Eseosa

Description: “In order to grow your accounting firm the right way, you can’t just focus on sales. Yes, it’s important, but you also need to master these other areas.”

Perhaps the biggest goal of every accounting business is to expand successfully. Whether you’re a new business or small business owner, growing your accounting firm is the best way to offer value to both old and potential clients. It’s not enough to focus on sales alone, you need to master strategies to help grow your firm the right way. If your accounting firm is successfully expanded, then making sales becomes easier. 

As an experienced CPA who now has a high-growth firm, it can be difficult trying to take your accounting firm from zero to a hundred. As a small business owner some years back, it was challenging growing my accounting firm and developing it to the standard I wanted it to be. Over the years, I hit many roadblocks and had to start all over because I had no detailed business strategy to guide me. 

With the right mindset, CPA firm understanding, and a workable business plan, you can turn your firm into a high-growth accounting firm. Here are 10 Strategies to help you grow your accounting firm the right way. 

10 Strategies to Help Scale Your Accounting Firm The Right Way 

1. Be Mentally Prepared For Change 

Growing your accounting business requires a huge mental shift. That is, you have to have a mindset that’s different and willing to accept change. For the longest time, I knew that I wanted to expand my business, improve on my accounting services and generally increase my annual revenue, but honestly, I was scared to make the move. At the time, I wasn’t quite sure whether it was the right time for a change. However, I knew that I needed a different mindset to make my goal become a reality. 

The first step towards bringing change to your business is having a change of mindset and believing that your business can grow. It’s all about being confident in your accounting firm’s ability to rise and expand in the existing marketplace. 

2. Experiment With New Ideas 

Experimenting with new ideas is you taking a giant step towards transforming your accounting firm the right way. The problem with most accounting businesses is the inability to let go of old working methods. For example, using timesheets has been one of the ways of tracking billable hours. 

However, it is now obvious that it is a flawed tool because it doesn’t take into account the efforts required to carry out the assigned task

3. Create Better Workflow Processes 

It took me a while to understand that creating a better workflow process was a great way of growing my business. Before learning this, my firm’s workflow was chaotic and without order. Due to this, we mostly missed deadlines and lost clients because of the many projects we were trying to handle at once. 

If you want to kick-start your accounting firm’s growth, then you have to create better workflow systems and processes. By using tech tools and automation, you’re able to create a workflow system that is convenient for you and your team members. A better workflow process affords you the opportunity to offer better accounting services to your clients and ensure they’re satisfied. 

4. Provide Meaningful Value

One of the biggest challenges I faced when trying to grow my accounting business was finding ways to provide value to my clients and keeping them satisfied at all times. A lot of accounting and bookkeeping firms still stick strictly to bookkeeping, project management, and accounting methods. There are no additional services to help provide value to their customers. 

One of the fastest ways to grow your accounting firm is by providing meaningful value by offering new and additional services that work in line with your accounting practice. There are various services you can offer to your clients. You can start by shifting to value-pricing, offering additional services to new and existing clients, and introducing trending accounting practices to your workflow. 

Aside from typical accounting services, you can also offer advisory services, onboarding service, outsourcing accounting services, content marketing, testimonials service offerings, and so on that will increase your profit margin and ultimately grow your accounting business. 

5. Onboarding The Right Team Members 

One thing most CPAs and business owners should never take for granted is hiring the right people. Onboarding new team members is a critical decision and a mistake could be tragic. It’s important that you’re very selective about the people you let on your team. You can’t grow your business if your team members don’t have a growth mindset. It would basically be you pushing for a change with no support. 

When you have talented and proactive team members who are easy to work with and are fixated on helping the firm achieve its goals, it becomes easier to grow your business. By involving them in your decision making process, you create a friendly working environment and manage your workflow and projects effectively. 

6. Give The Right Information 

It’s not enough to hire the right team members. If you don’t communicate the right information or the ideas you have in your head, it would be hard for them to work accordingly. Also make sure whatever information you’re passing to your team members is concise and understood. 

You could always ask questions to make sure they completely got the right information to enable them to work effectively. You can also make use of collaborative tools like Jetpack Workflow, Loom, Miro, and so on to provide a streamlined means of communication between you and your team members. 

7. Master Project Management 

Like I said earlier, my accounting firm’s workflow used to be chaotic because we were trying to offer many services at once. Over time, I realized what we lacked was project management. Mastering project management allows you to have a detailed and well-defined framework that will help during the execution of your accounting projects. It helps you identify potential problems and reduce the risk of project mismanagement. 

Thankfully, there are project management software tools that allow accountants to monitor their project’s success. One software I’d recommend is the Jetpack Workflow. This has been a favorite of mine because it integrates with other accounting and business software I use. Aside from that, it helps me and my team members stay organized and productive.

As an accountant, using a project management tool like Jetpack Workflow makes managing your team members and projects so convenient. It increases your team’s productivity by a large percentage. Jetpack Workflow is also affordable and comes with pre-made accounting templates and other tools that are a must-have. 

8. Utilize The Internet To Your Advantage 

It’s the digital age and the Internet is now one of the biggest marketing tools for accountants. Gone were the days when accountants used to rely on word of mouth, television, and printing advertising. With social media marketing platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook, it’s easy to access your target audiences and attract them by offering valuable content. 

You can attend webinars, network with other accounting firms, keep up with accounting trends, build a one-on-one relationship with your target audience. Now, accounting firms can expand their business broadly by making use of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and blog posts to increase their ranking on Google. This makes it easier for potential clients to notice them when they go on search engines. 

When you offer valuable web content to your target audience, it’s easy to get feedback and recommendations that can lead to future working relationships. Learning how to use other software tools like Jetpack Workflow, Quickbooks, Gmail, Google Spreadsheet, and so on proves very useful in scaling your accounting firm effectively. 

9. Document Everything 

As a business owner, your brain is working round the clock figuring out your workflow, team management, client prospecting and offering value. It can be a lot and you could forget important details if you don’t document. Documenting your ideas makes it easier for you to identify problems and their solutions, as well helping other people go through the process. 

One reason why I was able to come up with strategies to help you scale your accounting firm the right way was because I documented all the processes I went through. From the loopholes to the achievements, they were all documented. 

10. Think Long Term And Plan Ahead 

There is no easy roadmap to successfully growing your accounting business. You have to have long-term goals and plans that can sustain your business even during unfavorable circumstances. Even though I have gotten my accounting firm to where I want it to be, I still develop new tactics and plan to make sure it gets better. 

One thing I do is develop different backup plans and provide solutions to problems I think might come up. It’s not enough to want to grow your business, you have to create new ways to make sure the growth is long-term and won’t take a step backward too soon. 

You can meet with consultants to help draft plans that will help you continue to attract clients and increase your profit margins and annual revenue. You can also make use of tools like Jetpack Workflow to make your working process easier to track and improve your firm’s productivity. The goal is to continue to expand, grow your client base, and have an increased profit margin. 

Additional Tip to Grow Your Accounting Firm 

There are various ways to expand your accounting firm and grow the right way. An additional tip is to read books on how to grow your accounting firms. For example, Jetpack Workflow offers a free ebook for CPAs who want to scale their accounting firm the right way. 

The book is titled Double Your Accounting Firm and it teaches CPAs skills like getting referrals, solving the pricing problem, how to recruit the right team members, and so on.