Adding value to your Accountancy Practice: Advising the advisor

Deciding what’s the right piece of advice for your clientele and how to present it can be tricky. As a small business accountancy practice, the livelihood of many business owners rests in your hands. Each client’s business is unique, requiring a tailored solution in order to offer the most appropriate form of support. Adding value to your accountancy practice could be very beneficial. Yet, sometimes, it may be the accountant who needs support, especially when adapting to change.

Adding value to your accountancy practice is no longer an option

Business accountancy is no longer just a matter of shuffling accounts in a bid to earn your clients the ideal levels of interest, revenue and efficiency. Because of the amount of competition in this field, the standard role of a business accountant has since expanded, touching upon various other roles. So to ensure that your accounting practice is able to offer the services your clientele demands, we at Rangewell are stepping up and offering 5 ways of adding value to your accountancy practice.

1. Applying for business finance

Whether with their local high street bank or through the dynamic world of alternative finance, what many business owners fail to appreciate is the need for preparation when applying for business finance. A frequent issue that lenders often raise is the lack of quality applications. To elaborate, the most common reason for a failed application tends to be on account of poor credit, CCJ’s, outstanding debts, mismanaged documentation and so on. As such, around 1 in 3 SMEs is missing out on essential funding opportunities. This needs to change.

As a business accountant, you’re in the perfect position to guide business owners when contemplating a finance application. With a firm yet reassuring hand you can ensure that their proposal is fit for a lender’s scrutiny. Encourage each of your clients to prepare beforehand a business plan, credit report, tax return, financial statements, and any other forms of documentation that might be applicable to the desired finance product. In addition, it may even be a good idea to prepare your clients on the sorts of questions lenders may ask.

2. Business valuation

Another area where you can be adding value to your accountancy practice and small business clients involves business valuations. This is a vital area for business owners and is a requirement in a wide variety of scenarios such as business sales, business finance, disputes, insolvency, mergers, acquisitions and so on. Yet in spite of its necessity, around 1 in 3 SME owners feel that their businesses are undervalued, with a further 17% completely unaware of how much their business is worth. If not sorted and kept up to date, the potential impact could be critical.

As an accountant, you can resolve this issue for your clients. Whether you intend to generate a calculation based on the total number of owned business assets, annual sales or customer bases, you can deliver an accurate project of what they’re worth. By doing so, your clientele will have a stronger understanding of their business’ standing, allowing them to better adapt their plans, goals and overall direction.

3. Cash flow management

It goes without saying that cash flow is a vital part of running a business successfully. For your clients, it really is a matter of life and death for their business. Since accountancy generally involves business accounts anyway, alerting clients to potential cash flow issues shouldn’t be much of a stretch from your current services. So to better tailor your services to your clients’ needs, you could offer to generate periodic cash flow projections or even guide them to appropriate forms of finance.

When it comes to cash flow management there is a broad spectrum of finance solutions on offer to your clients, thanks to the alternative finance industry. From Bridging Loans and Invoice Finance to Refinance solutions, with so much available and so many lenders to choose from knowing which one to select can be perplexing. That’s why Access To Finance providers such as Rangewell are so crucial when seeking business finance. With our services and expertise, we can source the most appropriate form of business finance for your clients’ needs.

4. Strategic planning

Access to vital data is a necessity when formulating a well-informed business strategy. These are essential for a number of reasons, all of which allow businesses to better coordinate their efforts and steer themselves towards their ultimate goals. Having a strong business plan allows business owners to secure external funding, plan for new ventures, expand, cope with direction shifts, business sales, acquisitions, mergers and so on. Working closely with the data required, your practice could expand its services and assist in establishing detailed, coherent business plans for each of your clients. In the long run, this will allow the businesses under your care to thrive, solidifying existing relationships and benefitting both you and your clients.

5. Succession planning

On average, around 20% of SMEs make it to 5 years of maturity, with estimated 70% of family-run businesses failing before another generation can take the reins. Such situations can become a real headache, becoming a rather ugly affair if not managed appropriately. Whether it’s through poor sales, tax liabilities, family disputes and so on, your services can come as a welcome pillar of support when arranging a succession plan. By extending your services to succession plan arrangement, you can enable your clients to sort out:

• Who will be taking over
• Manage tax liabilities
• Time scales
• And, ensure a calm steady transition for their existing customers.

Our values are simple – we’re on your side

Adding value to your accountancy practice may well require some support. At Rangewell, our values are simple – we’re on your side. Our services are clear and transparent and we support many practices like yours - whether the need is funding for accountancy clients as a partner or funding for accountants to grow and scale. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for business tips and case studies, and feel free to call us on 0203 637 2340 if you’d like to chat about what we can do for you.