Client Accounting Services – The Future for CPA Firms Growth

Client Accounting Services – The Future for CPA Firms Growth

When you start a new business and know it’s going to take flight within a few months, you cannot contain the mixture of apprehension and excitement. But wait! Before getting busy with your business plans and strategies, you also have to take care of your finances and books. But, if you are high in spirits and have to start your accounting from scratch, then we have a pleasant surprise! What you truly need is CAS or Client Accounting Services.

Yes! The once not-so-popular CAS is roaring to life in the accounting industry. It is now listed among the ten fastest-growing niches in the service landscape.

So, let’s get to the core of Client Accounting Services. In this blog post, we shall take a deep dive into CAS and its benefits. Keep reading to get mind blown with this once diminished service sector. After reading, you might wonder why this jackpot even went out of fashion.

What are Client Accounting Services?

Client accounting services represent an integrated approach that keeps the client and accountant relationship active and alive. In CAS, most of the accounting functions of your business will be handled and taken care of by the accountant. It means that you can get meaningful fiscal guidance from the accountants to make effective business decisions. They will help you in all phases of your money management, from preparing financial statements to processing your money transfers. You can rely on CAS providers to manage your tax preparation services, bookkeeping, and handling payroll. Apart from this, they also perform essential CPA services like cash flow management, tax planning, budgeting, and forecasting. What’s more, to say, it will clear your schedule and make you free of one of your all-time worries– finance and bookkeeping.

Client Accounting Services keeps the clientele at the center of services. It is all about fetching maximum profit to the clients. It is the brainchild of technology and is envisioned to make things easy and hassle-free for you. Moreover, it makes account handling easy for the accountants too. In short, we can say it creates a perfect balance between the needs of the client and the capabilities of the professionals like CPAs and CAs.

Wondering what the difference between the outsourced accounting offerings and Client Accounting Services is? Well, the difference lies in the vast arena of activities managed by your accountants in CAS. In most cases, the primary procedures of your accounting functions get handled by your accounting technician. But CAS provides a 3600 view on your business and accounting environment. It makes you work knitted with the client and keep a holistic understanding of your client’s business. In other words, you can say it goes beyond the possibilities of outsourced accounting services.

Generally, the boutique offerings under client accounting services covers:

• Transactional services
• Strategic services
• Performance services
• Compliance services

What is the objective of Client Accounting Services?

CAS is inclined to boost customer satisfaction by facilitating tailored accounting solutions that suit your business fabric. As a robust team of accountants is working closely with your business, it creates a familiar ecosystem and makes the work a lot easier for the supervising professionals.

Client accounting services come with added advantages for your business. It creates value for your company and boosts your profit margin to the desired heights. In addition to that, CAS is designed to offer systematic strategies and meaningful insights about challenges and opportunities in business.

The contemporarily trending version of CAS is worthy of the benefits and services it provides. Some might call it more of an advisory board, enabling more remarkable growth by delivering projections and consultations as the business progresses. It functions as an in-house accounting department and brings professional accounting services to your disposal. It prioritizes the client’s needs and brings actionable changes to your overall business outlook.

CAS functions in accordance with the needs of your clients. It adapts to your business operations seamlessly and makes it more lucrative. It can be integrated into the functioning methods of various types of customers that include:

• Entities with traditional manual accounting processes
• People who need transaction processing services
• Clients looking for reliability

What are the Benefits of Client Accounting Services?

Client Accounting Services essentially plays the role of an entity’s accounting department. Hence they have a better chance of knowing your business pulse. Therefore, they deliver customized accounting solutions that target hidden opportunities. Moreover, over 70% of business owners posited transferring all accounting services if they had the right solution. As CAS eliminates variables, it also helps you standardize your firm’s financial operations. It brings better internal control over business affairs and helps you scale the business towards increased growth. Additionally, when an accountant is handling your payroll and bookkeeping services, it is easier to ensure compliance. Here are some notable benefits of comprehensive Client Accounting Services best practices for CPA firms.

• If a firm decides to opt for CAS, it is outsourcing most of its accounting functions. Its broad scope allows the accountant to tailor the accounting operations based on the nature of your accounting needs.
• It creates a resilient and reliable workspace between the accountants and the clients. You will get regular consultation before critical business decisions, and your projections will influence your clients’ future endeavors. This constant communication will help to strengthen the client relationships.
• This form of service influences business decisions and provides actionable and trustworthy accounting solutions. Managing the accounting of your client will give you a deeper understanding of their fiscal frameworks. This will optimize your advisory projections.
• CAS increases client satisfaction and creates loyal clientele. As you can adequately handle the heavy data of the company, your clientele will sustain the relationship for a more extended period. Moreover, the custom-tailored solutions and understanding of core business goals will create client loyalty and retention.
• It enhances the sustainable growth of your firm. By extending your services and your capacity belt, you can bring scalable changes to your business. It will also increase the homogeneity in your procedures and attract new clients.
• CAS creates time-honored business models. As more businesses are opting for it, CAS is now regarded as the futuristic approach. When you professionally manage the financial situation at all levels within the organization, you invest in your future expansion.
• This service model you stand out from the competitors as you get backed with professional accounting solutions. With more savings and efficiency comes more growth and opportunities. It will buy you time to manage your business activities and bring profitable solutions within your reach.
• CAS saves your costs and augments your returns. It will ensure compliance and make your financial management straightforward and hassle-free. It lowers the incidence of errors and mitigates risks by adopting tech-savvy accounting solutions.

