These posts are typically aimed at helping you with your financial or tax matters. But this one’s a little different.
There probably isn’t a profession around that wasn’t at least slightly upended by the pandemic and the situations it created. The accounting profession is no different.
According to the Wall Street Journal, 300,000 accountants and auditors have left their jobs in the past two years, and there aren’t enough college grads to fill those roles.
This has also come at a time when there’s been an increased demand for accounting services. More individuals, businesses, and organizations need help as regulations and reporting requirements get more confusing and complicated. Many businesses and organizations also struggle to find employees, making it more difficult for owners and leaders to focus on their finances as they’re forced to juggle more roles themselves.
Many accounting firms — including ours — have been increasing salaries to attract and keep good people. We, like many in the profession, believe that investing in our people is the best way to take care of our clients.
But those increases, along with inflation and other factors, have meant price increases for clients. Right now, we’re working to level-set our minimum fees to make sure we’re being fair to all our clients.
But salary and price increases can’t go on indefinitely. So, what are we, as a firm, doing to address these issues?
Our firm has always looked to technology to help us solve some of our biggest issues and now is no different. We’re focused heavily on automation to help clients — and ourselves — with repetitive tasks that normally require a lot of time and effort.
Tools like iSolved for payroll and HR and Jirave for financial modeling help us free up the resources we need to serve clients better, faster, and more cost-effectively.
We’re also focused on developing our team members by investing in training to help with their technical competency and their mental health. We’ve also started a mentoring program to help them develop personally and professionally. The hours piece is a bit more complicated. Right now, we’re working to continue providing clients with the highest service levels while also helping team members find work and life flexibility.
Through all of this, we work to put our clients’ needs at the forefront. We evaluate the best way to help you and work to find solutions — whether through data automation, process streamlining, or other technological solutions. Our goal has always been to help you live your best life and run your organization in a way that makes sense to you and eliminates the monotony of data entry.
There might not be any perfect solutions, but we believe that with the right mindset and investments, we can continue to create wins for our clients and team members.
Questions? Let us know.