It’s time to hit the road with Amy & AJack for the All Aussie Accounting Adventures TECH edition as they are back for another show stopping season with horse references galore. Sure it’s not an Andrew Dad joke, but gosh it’s close.
In this episode Amy and AJack set course on a high-tech odyssey through the ever-evolving realm of accounting, where they construct a solid digital foundation for advisory services.
Advisory services, in this digital age, act as the sophisticated AI systems that guide businesses through the vast and dynamic sea of financial choices. These services are like the algorithms that not only steer the ship but also use real-time data analytics to chart the most efficient course, all while optimising for the smoothest journey.
On our tech-infused journey, we'll explore how the rise of cutting-edge software and data analytics has revolutionised the landscape of advisory services. We'll emphasize the importance of using technology as a strategic tool, ensuring that it empowers decision-making rather than taking the helm completely.
And here's a reminder – while technology advances at full throttle, compliance is not sailing into the sunset. It remains a critical part of the accounting landscape, ensuring that our financial voyages stay within legal and ethical boundaries.
So join us on this tech-savvy voyage of discovery, as we uncover the essence of advisory services in the digital age together with our sea horses (Ask Amy about that reference 😆)
CHECK US OUT ALL IN Advisory | Chartered accountants, business advisors & transactional experts Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans Clarity Street
CHECK US OUT ALL IN Advisory | Your squad of award-winning accountants, tax wizards & biz visionaries, perfectly tailored to elevate your biz. Let's soar together! Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans Clarity Street | Bringing clarity, time & ease to your practice. Your accounting systems, people and processes working together. Simply. Seamlessly. Mayday | Revolutionise your finance teams multi-entity month end through real-time accounting
It’s time to hit the road with Amy & AJack for the All Aussie Accounting Adventures TECH edition as they are back for another show stopping season with horse references galore. Sure it’s not an Andrew Dad joke, but gosh it’s close.
In this episode Amy and AJack set course on a high-tech odyssey through the ever-evolving realm of accounting, where they construct a solid digital foundation for advisory services.
Advisory services, in this digital age, act as the sophisticated AI systems that guide businesses through the vast and dynamic sea of financial choices. These services are like the algorithms that not only steer the ship but also use real-time data analytics to chart the most efficient course, all while optimising for the smoothest journey.
On our tech-infused journey, we'll explore how the rise of cutting-edge software and data analytics has revolutionised the landscape of advisory services. We'll emphasize the importance of using technology as a strategic tool, ensuring that it empowers decision-making rather than taking the helm completely.
And here's a reminder – while technology advances at full throttle, compliance is not sailing into the sunset. It remains a critical part of the accounting landscape, ensuring that our financial voyages stay within legal and ethical boundaries.
So join us on this tech-savvy voyage of discovery, as we uncover the essence of advisory services in the digital age together with our sea horses (Ask Amy about that reference 😆)
CHECK US OUT ALL IN Advisory | Chartered accountants, business advisors & transactional experts Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans Clarity Street
CHECK US OUT ALL IN Advisory | Your squad of award-winning accountants, tax wizards & biz visionaries, perfectly tailored to elevate your biz. Let's soar together! Illumin8 | Purpose-led cloud-driven accounting humans Clarity Street | Bringing clarity, time & ease to your practice. Your accounting systems, people and processes working together. Simply. Seamlessly. Mayday | Revolutionise your finance teams multi-entity month end through real-time accounting
Very good, very good. I am looking forward to this episode and I wanted to start with a little quote, which I don't really think can be put to any one person, because it's very vague, but it is that you can't build a great building on a weak foundation, and I feel that, on the topic of advisory, reporting, forecasting and all of these services, that, at the end of the day, you can't do these things without a really solid foundation. What do you think?
Speaker 2:
Yes, agreed, and you know it does. It definitely feeds into today's topic on the All Aussie Accounting Adventures Tech Edition. It's a bit of a fun one. So, listeners, hoist the sails. We're embarking on a voyage from XL Safe Harbour to the clouds expansive sea. Let's set course for precise forecasting and keep an eye out for seahorses on the way. I think sorry, jack, I think that may be my favorite horse related intro yet. To be fair, and look, maybe for anyone who has been listening all season without knowing what is going on, listen back to season one so you understand the horse theme. Anyway, let's, let's, let's actually unpack today's topic, which is all about advisory, but I have loved those introductions from you.
