Efficiency of process has been amongst the top three challenges facing the Australian accounting industry for the last five years, and accountants have voted it as the biggest challenge for the coming financial year.
With accountants Australia-wide recognising the need to become more efficient, we answer the burning question: how?
3 Steps to Operating at Peak Efficiency
1. Start- and end-of-job routines
Give clients a checklist detailing all the information and source documents you’ll require from them, before the job begins. Educate them on preparing accounts in accordance with your accountant’s needs. Use a single ledger to avoid manually re-keying data into the client file.
Speed up end-of-job routines with a secure online portal that includes time-saving features like electronic signatures and notifications.
2. Up-skill staff
Employ bookkeepers to conduct pre-commencement reviews on compliance jobs, carry out reconciliations and perform the bulk of data processing, and train admin staff to process and reconcile compliance work.
This frees up your accountants to focus on actual accounting work, like ensuring all tax treatments are correct and looking for areas to benefit clients.
3. Standardise
Working with a standard set of best practice workpapers and templates (based on up-to-date regulatory and legislative information) reduces review time by 50% to 75%.
Include checklists to ensure none of the fundamental activities are overlooked, and specify particular document filing protocols, so that no work is overwritten or lost, and all documents for the same job are housed together.
For more information, visit Business Fitness
Brad also co-ordinates the annual benchmarking study “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the Australian Accounting Profession.”
In his spare time you will find Brad in the backyard playing cricket with his two boys.
Email: [email protected]
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