thing so i think yeah you're right those those three areas uh are there obviously you know technology is there to help us and and fathom's just part of that stuff and we're super proud to be part of uh and partnering with the acca so i'm going to wrap up i mean thank you so much for your time this morning it's it's good to chat with you and just hear some of the stories that you have and how your your practice has developed and how clients are reacting to to to the tools that you're using including fathom um if if you want any more information please visit the the partnership page on the acca website you can always connect with me directly on linkedin um please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or if you want to take a trial a father we'd be more than happy to to help you and assist you with that but thank you very much for your attention it's a pleasure to speak with you shell thank you very much take care thank you acca the world's most forward-thinking professional accountancy body

2022-09-16 09:19

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