What Are Accounting Advisory Services? Here’s What You Need to Know

Keeping up to date with all things technology is now the difference between keeping clients and losing them. In fact, firms that use technology will grow an average of 11% more over a ten-year period than firms that don’t. Below are eight deliberate steps you can take to start preparing your firm, your staff and your clients for the move toward a more advisory-centric future. Research shows that poor cash flow has left 1 in 7 left small businesses unable to pay employees and 38% unable to pay debts. Businesses, especially small businesses, need contingency plans to navigate predicted and unforeseen challenges.

• As an example, Susan Boles offers virtual CFO services to coaches, consultants and agencies to help them with their finance functions.
• EY offers a variety of career paths and opportunities, and with so many options, we understand it can be hard to choose.
• Ernst & Young Global Limited, a UK company limited by guarantee, does not provide services to clients.
• Accounting Today is a leading provider of online business news for the accounting community, offering breaking news, in-depth features, and a host of resources and services.
• Deloitte’s accounting advisory offerings can help you navigate some of accounting’s most complex challenges.

It was clear they didn’t know how to come to decisions around protecting their assets, minimizing their risk or using the data to drive growth. QuickBooks® Online allows us to have live bank feeds, a shared workspace between business owners and accountants, and real-time archival access. What this means is that we no longer work in an environment of stacks of paper manipulated and kept disconnected from our client’s day-to-day business. Combined with accountant-only features such as the Business Performance Dashboard, we have the technical foundation to delve into accounting advisory.

Enhancing confidence in accounting decisions

QuickBooks Online allows for seamless app integration specific to your client’s needs, and there is an app to improve nearly every business process. However, your client is not an app expert and is likely unaware that technology exists that can make their business life easier. Business owners often feel in the dark when trying to navigate their financials. One way you can help is to filter out the noise and focus on the most relevant information to their situation. From this position of authority, your clients will feel greater confidence with the information they are provided.

• As you connect on a deeper level with your clients, you and your staff will become empowered to identify additional advisory opportunities along the way.
• Our team assists clients with carve-out financial statements, finance workstream separation support and other financial reporting and accounting matters.
• Most firms that offer CAS serve either one or a small number of niches — and for good reason.
• Explore how our knowledge, experience, and tools can turn your accounting and reporting from burden to benefit.
• “The employer can now scale and grow without significantly adding to the headcount,” Moe said.
• It “didn’t have very robust reporting capability,” he said, and couldn’t customize data to the extent that he wanted.

This is why you see so many firms competing on price, or marketing themselves with phrases like “trusted” or “accurate”, which are standard expectations. MAK Financial CPA, a firm located in San Diego with five U.S.-based and five offshore employees, started doing CAS because it saw a need for it, said owner Michael Khalil, CPA. Most of the accountants in its area who served small businesses focused on taxes and didn’t provide the kind of sophisticated advice business owners needed, Khalil said. He chose to focus on quick-service restaurants as one of his niches, in part because he handled accounting for several of his family members who own franchise pizza restaurants. Have someone in your firm be responsible for keeping up with new technologies in the CAS space, suggested Hugh Hermanek, CPA/CITP, a partner at Hancock Dana, a 55-employee firm in Omaha, Neb. New apps and software emerge rapidly, he said, and when you’re knowledgeable about them, you can choose the right ones to help your clients’ businesses run more smoothly.

Make a strong commitment to CAS

Our advisory services for accounting and reporting can help you face the challenges presented by evolving accounting standards and business models, disruptive technology transformation, and global economic trends. Explore how our knowledge, experience, and tools can turn your accounting and reporting from burden to benefit. From financial accounting to reporting advisory, there are many types of advisory services that accounting firms can provide. Your expertise and knowledge are baked into every client engagement, ensuring a mutually beneficial experience for both parties, long-term growth, and revenue opportunities.

The good news is that you are likely already providing some type of advisory, and that with a few more steps, you will be on your way to creating more value for your clients and practice. In one form or another, you’ve probably been doing advisory already. In fact, in a recent study, nearly 60% of accountants said that they offer advisory services. Just what these services look like in those firms, we’ll never know, but to get the best results for you and your clients you’ll want to approach advisory in the right way and make it integral to your offering. EY’s FAAS teams support you in determining, monitoring and disclosing financial and nonfinancial insights for your stakeholders.

Retirement planning

“We had to step back and look at the value of the services we were providing, not just how many hours we spent” on an engagement, he said. ACT Services now offers CAS clients four packages starting at different price points, with room for customization (see the sidebar “How One Small Firm Packages CAS”). To price accounting advisory services appropriately, you must define the scope of work at the beginning of the project and ensure the client knows what is included and what will cost extra. This might require educating them upfront on what’s included and not included in their engagement. Our practitioners provide on-demand, online, and real-time technical accounting and corporate reporting support. This flexible and scalable service is designed to help you address accounting events, strategic transactions, new accounting standard implementation and financial reporting.

Many resources now exist to help firms that are starting to offer CAS. Organizations including the AICPA have created materials firms can use to learn about CAS and offer training programs that cover everything from pricing to staffing to how to talk to clients about the value of CAS. Our services are designed to help clients implement an integrated ESG approach, strategy, and reporting framework to comply with the evolving reporting requirements and meet the needs of key stakeholder groups.

You don’t need to have “arrived,” you just need to be moving forward and have something to offer your clients. We can support you in building an effective and efficient finance function with a range of accounting, reporting and analytics services. All of this makes it critical that accounting and financial reporting are handled efficiently and with an eye toward what’s best for the organization as a whole.

Capitalizing on tax and accounting “hot topics” will draw your audience in and solidify you as leader in your field. Taking client challenges and applying strategies to create opportunities in service to their growth. EY focuses on high-ethical standards and integrity among its employees and expects all candidates to demonstrate these qualities. At EY, you’ll have the chance to build a career as unique as you are, with the global scale, support, inclusive culture and technology to become the best version of you.

How to know when you’re ready to move to advisory…

To lay a foundation for success, business owners need to first understand their own personal requirements in order to create successful business budgets. Therefore, we must shift our own mindsets from completing tasks to building long-term goals and plans with our clients. Often, coaching is a phased-in approach over a 12- to 18-month timeframe.

Changes to accounting and business advisory services are more than just water-cooler chat. In fact, the industry is abuzz with firms that are adapting their client offering to include value-add services as technology is making previously lucrative services obsolete. Most accounting firms recognise the value of evolving existing accounting services to meet new market demands and remain competitive. https://www.bookstime.com/articles/intangible-assets offer one way to satisfy both while also ensuring clients are supported in the right way. There are many correct explanations of the phrase “accounting advisory services,” which can make it difficult to understand and apply to our practices.