Speaker 1:
Grab the reins, take a hold of your steed. It's inspiring stuff, just like advisory. In preparation for this episode, I wanted to look back at what Ali and Andrew have said, and we just had a bit of a chat with Andrew just then in kind of preparation for this, and I've also spoken to a number of other advisors and I have worked in an advisory firm before and so you know, I think, when it comes to what is advisory, it's obviously a good place to start the conversation, because today's all about advisory, forecasting, reporting. What's the difference? What are the tools that you can use? How does this all work? What do you have to get in place first?
Speaker 1:
But you know, people have been saying for years that compliance is dead and I feel at this point it's proven to be false. I mean, potentially, some basic, basic individual tax returns are no longer there, but there's plenty of compliance work still being done and it's still the vast majority of revenue for most firms. But there's still excitement around advisory. It's taken a long time to really take off and I think part of that is that a lot of the forecasting and reporting tools that claimed to be advisory tools haven't really delivered on that to date. I mean, how do you see it?
Speaker 2:
So I was actually thinking, as you were just talking then, about where the whole concept of advisory came from, and I don't think I'm too far incorrect from saying two parts around this, which is that zero probably coined the phrase for the accounting industry advisory. Now, when I say coined it, I mean as in like they really started heavily promoting the term advisory for the accounting industry when they came into play because, all of a sudden, what used to take quite a long time to do you had, you know you were there are a whole heap of efficiency gains by using a cloud-based product to do you know, to do your internal accounts and for and on behalf of your clients. So they came up with an alternative solution, which is well, if you're not doing this anymore, what will you do with your time which is advisory? But the second component of that which is advisory for this industry is not new. It's that's literally what you've been doing since the dawn of time, which is advising clients on, you know, their financial position, their tax position, etc.
Speaker 2:
So the actual term is not new, it's just that it's. There's been a much greater focus since the inception of cloud-based technology and especially the zero ecosystem of apps around there. So it's just something to to consider. When it you know, when you're looking at where advisors come from, where it's going, what we're doing with it it's not new, but it is the focus is definitely shifted. I think a really good question is you know, whilst whilst accountants have been doing advisory for quite some time, are they always the best person to advise on your business? Well, that's quite subjective, I guess, which is an interesting one to unpack as well. Which thrown a curveball there for you.
Speaker 1:
No, it's a good question. I think the reality is that to be a good business advisor you have to understand a lot more than just accounting. But it provides a fantastic foundation and we're obviously spoiled or fortunate to be in the position we're in where SMEs come to us as pretty much their first point of contact. So we own a lot of those relationships and we're working with these businesses at a time that they need guidance and support and advice, and so I think naturally we're in the right spot to be the business advisor. But that does not mean every accountant has the skill set to do it, and I think that's why we wanna talk about it and we wanna talk about the tools that are out there and the tech that's available to help. But what else do you need to get in first? So I mean there's a lot we can cover in this and I mean I'm just trying to think the next best place to. I mean maybe let's break down advisory into the parts You've kind of referred to that a little bit, but I kind of see it as there's your typical traditional tax advisory and actual I'm gonna write you a letter of advice around this CGT transaction.
Speaker 1:
Sure, it's advice, it is formal advice and I guess falls under a determined advisory. You've obviously got forecasting and reporting tools that allow you to put together monthly management reporting packs and bits and pieces like that, with some executive summaries. You might have a meeting around it. I think there's a component of advisory there, but it's a little. It's probably not super advisory. I don't think You've got more business coaching and stuff like that as well, where it's more like hey, what do you wanna achieve with your life? What are your goals? Let me help you, let me hold you account to account for that as well. And I think that last bit feels like. I mean, coaching sounds like a bit, whereas advisory sounds a lot more cool and something that we wanna do, and coaching feels a little bit like oh, I don't wanna be that guy who's saying like come with me and I'll make you millions of dollars. So I think maybe You're assuming.