Studies have found that companies that choose CAS have the upper hand in making effective decisions and profits. Further, it also found that 80% of clients who decide CAS have a deeper satisfactory ratio than companies without CAS. As the accounting demands increase day by day, CAS provides the perfect avenue to fit all your accounting needs. Let’s look at what the clients alleged about Client Accounting Services in a popular survey.

• 80% of clients argue that they have more time to focus on the core business.
• 68% of clients note that accounting is effortless and efficient with CAS.
• 50% of clients say that they are unaffected by the errors in accounting as CAS provides reliable solutions.
• 30% of clients who choose CAS have already experienced profits.
• 30% of clients reveal that they appear more confident in making business decisions.

How to start Client Accounting Services in your CPA firm?

1. Master Automation

Automation makes it easier to handle multiple accounting services at a single time. It increases the data handling efficiency and makes it error-free. Moreover, it also enhances your transparency and makes you the manager of the workflows. By leveraging your data and adopting cloud-based software, you can seamlessly deliver accurate financial solutions to your clients. If you are considering accounting software, then we recommend Xero and QuickBooks. Depending on the workflow management of your client, you can integrate either the former or the latter.

On the other hand, if you seek automating expense management, then Receipt Bank or Hubdoc can be considered. For payroll management, Gusto and Wagepoint are considered best. However, there are many more such software systems to explore. But it is essential to master technological aspects before taking the long road of Client Accounting Services.

2. Assess Your Sales Process

If you are planning to integrate CAS, note that you might need to modify your sales process. It is because Client Accounting Services differ from the traditional outsourced services like tax plans or financial statements. As you take over the workflows, it is vital to evaluate your sales process in selling workflow management. It is also essential to envisage what your workflow looks like once you have adopted it. You might need to consider the following;

• How will you manage invoices, and how will you collect the money?
• What will be the different types of expenses and bills you might encounter?
• What is the employee number of the client company, and what is their payroll management plan?

3. Productize Your Services

As you are offering accounting services regularly, you can develop a monthly subscription plan. To make a charging account, you can consider the services, apps, and assistance you will deliver to your clients. Research and then draft out the various elements involved in the Client Accounting Services you plan to offer.

4. Standardize your Client Accounting Services and Delivery process

If you include CAS in your service page, you also need to think of solutions that could ensure consistent efficiency. As you will be mingling closely with your clients and repeating the chores on a recurring basis, you need to work on methods to keep up with the client’s expectations. To integrate effortlessly with your client, you can ask the person with relevant experience handling the same functions for years to map you through the procedures.

5. Get ready to tailor your services

Each client works differently. Hence, it is to know about their usual procedures and steps in managing accounts. You can train your staff or review the steps to tailor the integration process or standardize the procedure to deliver unique solutions per the client’s demands.

6. Know your capacity

Most firms are unaware of their capacity to accommodate clients. You need to know two things before you take the turn; a) ensure timely delivery as you have promised; b) ensure your staff is not exhausted with overload. As you consistently offer a multitude of services, it is not okay to miss out on the payroll or any services you regularly deliver because of overwork. Hence, create a systematic plan to know your team’s availability, your capacity, and the time the work might take to develop an efficient trajectory.

What are the Challenges in Offering Client Accounting Services?

• Achieving Client satisfaction – Attaining optimum satisfaction levels for the customers using client accounting services can prove tricky. Each business has its own set of expectations and financial issues. Thus, you may face troubles when you want to meet all the requirements of the client business perfectly.

• Pricing techniques – It can be tricky to price the CAS offerings of your entity. Firms are adopting a mixture of pricing tactics for Client Accounting Services. When some are charging hourly, some consider the price in alignment with the value they create. However, you can also determine a fixed amount after considering the output and resources you might employ.

• Devising Leads – Firms are unanimously choosing tailored solutions for their clients. With numerous tech-savvy methods available, you can create the lead by using SEOs methods or investing in content marketing strategies. You can also utilize traditional marketing techniques or seek expert help to stand out from the competitors.

  If you feel sidelined in adopting this growing trend of Client Accounting Services, then you can boost your firm competence by changing the leadership to build a CAS culture or partner with a CAS provider. You can also invest in the CAS software and appropriate tools to make the amalgamation faster. No matter which strategy you adopt, you must do it as quickly as possible because the Client Accounting Services demand is increasing at an unprecedented rate.

Place your reliance on the able team of Unison Globus to tackle your need for the best Client Accounting Services

Unison Globus helps you with comprehensive accounting and advisory services at a low cost. Our professionals are aware of the turning of the tides and deliver CAS to make your decisions more accurate and effective. We have incorporated a tailored service system to fit your multiple needs. CPAs and CA practitioners can outsource their accounting demands with Unison and unlock our top-class assistance in accounting and tax preparation. Contact us today!