4 Tips To Ensure That The Practice Of Your CPA Firm Doesn’t Fail

CPAs and accounting firms provide one of the most valuable services today. Almost all businesses of every domain and niches use their services for better management of their accounts.

However, with changing times and rapidly evolving accounting techniques, there are a few things that CPA firms need to consider to ensure that it sustains in the market and stays ahead of their competitors. Here are a few tips for CPA firms to ensure their practices don’t fail.

1. Harnessing Cloud Computing In Your Accounting Ethic

One of the best habits to ensure that your CPA practice does not fail is to keep track of the latest IT solutions for the accounting domain. Cloud is one of the technologies that can transform your accounting practice and increase productivity.

Right from efficient data management to increased security, cloud proves to be a very significant addition to your ethic. Here are some of the benefits of cloud that can evolve your accounting practice.

1) Remote Accessibility: Clients can ask for your service at any moment of the day. Visiting an office to access that particular data or file can be a gruesome task.

Cloud stores all your data in a remote location, which you can access, irrespective of time and location.

All you need is an internet connection and an electronic device, be it a tablet, mobile phone or laptop.

2) Data Security and Disaster Recovery: No one can predict disasters or data security breaches. If you are using in-house servers, such accidents can lead to losing your clients’ valuable data and, eventually, failure of your CPA business.

Cloud technology has features like end-to-end encryption, IDS/IPS, multiple firewalls that keep security breaches at a safe distance. In the case of a disaster, the cloud stores all your data in a data center, which helps you retrieve your lost data within no time.

Thus, using cloud technology can keep both data breaches and disasters at bay.

3) No Maintenance: Concentrating your energy on the maintenance of in-house hardware resources can take a toll on your accounting work. Your work can be hampered, and the relationship with clients can be affected.

Adopting cloud services from a cloud provider can be of great help in this case, as they take up all the IT-related tasks, and thus, you can concentrate on your accounting business properly.

4) Reducing Capital Costs:  The secret to a successful CPA practice is to invest your time and money wisely. Using in-house servers that require high maintenance can hamper your process. Cloud service providers have a “pay-as-you-go” model that asks you to pay only for the resources that you are leveraging.

2. Using a Responsive Communication Channel

Communication can be a major difference between a failing CPA business and a successful one. Being one of the accounting service providers, you need to maintain all your communication channels categorically.

Here are a few communication channels and techniques that can ensure that your CPA business is not failing.

1) Keeping a Website: Having a website is one of the critical things your CPA firm needs. Since all your services can’t be provided orally or on the phone, the site offers every minute and necessary details of your services provided.

A primary call-to-action button on your website can connect your firm and the prospective client, and that can turn out to be very beneficial to scale up your business.

2) Using Social Media Channels: Social media is one of the critical communication channels to engage with prospective clients. If you are holding a webinar or Q/A session, social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn can help you promote it.

3) Responsive Helpdesk: Having a responsive helpdesk with the least reaction time can give you an edge over your competitors. It can help you earn a reputation in the market, which can be very useful in converting prospective clients into potential consumers.

Being an active communicator will not only let you interact with clients, but you can also understand, analyze, and read their problems, which can play a role in evolving your accounting business.

3. Leveraging Technology

If moving your CPA firm to the cloud can bring some benefits for your services, leveraging advanced technologies keeps the services provided by your firm up and running 24*7 and prevent your practice from failing.

Here are a few technologies your firm must invest in to ensure that business is not shutting down even in a hard time.

1) Virtual Desktop Infrastructure: Using hosted VDI can help to form a virtualized desktop environment through the server. With VDI on the cloud (DaaS), you can easily access your desktop apps and data remotely.

2) Hubstaff or Toggl: Time-Management is an important aspect if you really want your firm not to fail. Hubstaff and Toggl are time-management software that can help you to track your time spent on a particular project or a client.

Depending on the time spent and the level and weight of work, you can prioritize your clients. This tool can also help you to track your employees and judge their productivity as well.

3) Hosted QuickBooks: There are still some CPA firms that are using papers rather than software for their purposes. On the other hand, cloud-based QuickBooks makes tasks like invoicing and cash flow audit easier for accountants by automating all these tasks and making document management fun and exciting.

Therefore, if you constantly use these technologies for your daily activities, your firm will be far from being a failed venture.

4. Not Overlooking Few Important Guidelines

There are some aspects that CPA firms often overlook, which leads to failure of their firms. Here are a few, and inserting them into your business ethic can be very significant.

1) Keep Tabs On Government Regulations: Being a CPA, you need to keep an eye on government regulations. If your firm is not compatible with the latest government regulations from authorities like FASB and IRS, the license of your firm is always at risk of being canceled.

2) Hire Wisely: Do an audit of your company budget and then hire resources depending upon the workload. Hiring an uncountable number of candidates for a firm can be tough to manage. Hold up technical and psychometric rounds for candidates to test their all-round skills and then onboard them for your business purposes.

3) Analyze Your Competitors: If you are a novice who has just started a CPA firm, running a business can be difficult. Thus, you need to keep an eye on other accountants, bookkeepers, and CPAs to ensure that your firm is following all the latest trends in the accounting industry.

Wrapping Up

Nowadays, the competition has grown so much that a simple mistake can turn into a grave one if not rectified in time. It can result in losing clients, incurring losses, or even licenses to be canceled.

Thus, a CPA or a bookkeeper must comply with all the regulations, technologies, and trends to eliminate operational bottlenecks and deliver the work on time. Following all these will be quite instrumental in ensuring that your CPA practice does not fail and, moreover, turns it into a successful one.