Speaker 2:
Sorry, you're actually putting those blinkers on a bit there. I feel like Jack when it comes to that. It's the same as the concept of accountants associating the word sales with what they actually do. They don't like that word either, but I get where you're going with it. Advisory does sound like a nicer term to associate with this topic.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, there's a lot of those predatory kinda style coaches out there on the internet, but that's none of you guys, so we don't really need to worry too much about it. But I mean, okay, so before we get into the tools and all of this kind of stuff, we're not gonna tackle the whole. How do you run an advisory firm and whatever else? I think that's a much bigger discussion. But if you're out there and you're interested in it, maybe you've done some courses on it and you're thinking about offering this as a service. I mean for you, amy, what has to come first?
Speaker 2:
Well, I think the first thing is back to your initial point, which is compliance is like compliance is dying. Compliance is 100% not dying any time soon. I don't think it ever will be dead Compliance. It will always be an element of compliance work required. So if you are that type of accountant and that's the type of work that you currently do, you'll always still have a component of it. So, to that point, some of the things that you obviously need to ensure that you actually have done and are taking care of have you got all of your compliance work done? That'd be the first thing, like some of the foundations, like before you get the tools, you know the foundations for some firms that they need to have in places Compliance work if you haven't got your bread and butter up to scratch.
Speaker 2:
Two points here If you don't have your compliance work done, how do you actually give the advice? Are you just making the information up? Because if the compliance work isn't done, I feel like there's an element of compliance that obviously needs to be done from you know, whether it's a tax, whether it's a bookkeeping, et cetera. You need to have everything up today before you can obviously provide the good advice. That's the first thing.
Speaker 2:
But also, if you can't get your bread and butter done with all of the lodgements that you have, why do you think that you should, you know, forego doing some other clients' compliance work in order to free up some time so you can provide advisory services to another client Like, how is that fair? I guess from you know the output of work and you know at the end of the day, you guys run your business as the way that you like. But I feel like if you can't get the baseline work done, because you don't have capacity to obviously achieve that and get all that done, why are you offering additional services, which is an additional advisory service, for example? So that would be the first little components that I would be looking at.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I think too, in a related ish note, in terms of the must haves you talk about must haves and nice to haves and maybe for now, advisories are nice to have Bookkeeping and having a clean set of accounts seems to be something that more and more firms are bringing in house as part of their advisory offering and saying, hey, for us to give you good, relevant advice on a regular basis, especially because a lot of advisory firms are meeting with their clients on a monthly or quarterly basis, more than they are, especially monthly, which is more often more than they're doing compliance, because it's quarterly boughs or it's annual tax returns or whatever. So for a meeting monthly, I can't afford to be giving you advice based on numbers that are out of whack, and so a lot of firms are saying, look, if you want to be under my advisory arm, you want to be under that service. I'm going to also have to take over the books, and I think I'm seeing that that's working quite well for those firms. So, getting on top of compliance, first and foremost, because I think, as you said, you've got to have that service offering down before you worry about adding new services. But then, once you look into how do I deliver advisory? Well, to give good advice, you have to have clean books, and so the easiest way to do that is actually to bring that in house or have a really good, trusted kind of relationship with a bookkeeper, or solving that problem in another way.
Speaker 1:
And then I guess, beyond those two kind of cleaning up house, there's having a decent structure in place as to well, what is my advisory offering look like? Yep, what kind of meetings am I having? How are they being run? What's the output to the client? Are we doing tax planning meetings? Are we doing business planning meetings? Are we doing strategy sessions? Are we doing goal setting? And I'm holding you accountable. I think there's a lot of different bits and pieces that fall under that advisory scope, and so figuring out how you're going to run those sessions is important, and maybe this is a good point to call out. Look, if you're really starting and you don't know, there are the gap and mind shop. These are paid services that provide you all the templates and frameworks to create a advisory offering in your firm. Not cheap, don't get me wrong, but good network of firms, good network of people to connect to, to say, hey, if you're getting started, maybe start there.
Speaker 2:
Clarity HQ as well, is another one, not Clarity Street, clarity HQ. The app is another one that actually provides a lot of foundational work and how to actually produce advisory. So not only do they have the app, they also, similarly to what the gap does is obviously producer content and the know-how around obviously delivering that service. But I think what you said before in relation to what is your actual service offering? How is it structured? Who's going to deliver it? How is it going to be executed? How is it going to be delivered? What platform are you using? What team members are going to actually be part of this? Do you actually have the team that are capable of delivering this service? Do you, as the business owner, is it solely resting on your shoulders to obviously do this particular service? Are you spending time empowering a team so that you're not the sole person to be doing this?
