Having worked with accountants in practice since 2005, a couple of year ago we came up with Crunchers Bookkeepers.
Based on our experiences with accountants., bookkeepers and franchisees we have decided we want to be self-sufficient so we are launching our own accounts/tax centre. This means our local offices who are not accountants can offer an "all-in" service and go head-to-head with accountants.
We are seeing and ever increasing number of accountants offering bookkeeping and with the advancement of smart technology and off-shoring I can see the market shrinking for the traditional bookkeeper.
What do you guys think?
Isn't it time bookkeepers take the lead with businesses?
I think accountants needing to advertise bookkeeping could be a great sign. Years ago when the ICB started hardly anyone was looking for a bookkeeper, or bookkeeping service, they all were after an accountant.
The ICB has been banging on about bookkeepers since it started, and how they can sometimes offer a better service to the small business.
Now people are starting to take notice, and more new business startups are being told to look for a bookkeeper, which is why accountants are now feeling the need to market their bookkeeping services, rather than just saying 'we are an accountant, that's all you need'.
Over the last few years more and more accountant firms have started contacting the ICB. These firms in the past would have hired an AAT student or member, are now after an ICB member. The ICB is even thinking about starting a 'club' for accountants to help them work with ICB bookkeepers.
The firms the ICB talk to say the change is that in the past bookkeepers needed accountants to subcontract down to them, now, more and more, the accountant needs the bookkeeper to pass work to them.
Obviously there is still a long way to go, and probably most accountants don't have this problem, but I think the bookkeeping industry is growing, fast.
Bookkeeping is growing; it is part of the personal outsourcing revolution. It is just a case of who is going to get the work and at what rate.
The truth is accountants say there are loads of bookkeepers, but very few good ones! So, I think the ICB strategy of having quality control is a good one but accountants are still the relationship driver.
Our franchisees are not interested in having had me downs from accountants because they get forced to work on a low hourly rate! They want to be the relationship driver so being able to offer year-end accounts and tax means there is no clash with accountants.
We have reviewed the ICB and AAT as the recommended training route and at the moment are going down the AAT road.
Ah but more and more accountants are contacting the ICB to become partners, because they want the bookkeepers to hand them work. This can only be because more clients are going directly to the bookkeeper now.
The ICB has been trying to get this since it started, and still has a long way to go, but it is happening. Unfortunatly the ICB was only started 14 years ago, and so when most accountants, bank managers etc went through training the ICB did not exist, and so would have been brought up on the belief that you do AAT, then become an accountant, then hire AAT students/members to do the bookkeeping.
That is changing, slowly, but now more and more accountants are realising that people are doing ICB, becoming professional bookkeepers in their own right, and gaining their own clients.
With regards to AAT or ICB, I would stick my neck out and say the ICB is the prefered training route, the AAT is the prefered end result for accountants
Having worked for a medium-sized accounts practice, it's sometimes not profitable for them to do bookkeeping, but it can be a way of hooking people into more profitable work - accountancy, vat compliance, tax returns, advisory etc etc etc.
I have finally joined my co-worker as a mostly-full-time colleague in our limited company and although we have bookkeeping clients, the aim is to provide them with an 'all-in' package that is competitive in pricing but much more of practical help to our clients by providing management accounts, cashflow control, advisory where possible. And the joy of being a 'bookkeeper' yet able to provide accountancy (as I'm Chartered) is that we can provide these services profitably yet at a lower cost than many traditional accountants.
I guess bookkeepers don't get marred with the 'stuffy accountants' image so we have a real chance of taking some market share with careful image management and providing a great service at an affordable price :)
I agree that Bookkeepers should break the mould and offer more services. If you have the right staff and the right knowledge then go for it.
For too long Bookkeepers have been know as processors of paperwork and a drain on cash for little in return.
When AAT was launched, if you qualified at Technician level you were basically known as a glorified bookkeeper. But AAT and the ICB are growing in stature each year.
There is still space for Bookkeepers and Accountants to to work alongside each other and together to get the best services for their clients and offer real value for money.
I myself offer both accounting, bookkeeping and business advice services but my niche market is tailoring the bookkeeping process to not only provide my clients with good sound and accurate financial information for monitoring their business and helping them understand how their business functions, but also to ensure that their accountant has to carry out minimal work on year end accounts and hopefully saving my client money on fees.
After 10 years in practice, i have seen so many bad cases of bookkeeping and although we tried to change the clients processes to make things better, without 1 to 1 training it was very difficult to get the client to implement the changes needed.
That's where I come in!!! Good solid 1 to 1 training which improves not only their bookkeeping processes but help them save time, become more efficient, create more time for them to work on their business and do the things they are good at.
So if you if you feel you can offer these extra services to go head to head, then why not, but as Moxby says, try to to get labelled as the stuffy accountant. mix things up and try to offer something slightly different.
