Partner Pages 2019: Change in the new age of accounting

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Rick Hemphill is a manager within ShineWing Australia’s business and private client advisory division. He shares his journey from a pen-and-paper accountant to the head of a digital team developing software solutions for clients.

I started off as an accountant following the old-school way of doing things: I would get a bank statement, code it up with a pen, save it into my paper file, and key in the date, descriptions, amounts and so on to prepare monthly or year-end accounts. The changes in how we do things now are just mind-boggling, yet I know for a fact some people in our profession are still stuck in the past. As trusted advisors, we have a unique opportunity to help our clients embrace the power of digital connectivity, to streamline their back-office processes and have them focus on exactly what they can do best: driving revenue in their business. That’s the trick for any accounting team – if you get your clients to grow, you’ll grow with them.

Helping clients do better business

About five years ago, a client with operations in Australia, the United States, and Hong Kong was determined to automate their bank feeds. Their office managers were having a terrible time manually working out the daily exchange rates of transactions to chuck into their bank reconciliations – there had to be a better way. Research lead me to set them up on Xero for all their entities, using foreign currency bank feeds, and I saw the efficiency advantages for them straight away.

Diving deeper

Buoyed by this experience, I started digging into the ecosystem of apps for accounting software. I’m curious and a bit of a tech-head by nature. I’d also describe myself as someone who’s passionate about process improvement, automation, and reporting. Personally, I couldn’t help but continue to investigate the different add-on apps in the software ecosystem, working out what they could do, and how they could make life better for my clients. I know app advisory seems like a bit of scary beast because there’s so much to know, but you’ve got to

start somewhere. You’ve just got to build up to it. There is no textbook for it and every business is different with different needs. Just start with a conversation with a client you know well to find out what’s bothering them and how you can help.

Developing my own team

Because of my interest in this area, I soon became the face of advisory – the person that our clients were referred to when they wanted to know what they could be doing better. It really started to grow from there, and my confidence also grew with every successful engagement.

It was difficult getting support from some of the older partners, to begin with, but things began to change once I was able to prove that we could generate fees and help our clients build better practices and processes. I’ve since held presentations internally with all of our divisions, externally with clients and prospective clients, and assembled my own dedicated team that works with me to consult in this space. I teach my team to take practical steps: get face-to-face with clients or decision makers to find out what’s important to them. Get them to share their pain points. If they’re coming to you, they’ll have this list ready. If you go to them, the majority will just be sitting on their issues but more than happy to share. The next layer of the conversion is your thoughts – discuss what you’ve done before, what works well, what doesn’t and illustrate your solutions with examples. Document their requirements, the information flow across their business, the people involved, and determine how income is received and expenses are brought to account.

Functionality to meet growing needs

We find that using Xero and add-on software gives our mid-tier clients the functionality they need without having to move on to a really expensive, custom-made, ERP solution. Xero’s tracking categories and new reports, complemented with software for authorisation levels, customer relationship management, and dynamic reporting mean that we can satisfy our clients’ needs in regards to their sometimes complex internal controls, sales databases and real-time divisional and group reporting.

This can all be achieved with off-the-shelf software. So, for a smaller investment, our clients can use small business software with its familiar and easy-to-navigate user interface – often staying on the same system that they’ve been on, but under-utilising, for a while. Even better, our clients can seek advice and solutions from their accountant they know and trust and not someone new who doesn’t come with the understanding of the business or its people.

Start new conversations

With every client you work with, your service gets better, your messaging gets clearer, and you understand more of what people are looking for. You soon come up with solutions for problems that your clients haven’t even thought of yet. We talk with our clients about what, from their perspective, they’re not doing well, what’s not working for them, and what they want. It’s often a very similar story: everyone’s trying to build efficiency and many are dissatisfied with the reporting that they’re getting month by month, even day to day. By streamlining their back-office processes and giving them real-time reporting, I can help my clients get back to doing what they’re really good at: growing their business and revenue. I really like that.

Rick’s story is taken from the new issue of Partner Pages – a magazine of beautifully curated content, written by partners, for partners. Get your free copy at the Roadshow Australia 2019.

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