Speaker 2:
But what's the output to the client? Like, what does a client get? What's the tangible thing? Do they need to get anything? Do they need a report? Do they need a nice, pretty chart? Do they need a platform which they can log into? What actually is the service? How is it going to be managed? How is it going to be embedded into your general workflow. All of those things which it's no different to at the moment. It's no different to you doing your tax and compliance but then going oh, we might actually offer bookkeeping as an additional service, as opposed to relying on external bookkeepers. Same concept, but you've just got to factor these things in, basically.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and you've hit the nail on the head with respect to a few of the challenges that firms have rolling this out, one of them being that delegating advisory offering is hard. It's not like we can look back on the last 50 years of how this service has worked and have a recipe for it. You've got to create your own recipe as to how you train your staff. Sure, you can refer back to some of those services we mentioned earlier, but not a lot of junior accountants who come into the industry yet Hopefully this is changing but are coming in with skills or the comfort level to sit in a meeting with someone who runs a business and answer their questions on the spot, on the fly. Sure, directors, firm owners, can tackle that kind of stuff and feel comfortable with it, but junior people less so, and so delegating it is hard.
Speaker 1:
There's also, I think, a natural fear within risk-adverse accountants that as soon as I'm playing outside of my comfort zone, which is numbers now I'm playing in this business-ish coaching advisory space that maybe I'm going to say something that's wrong. And am I at risk there? That's not my job, that's not what I'm used to, so it's kind of an uncomfortable feeling. You've also got that showing the value to a client is harder as well. Compliance is easy. You know they know they need it. It's a grudge purchase. A lot of the time it's like I don't want to do it, but I have to do it, so I'll pay you the money, get it done. Advisory they don't have to pay for, so you have to show them why it's valuable. And so, if you're new to it yourself understanding well, I can't just have a meeting with them every month. They're going to walk away and think at some point I'm sick of this, like I'm not getting what I need. You need to show them the value that you're delivering. So there's challenges of rolling this out.
Speaker 2:
The value one is a really interesting one, jack Like, if we just want to break down the psychology of accountants for a while, like we've covered this in previous episodes. When it comes to sales, is it a dirty word? No, I raised it earlier. But in relation to accountants, the accounting industry, when it comes to tax and compliance by nature of the very fact that the ATO dictates that there is compliance there the accounting industry has never really had to hustle for clients. They've never had to work to display the value of the service that they provide to a client because it has to be done. So in terms of displaying value to your clients, in terms of acquiring clients, that's never really been a massive challenge for this side of the industry, because you've always had them, doesn't mean that you've got good clients, don't get me wrong. You still have to work for them. However, it does mean that you'll always have a steady flow of clients.
Speaker 2:
When it comes to advisory, you are correct this all of a sudden. It actually it starts encroaching on your own value proposition for yourself, for your own belief system around how valuable you actually are, how valuable the service you are is to that client, and it's a struggle. I'm not going to sugarcoat this it is really challenging. Any business owner can attest to this. No matter how good you are at doing the thing, whether it's accounting or whether it's something else when it comes to running your own business and articulating the value of your service versus everybody else, it's hard work.
Speaker 2:
It's not an easy thing to do, which is why you know, when it comes to advisory and delivering it, I think the first call out here is how much do you value yourself? First point, therefore how much do you value the service that you're delivering to your clients? Not everybody's gonna like it, by the way, and that also comes with challenges as well, because all of a sudden, you're gonna have people that go I don't value that and you're gonna go oh, but I'm valuable. I promise I am. It's hard. This is a really challenging component of it.
Speaker 1:
It's a really big one and something to ponder over our sponsors.
