For any business, the cliche that “time is money” holds true. And for accountants, the less time you can spend on routine tasks the better. Let’s take a look at some ideas to use your available time wisely and increase your income.
But I’m always busy! I don’t have time to spare…
Understood! You’ve chosen a busy career and you have a lot of clients, so let’s start with some ideas to free up time for added-value activities.
Video conference call
We’re all using video calling on a daily basis now. If your practice is anything like BTCSoftware, you probably have been looking for ways to streamline internal meetings and chats, so here’s how we’ve been able to reduce overall time spent in meetings by roughly 25%:
- Set a three-minute rule and get started. This is especially effective for larger meetings where you might have several employees waiting for one person to arrive before you begin. Perhaps they are in another meeting that’s over-runing, or maybe their internet is completely down. That’s why, after three minutes, you introduce your topic and keep going – latecomers can catch up!
- Schedule your meetings in blocks. If you know you need to chat with three different teams today, try to schedule them back to back or within the same morning. By compressing your calendar, you will have more continuous time to focus during the rest of the day. Switching between meeting and focus time can drastically affect your productivity.
- Keep meetings shorter. If you set a meeting for an hour, your attendees will absolutely talk for the whole hour! That’s down to Parkinson’s Law which states that work expands to fill the time allotted. So streamline those meetings and you might be surprised at how much you can get done in less time.
- Knock off 5 minutes, especially if you’ve got back-to-back chats booked. Meeting fatigue is real, so if you’re scheduling a block of meetings, book them for 25 minutes and give yourself a chance to get a drink and stretch out.
Working as paperless as possible
As accountants, you know that some clients just can’t part with their shoebox filing system! That’s been a real challenge of the pandemic, but thankfully more clients are willing to give tech a try. Bookkeeping software that allows them to directly scan in receipts is a must-have for many practices, but make sure that your compliance software also links up so that you’re not wasting time later by transposing data between systems manually.
Accounting Software
Yes, we’re biased here – but it’s true that great software saves your team time when it comes to processing accounts and tax returns! As one happy BTCSoftware customer told us:
“I would go as far to say that of all the software packages of this type BTCSoftware is by far the most user-friendly and streamlined one I’ve used, I feel like our turnaround on work is quicker and work isn’t lying around waiting to go out because none of us has time to get covering letters done, the ones in BTCSoftware are perfect.”
There’s a lot to tell you about BTCSoftware, so check out our software for all the information.
So, how can I make more money with my increased availability?
From the simple to the creative, here are some ideas to boost your profits:
Court reviews and referrals
You’ve been working hard for your clients throughout the pandemic, so now’s the time to ask them for reviews and referrals. Try asking your team to identify three clients each they’ve had great verbal feedback from and send a link to Trustpilot or Google reviews. Ask them to consider specific and open-ended questions when leaving a review, such as:
- What was the biggest challenge you asked us to help you with and how did we help?
- What’s been the biggest benefit of working with us?
- If your friend was looking for an accountant, why would you recommend us?
Virtual networking events
Don’t miss out on the benefits of networking! If you’d usually visit your supplier at Accountex, give them a call or email them to catch up and ask questions. And if you were planning to use trade shows to investigate alternative software, book remote demos instead. At the BTCSoftware stand, our team is always ready to demonstrate our software to visitors and nothing’s changed in 2021 – get in touch for a remote demo instead to see the value of affordable and powerful software.
Offer low-cost management reporting for smaller clients
This could be an option for your smaller business clients, who may want an overview of their business’ health at the end of each quarter. Use a template report, then use data from their bookkeeping software to add in the relevant charts and information for your client. Perhaps you could show their year-on-year progress, or provide an update on their debts. The key is to make this an affordable add-on to your services, which means using a template that suits as many clients as possible and that’s easy to update and send.
Take a look at The Joy of Business for the full idea!
Get social!
People buy from people they trust, so show off your company culture and knowledge by using social media. You can use it to post deadline updates, case studies, share what your teams are working on and more. Being visible online makes it much easier for prospective clients to understand why they should trust you.
Write a book
Why not? This may not be an instant money-spinner, but if you’ve always fancied sharing your wisdom with the wider world then use your time to get started! There’s an added benefit to your client prospecting; you can take extracts of your work-in-progress and share them as PDF downloads on your website to demonstrate your knowledge.
Want to find out how BTCSoftware can give you more time in the day?
Our team is available on 0345 241 5030, or jump right in with a free demo!
