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It’s actually much easier to adopt within a small firm because the democratisation of these platforms and the software means that instead of paying thousands of dollars for a desktop bookkeeping platform that needs to be held on servers, you now have something that costs maybe $20 a month. For that reason, it really is a no-brainer for most people. The learning curve and the idea is that the user interface and the consumer journey is easy to follow. They want to make it as easy for you as possible. Where people go wrong and why they need us is simply because they don’t understand accounting fundamentals. If you don’t check that at the beginning, a couple years later you’ll end up with things at a place where the burden to fix them will outweigh and impact the progressive journey forward.
We love to use what’s readily available and we have this ethos at our company. If it could do 80% of what you wanted it to do, it was good enough. This is because eventually there’s going to be enough consumer feedback for the technology or platform you’re using to do that extra bit for you. I think that’s a huge obstacle for a lot of people. Accountants, advisors, clients in general often say, “it does this, but it doesn’t quite do that.” Well, you know, no system is ever going to 100 per cent do what you want it to do. The idea is, you fill in the gaps where you can and then find other applications that connect with it to do what you want. From there you can look at the overall cost, evaluate how easy it is to use and then, I think you have something worthwhile there.
I will say this, in a climate where everyone positions themselves as a professional, or where someone living nomadically in Bali can say they’re an expert in all things tax and finance in Australia, or in a world where people don’t trust reviews or testimonies anymore, accolades to me is the last piece of real external validation you can get and that you can trust. I think this because it’s a commemoration of your peers that you are, or you have achieved something. I see it all over the place now that people aren’t rushing for reviews, they aren’t rushing for likes and follows or engagement. They’re rushing to get the accolades. I really do believe that is a beautiful place to start. If you’re in the running for a young rising star award and if you achieve it, then people are going to be looking at you and expecting big things from you. So, my advice to all young accountants is to look for those accolades and go for gold.
I do have tips actually, two things. The question every owner or every young rising accountant should ask themselves is why am I doing this or why do I need to do this? Once you then have that lens on and you look at the firm operating on a day-to-day basis, you must ask, is this thing I’m doing necessary? Is it a useful utilisation of my time? I guarantee you if you start to ask that question, there’s going to be a cloud AI or some sort of automated software that can do that for you in a fraction of the time. Right, but the caveat is this though, you must look for the thing that is redundant and see if you can replace it with some sort of automated software. If this becomes more troublesome than it’s worth, maybe you’re going down the wrong rabbit hole. That would be my advice, that’s how you begin to change things.
The second piece of advice I’d love to give young accountants is that the partner model where you have the partner, the senior manager, the intermediate, intermediate accountant, the grad and potentially the intern, then you have the admin staff and the tech staff, that model is becoming dangerously outdated. I say outdated because with all these apps currently democratising both the compliance process and knowledge base, it makes that idea of how to run a public practice a redundant concept because most of the compliance is being done by outsourced labour and, or your tech. Secondly when it comes to your knowledge base, I dare to say that Chat GPT nowadays knows more than I could possibly provide. What I’m saying is, as a grad, as a young consultant or advisor, these things that were traditionally part of the partnership model have completely been broken down and accessible to you always. The key thing that’s missing, I believe, from accounting practices now is not so much the knowledge or the skill or the title, it’s the relationship building. Relationship building is prominent in many other industries, whether it be marketing or SaaS, products or even large gas companies. You need relationship managers to keep people happy. With this software, what tends to happen is that as you scale, your clients become client 1 of 2000 and they become just a number. People don’t want to be, they don’t want to feel like a number. They want to work with someone, they want to do business with people. And as a young person, you’re primed to be that person they deal with as the work gets done by outsourced models or through the apps. So, if you leverage your ability to connect with people, connect with their brand and connect with them as professionals and business owners, that’s how you’re going to really show your worth. If accounting firms don’t start seeing that themselves, then it’s going to become a sunset industry.
I would say that AI apps or the applications they use are going to be built around AI centric models. Don’t look for the shiniest object or the one that claims to be able to do X, Y and Z. Look for the ones that solve the problems that reoccur every day for you. At the end of the day, they’re going to be the easiest and the most worthwhile to adopt. Again, that’s going to free up a huge amount of time because what then happens is you instantly become more time efficient and you will have more time to work on your business instead of just being a business operator. Most accountants end up, whether they want to or not, becoming just operators instead of owners. That’s how you lose yourself, that’s how you lose insight into the things that are changing. That’s number one. Number two is a lot of this stuff is at the front end for you as a user, things you’ll see. There are now applications that make apps easier to use by having it as its core foundation, but providing a user interface that makes it easier for you to get what you want, when you want, that’s what you need.
Intuit QuickBooks, the world’s leading small business technology platform, helps small businesses grow and run their business all in one place, including managing their books, getting paid fast, managing capital, and paying employees with confidence.