Speaker 4:
Isn't there nothing worse than working on a client, collaborating with others, and finding yourself having to go here, there and everywhere to be able to manage this client, whether it's documents in your document storage folder, whether it's using different video conferencing tools, whether it's information that's stored in hard copy or non-hard copy, whether it's dealing with other professional parties and just finding yourself not being able to do things efficiently. Well, friends, your solution is here. My Prosperity is an all-in-one client portal with innovative digital tools designed to increase practice efficiencies, scale client engagement and grow revenue. Now my Prosperity does a whole bunch of stuff. Some of the really cool features it's got are things like rooms where you can collaborate with other finance professionals to achieve any client goal. There's things like live data feeds, reminders, marketing collateral, automated reports, digital fact finds and so much more. This tool is fantastic for accountants and advisors and ensures that they can be servicing their clients as best as possible. So check out my Prosperity. You're not gonna be disappointed If I told you, allie, that I was a massive fan of incorrect information.
Speaker 3:
That is exactly the response that.
Speaker 4:
I'm. It frustrates me end to end when things are done and you find just really silly little mistakes.
Speaker 3:
That just shouldn't happen right, it just shouldn't happen. Oh, it craps me. It craps me to tears, I have to tell you.
Speaker 4:
Well, there's bloody good news for you, allie. There is a tool out there that helps to solve all of those problems, and it is known as XBIRT. That is X-B-E-R-T. It is an AI tool built for accountants and for bookkeepers.
Speaker 3:
And I also know, andrew, it scans all of your client files multiple times per day. It can even fix for 76 common bookkeeping, accounting and tax errors 76?.
Speaker 4:
I know, I only thought there's like three or four errors. I don't think we make that many mistakes in a day, but clearly we do Not at Illuminate. No Well, I mean, it's like having another member of your team, really, isn't it? If it's looking for those things. It's kind of dealing with a whole bunch of the time you'd spend on the crappy stuff and allowing you to have more time to spend on better quality accounting, advisory, management work when you're dealing with your clients right, 100%.
Speaker 3:
It can also manage prevention of fraud. Like that's a biggie.
Speaker 4:
Oh, that is huge.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, it gives you the real big picture on every client file before you've even started the work, right?
Speaker 4:
And I've heard of some very savvy accountants that are using it to help price their fixed fee arrangements, because they're effectively scanning their file, checking data quality, so they can scope it before they price it. So they're not finding themselves in a shit ton of trouble because they've got the wrong data.
Speaker 3:
Oh, sure for sure. So sign up for a free trial of expert today and let their AI do their heavy lifting on all your client files.
Speaker 4:
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Speaker 4:
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Speaker 1:
You brought up some very good points there, amy, just around the mindset and some of the challenges that people have rolling out advisory and I mean I think there are some challenges that can't be solved by technology, and I think that's fine, I think that's reality. There's lots of those summer people problems, summer things you can solve other ways. But with respect to the tech, that's why we're here, that's what this podcast is all about. Maybe, if we kinda make sure this second part of the segment is focused around the different apps and the different areas and what they're trying to tackle within this space, I thought maybe it's worth beginning with your more traditional reporting and forecasting tools, and so when I talk about those kinds of apps, I'm mainly talking about your fathoms, floats, spotlights, future leads and sifts, where they generally are helping you to pull together a monthly reporting pack with charts, graphs.
Speaker 1:
It looks a lot nicer. It extends beyond what zero is capable of. With respect to the forecasting tools, you might have scenario planning. You might be able to have a conversation with your clients about where they're going, what are the drivers of their business, the assumptions. This is probably, I feel, the most accounting friendly version of advisory. It's still in that safe zone of numbers before we get into goal setting and accountability and whatever else. But I don't know. Do you have any thoughts on those kinds of tools, any questions that people need to be thinking about?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, I'm interested to see the development of the apps actually over time, because there are mixed opinions around. Are the tools that are being used, like those ones that we've just mentioned, are they actually providing true advisory or are they just, you know, supporting documentation to the service that you're actually providing? So, if you think about, you know you set a financial statements, it's realistically the supporting documentation to the service that you're providing. So, are they? Have they developed enough? Have they actually, you know, created true value, and are they actually or are they just really hard to roll out in your firm? So, you know, that's another thought process around that as well, as you know. Are they good apps? Are they delivering value, or are they just supporting, you know, supporting the headline act, which is actually really you and your advice?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I think it's a great, absolutely great point. I think there is a little bit of skepticism growing or maybe it's always been there that they don't really add a ton of value and that you know a lot of clients don't read the report, so it doesn't matter, you know. I think that it's not a value add to you and your firm if you're just sending out a report every month to a client who never reads it, you know. I think that's important to make sure that if you are going to try using any of those tools, that you're packaging it up in a way that you can speak to it, that you are reviewing it, that you are going deeper than it and it does become a bit more of support for you to deliver a really good conversation with your client. Obviously, a lot of people still use Excel for that kind of stuff. I mean each to their own.
