hey it's patti scharf CPA and co-founder of catching clouds the leader in
e-commerce accounting welcome back to another Saturday slow down where I like
to remind everybody to work on their business and not just in their business
all right so today we're talking about accounting advisory services and before
you fall asleep I'm talking both to accountants and to e-commerce sellers
the sellers I want to talk to you more on like a consumer level as people who
are are buying the Accounting advisory services and then to the accountants who
have been going to conferences all year last year probably even the year before
that as you're hearing more and more people talking about how important it is
to be working in advisory so I want to I want to talk about like what that means
to me where I think the industry is going and and what what all is is there
okay so first of all I kind of feel like advisory is just a buzzword I think
people are making too much out of it I feel like like accounting firms but
pretty much any services industry they have been offering advisory services
since the beginning of time they offered it before they're offering it now
they're offering it into the future and it's something that's just kind of being
repackaged a little bit what advisory is I mean if you think about it it comes
from the root word advice so it's really when business owners are looking for
advice and when it comes to accounting that specifically around their business
and their businesses finances typically business owners are looking for advice
and the people who have that knowledge are the ones who are offering the
advisory services right so let's just talk about e-commerce sellers as an
example the kind of advice that you need and the kind of help that you're looking
for is going to change depending on the size of your business what stage you're
in what your goals are so maybe somebody who is just starting out they haven't
built up a network yet of people that can help them with their business they
they just want to know enough to stay out of jail they maybe need to know some
of the basics of accounting or how to use software or what
they're just kind of getting started and when they're looking for somebody to
help them with that there are tons of companies out there who can help them
with that and just because they don't call that advisory doesn't mean that
they're not giving advice and they're not holding their hand and they're not
helping troubleshoot the problems that they're having at that stage and then on
the flip side when you go to to more established sellers which is really in
the market that catching clouds plays in we've got more complex issues where
people are looking for help on cash flow or sales tax or you know they're selling
on 16 different shopping carts and they want to figure out how to put all that
together and figure out whether their business is actually profitable or not
and and just things like that or on another scale like with taxes like
people still need to file their tax returns and accountants since the
beginning of time have been not only preparing the tax returns but also
helping guide people through decisions tax planning and all of that like all of
those different things oh I would say falls into advisory services I would
also say that the best firms that the firm's that are doing this most
successfully are going to be the ones who are specializing in a particular
industry if they have a niche then they are learning all kinds of information
they've they've got a much deeper understanding of the challenges in a
particular industry or the kinds of challenges that their clients have
because they're seeing the same challenges over and over and over or you
know somebody else might specialize in just working with startups or just
working with businesses that are exiting you know they're they're working on
selling their businesses or something like that so the companies that are
really focused on a particular service or a particular size of client or type
of client or whatever they're going to have a step ahead when it comes to this
advisory kind of thing now when I started I said that you know
past present future advisory it's it's been around since the beginning of time
and they're just kind calling it something else so why is
there this big push all of a sudden in the last couple of years towards
advisory and I think that there are a couple of different reasons for it I
think one reason is the fact that I think business itself is a lot more
transparent and accessible than it was even ten years ago like what I'm talking
about is the existence of Google reviews this is the existence of Yelp the
existence of Twitter if you are not serving your clients well then
everybody's gonna know about it whereas ten years ago or or even before that
people didn't really hear about it I think that ecommerce sellers or small
businesses in general when they're looking for a service based business to
help them out like accountants and things like that they're gonna be doing
some homework on you and if you aren't up to snuff if you don't have
higher-level skills if you can't walk the talk then people are gonna know
right right out of the gate so it's really important for the accounting
industry as a whole to upskill and understand their clients more deeply and
provide better services and just help out the small businesses right the other
thing that's going on in our environment that I think is causing this big surge
of people talking about advisory is automation so I think there's there are
a lot of people who are a little bit scared about what automation is going to
do so and you know it was the same thing like when computers came around we had
people with the green eyeshades and the paint the ledger paper and stuff like
that tallying up stuff by hand and then
computers came around and they're like oh no I'm gonna be out of a job and of
course that did not happen because we still need people to do that work to do
the accounting work it's just the methods of how it's being done is
different then it it was done you know a hundred years ago and I think we're
going through a new evolution now where we've got zapier and we've got we've got
BOTS and we've got AI and machine learning that's all kind of just
starting to emerge and people are starting to think oh my gosh if I am NOT
coding these transactions by hand what am I going to do and the answer is the
same answer to always bend which is help your clients help your clients with the
stuff that they need you find out what's causing them to lose sleep at night and
then because you understand finances you have been living in this space you know
how you can help them but I think when the accounting industry is saying to
focus on advisory I think they don't they they're having a hard time
articulating what that actually is because it's going to be different for
every company every industry every for some for some people it might be more
helping with financing with somebody else it might be putting systems
together with other people it might be a specialization in sales tax like it's
gonna look different for everybody but in every case I think it's going to
be more of a focus on the client and less on the work you know it I think
that a lot of people used to be they would call themselves bean counters they
would just this is what they did they did accounts payable they did accounts
receivable or whatever now everybody has to shift and start focusing on the
client and what they need and how they can best help them and honestly that's
how business has been since the beginning of time the ones who do that
well they're gonna succeed and the ones who don't not so much so I don't know I
I'm this just kind of what I'm thinking I don't know if you guys have other
comments if you do please leave them down below I I'm happy to always respond
to comments and and see what other people are thinking in the industry I
hope you like this video if you did please like comment and share if you
have already please subscribe and I'll catch
you later