After over 30 years in this profession, accounting has never been more promising and more exciting. The main reason is technology is driving data entry costs so low that it’s just about to disappear. That means we can finally focus on helping small businesses get more out of their accounting dollars through more analysis and better tools. Here are five areas that I believe are essential to serving clients best.
1. The User Interface
QuickBooks revolutionized the user interface in the 1990s by having its screens look like accounting forms. It was pure genius at the time.
Today, I believe there is a small set of products that are leading the way with a revolutionary new accounting interface that has creative simplicity as its strength. ZenPayroll describes itself as “delightful”, and Xero describes itself as “beautiful”. These are words that are not necessarily associated with accounting systems!!!!!
Think Apple + accounting system, and you will get it. Clients in media, creative, ad agencies, and many others that are jazzed by design will be the first to want an accounting system that is indeed delightful and beautiful.
2. Disappearing Data Entry
Thankfully, data entry is being automated by awesome tools such as ScanWriter, Bill.com and more. If you haven’t heard of these tools (and you are spending more than half your time on data entry), you really owe it to your client (and yourself) to find out more.
3. Apps that Add Up
If you have yet to be asked by one of your clients if they can do their books on their iPad or smart phone, then – trust me – it’s coming any week now. These apps are our new best friends. Some of them will cut down on customer service questions; others will help us collect data from our clients. There is one app where you can take a photo of a receipt and upload it right into the accounting system. No more chasing your client for paperwork!
I recommend making a list of apps your client should install, including their bank and credit card accounts as well as all the third party applications you have clients using. This could be a great add-on service for you.
4. The Cloud
No list would be complete without mentioning cloud accounting, but I think most of you have heard about it by now so I will move on.
5. Automated Analytics
Whether you call them key performance indicators, a financial dashboard, ratios, or metrics, the good news is we have more products available that can crunch numbers for us so we can help our clients with cash forecasting, job costing, margin analysis, and profit improvement. Bench-marking tools fall into this category too.
Getting Up to Speed
How did you do on our checklist of hot tech trends? Congrats if you did well. If you didn’t do so well but are now super-curious about how to learn more, then our Ultimate Accounting vCon is the perfect place to learn more at a really low cost. We’ll be presenting many technology solutions as well as showing you how to price, package, and present these solutions to clients. We’ll also be sharing many examples and case studies of your peers who are rocking the accounting tech world and serving their clients exceptionally.
If you’re already registered, we appreciate your business and can’t wait to get started. If not, you can check it out right here: http://accountingvcon.com/