Speaker 1:
I think there's reasons why I think the some of those tools are limited in their flexibility. Accountants are pretty comfortable with Excel. I think that there's some accuracy issues with some of those tools too that just don't calculate stuff the way accountants need them calculated. I don't need to go into detail on all that. It's more. You know each of their own as to how comfortable you are that those calculations are correct, and we also don't need to go into detail on Excel. It's getting a little bit into the nitty gritty. But the other side of advisory tools are. I guess these ones are the ones that fall a little bit more under the advisory app kind of definition, compared to reporting and forecasting, and I'm thinking about apps like brief clarity HQ that you mentioned. There's a couple others out there, like in Pira and Lumient, I think I'm pronouncing them correctly.
Speaker 1:
I think there's more coming. It just seems like this is a space that's starting to build. It's been building in terms of the service offering for a long time, but in terms of the tech to support that, I think the pain points are starting to become more visible and the market is growing. So now there's more players coming into this space.
Speaker 2:
There's a lot of upkeep that goes into using the apps as well, like not only you. You're obviously having to ensure that, like let's start from the very basics of all of the apps that you're obviously using in this process, mentioning the fact that you know we were talking to making sure that all of your bookkeeping is done. So if you were to use right from the client life cycle to deliver your advisory tools, there is a lot of upkeep that comes into delivering these, which is, you know you could start with expert, to make sure that you know your experts are running, or ADA whichever one doesn't you know, because ADA is obviously one of them as well. You've then got your zero file that needs to be reconciled and make sure that that's all flowed through. And then there's actually using the actual apps that are out there, whether it is you're reporting and forecasting, whether it is your actual advisory apps, whichever ones that you're obviously using, they still have to be maintained and upkeep. Making sure that the syncs are still happening between the apps, making sure that and like.
Speaker 2:
And how much prep work do you need to look at to ensure that the information that you're viewing on the screens is correct before you then have that client meeting with a client as well, and are we trusting the information? Because I think that's you know, you slightly alluded to it before, but accountants need to trust the information in order to stand in front of a client and have a conversation with them and give them advice. So it's, I don't know. It's an interesting space. There are a lot of apps out there, but are there any that are doing it really really well and are actually helping nail it all? Are we thinking about this in the wrong way and are we just hoping that the app will solve the advisory in inverted commas dilemma of delivering that service, without understanding that Maybe that, maybe the advisory tool is just the output of the service? It's not actually. It's just a supporting documentation. It's not actually. You are the service or your firm is a service.
Speaker 1:
I can give some unique insight here. I did a lot of work with a tool called brief. They're an advisory app relatively early stages still, but they're in market. You can sign up if you're interested in it and we did a lot of research, together with a lot of really good advisors, around what the problems were with the process and and how they could help with tech. And the reality was some of the process, some of the issues weren't things that tech's gonna help with, but there were certain things that are. So I think it speaks to what you're saying, which is there's components of advisory that aren't tech focused and you know tech plays its role, kind of to support the offering.
Speaker 1:
And and if I go back to that research that we did, the the key challenges that came out of that, some of which I alluded to earlier. One of them is really, you know, it's hard to offer a lot of advisory because it's limited, its bottleneck, to the directors, because they're the only ones who feel comfortable going into the meeting with the client and kind of winging it and solving all their problems on the fly. So, brief kind of said well, what if we could get the core pains of your client to you ahead of the meeting. So a simple, you know, technological solution so that we have the information from the client before the meeting, we know what they want to talk about, we know what their issues are. So Someone who is a little bit more junior can now prepare for that meeting ahead of time, have a discussion with the director and say I'm not sure what this is, I'm not sure what that is. I think this is a good solution recommendation, whatever else it is.
Speaker 1:
And now you're beginning to open up, you know that the people who can offer that service, because you're you're bringing forward some of the pains that the client has into Some prep work that the client, that the team can deal with.
Speaker 1:
You have the meeting with the client and it provides a Quite, a nice simple area to record your meeting notes and actions but also keep track of any goals that the client has. So these were things that the accountants that we were dealing with already doing, just in a mishmash of other systems or word documents or in different folders and spreadsheets. And and that's just a nice simple way to say look, you guys already have a really good framework set up to deliver advisory, but it can be a much more streamlined situation and we can add a feature here that's going to help solve that issue around bringing in more junior staff too. So they kind of looked at the overall issues and said there's some that we can solve and we really want to support you guys in offering better advisory. Some of it, they know, is education and training and and whatever else. So so you know that'll obviously come with time, but it is a interesting and challenging space for tech.
Speaker 2:
Yeah, and I think that that comes down like it. That's one of the probably the major takeaways from this whole thing is that, no matter what you implement in your practice as an additional Service, advisory is an additional service, so there needs to be a lot of thought actually coming out of it. I think one other big call out is in relation to just because you found one app like you've gone to a trade show, maybe you've gone to zero con, maybe you've gone to a be count X, whatever the case is right, and you've seen All of the apps that we've just, you know, recommend to. You've had a look at flow, you've had a look at spotlight, fathom futurally, clarity HQ, whatever it is and You've come away thinking, oh my gosh, that's amazing, that's totally gonna solve that problem for that one client that I've got. That is a horrible reason why you should implement that as a service to your entire client base.
Speaker 2:
Just because one client is Asking for additional service when it comes to advisory doesn't mean that it's right for your entire client base. So do a little bit of investigation around the needs of your client base and whether it's actually going to be an additional service. It will be a viable service. But also, you know, getting a piece of app just for one client is not necessarily the right mode either. It's not necessarily wrong, but it's usually not the right thing. So if you are going to implement an app, do consider if it is right for the entire client base but, more than anything, actually really nut out what the service is. It's one thing to say that we're going to do advisory, but the actual execution and what's involved in delivering on that advisory it's as I said, it's it's like starting up another bookkeeping division in your business. That's the best analogy that I can give you, and everybody probably knows how challenging it is to run a successful, you know additional service within your business. From that element it's no different.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, and I think it's a great point. You know, it's not about the tail wagging the dog. The tech doesn't tell you what to do in your firm. You figure out what you want to do and then see if there's some tech that will support you in in doing it, and I think that's pretty much the role that some of these tools that we've kind of touched on today do. But I mean, maybe as a good, it's a good time to wrap it up and Get from you, amy, your Key core, favorite takeaway from our discussion.
Speaker 2:
Look, I've really enjoyed it all. To be honest with you, like, it's really nice to find out what the good apps are out there and also, just you know we didn't touch on what some of the failed ones are, but I think it's it's, you know, it's it's good to maybe, maybe, consider that not all apps are right for your business and that you do need to consider what is right for your client base. But again, I'm going back to that whole majority versus minority this, these apps and these tools should be used, as you know, for the majority of your client base, but really think out what that service offering is. That's my takeaway. What about you, jack?
Speaker 1:
Yeah, I actually really liked Just thinking about the, the problems and the, the challenges, I suppose, for every firm who is trying to work out how to offer advisory, and really honing in on, well, which of those problems and challenges can tech help me with, and which of them am I going to have to deal with Myself, training my team, refining my service offering, adjusting the pricing, you know, talking to my clients, what? What are those things that just tech isn't going to solve it for you? It's going to come together, it's. It's. It's not one or the other, it's it's a bit of a bit of a bit of both. So, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 2:
Thanks so much, jack.
Speaker 3:
Hey team. It's Ellie and Andrew from all Aussie accounting adventures here. I hope you really enjoyed this episode with Amy and Jack. What did you think, Andrew?
Speaker 4:
Oh, stunning as always, the two have been brilliant minds and a brilliant communicators. So we hope that you have got some incredible learnings out of this episode and if you'd like to continue to follow us, make sure you check out our website. Find us on the socials You'll see accounting Adventures, or look for all Aussie accounting adventures wherever good stuff can be found, whether that's conferences, whether that's websites, whether it's podcasts or Social media member to share it around.
Speaker 3:
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