Has the current crisis caused by the COVID 19 virus affected your business?
Are the consequences already being felt or are more significant effects yet to come?
How difficult is it to organize the work of an accounting agency from home in the right way?
And most importantly, is the decline in productivity and profit in the crisis is certain, can it be avoided or used to get a bigger piece of cake on the market?
Crises of various kinds will be more frequent in the modern crazy world, for sure.
However, it is easy to be smart and wise when something has already happened. Being better than others means thinking ahead, which is often not easy in business, but it is what sets you apart from others and rises to the top.
Therefore, it is important that we start thinking ahead from the beginning, set things right on time and automatically the chances of success are greater and more certain.
How to get a profit if you are an accounting agency?
Anyone who thinks that profit will come immediately, that just a little effort is enough and then in a relaxed manner sit in an armchair should skip this text.
You need to get into a street fight for profit at the right time in the right way.
Of course, everyone will wonder what the right time is and what is the right way?
How important is mutual trust?
Time is a relative term and a true general will feel when it is the right time to battle. However, even the best general cannot win without a well-trained army that accompanies him.
In order for the army to be well trained, the general must:
- constantly take care of them
- to provide the best conditions and
- always to be there for them.
In that way, the army will gain the general’s trust and will never leave him to lead the battle alone. It is not enough that the army only trusts the general, but it is also crucial that the general trusts his army.
The question is, how can a general trust all his soldiers, he is alone, and there are many of them?
In order for a general to trust his soldiers, he must know:
- how efficient each soldier is,
- whether each soldier uses his time in the best way and
- what it is that would make every soldier being even better.
P.S. The business world is no different from the battlefield. Every potential job is a path to battle. Every deal made is a small victory, every lost job is a small defeat. The ultimate goal is to win the war because you think on time and use the weaknesses of your opponent.
Time Analytics, truth, or delusion?
The right time to start thinking about how to increase profit is not when the business reaches a point where you can’t breathe from the problems that are accumulating. The moment the first problems start to appear, we should throw ourselves into solving them.
What is the right way to solve upcoming problems?
When the first problems occur, although they may not seem big and unsolvable at first if they are neglected they can become hopeless.
We want to present a solution to your problems and open the possibility to increase your profits.
Our solution, for our internal problems and of our clients’, and possibly of your own, is time recording software for accounting agencies. We put our expertise and experience into Time Analytics software, specialized for accounting agencies, as well as other service companies.
You must be wondering what Time Analytics software has to do with everything we’ve talked about so far.
The bottom line is that this solution can help you do the right things at the right time and thus improve your business.
HOW?
The key to any successful business is employees. If you have quality employees whose work you can to:
- plan
- track
- rate
- improve
- reward or penalize
then you are closer to the goal and away from potential problems.
Where is the hidden profit?
Every manager plans the work of his employees, but the question is whether he does it efficiently and how much time he needs for it. No matter how worn out, the saying “time is money” is true.
Our solution is automated and enables the work of employees to be planned as efficiently as possible in a short period of time.
Each employee needs less than five minutes a day to enter the activities he has worked on into the software. You will agree that every employee can dedicate five minutes a day to something that can bring us great benefits.
If everyone follows the instructions and fills in the Time Analytics software regularly, the manager will have a complete picture based on the reports generated by the software according to the entered parameters, which refers to:
- unused employee time
- employee productivity
- areas where employees need additional education
- the possibility of searching for new engagements
- unprofitable clients, etc.
With the mentioned reports generated by the software, in addition to the quality of work of your employees, you also monitor the quality of your business and your revenue and expenses, and thus your profit. You can evaluate both employees and your own business.
Based on adequate reports, you will report appropriate conclusions, and based on adequate conclusions, we come to the answer to the question of how to get a profit if you are an accounting agency?
Of course, you can reward employees who stand out from others, while you can consider hiring those employees who don’t fulfill their responsibilities.
Now you’ve got the reports with a bunch of numbers and conclusions. But how to read them?
The answer to that question we provide in the following paragraphs.
KPIs for accounting business
As you may already know, KPIs or Key Performance Indicators are figures that show you the past, present, and future of your business. By reading KPIs, you will understand the current state of your business. You can also see how well your company performed last year, last month, etc. You can see if your company improves or not, by comparing current KPI results with previous results. In addition, you will use them to make strategic and tactical decisions on the future of the business. Our time recording software will help you define and track KPIs.
Since the main resources of your accounting company are your employees, i.e. their working time, the basic KPI is total spent hours. You should track the total amount of spent hours per each employee, as well as per client, activity, project, and service line. You should also track the number of total number of spent hours in a day, a week, a month, a year. In addition, the total number of spent hours should be compared from period to period, whether it is the day, a week, a month or a year.
After you get information on total spent hours, you may derive most of the rest of the necessary KPIs for accounting companies. We divided the rest of them into three groups:
- Financial KPIs
- Marketing KPIs
- Productivity KPIs
Financial KPIs
Using Time Analytics software enables you to track the following financial indicators per client, employee, and service line:
- % of billable hours in total hours: how much of your work is billed to the client? Using this financial indicator, you see how well the company’s resources are utilized in providing services. In addition, you can see if you are providing free services to the client. In addition, you can see how much time an employee spends on internal company activities (administration, preparation of invoices and agreements, sales activities etc.). Usually, a high % of billable hours in total hours means that employees are productive and that most of his/her work is billed to the clients. However, in some cases, certain % of non-billable hours is necessary (for example, senior managers need to spend some time identifying and communicating with potential new clients)
- Revenue per hour: whether you are engaged by the client by a fixed or variable fee, this is one of the key KPIs to analyze the profitability of engagement.
- Costs per client (service line): you already know the revenue that you generate from each client/service line. But do you know the costs of each client/service line? Our time recording software helps you to simply calculate the costs of each client (service line). The costs are based on the costs of salaries and other indirect costs related to employees.
Marketing KPIs
Using our time recording software for consultants enables you to analyze the position of consulting company on the market:
- A total number of clients: does your number of clients increase month to month, year to year? You may already know that is much less costly to keep a current client than to acquire a new one. What is your CRM strategy?
- An average number of service lines per client: do you perform cross-selling? Do your largest clients know what types of services you may provide? If you spend a lot of time with the CEO and other managers of the client. You sit with them in conference rooms, on business lunches. You talk with them all the time on the phone, exchange many e-mails and SMS messages. Use this time to discuss their business, try to provide them advice on running a business. In that way, the client will look at you not as a specialist, but as a generalist. You will become his special strategic advisor. The client will then realize that you may provide an extensive portfolio of services
- The total number of hours spent on sales (marketing) activities: how much time you and your senior managers spend finding new clients? Maybe you need to put more hours on sales activities. Or maybe you need to change your approach, to spend working hours more efficiently.
Productivity KPIs
Crucial accounting firm productivity KPIs you need to track using time recording software are:
- total spend hours per employee: are employees overwhelmed with work? Who carries the most of workload? Are they under risk of burnout? Which employee has some free working time to help other colleagues?
- Structure of an employee’s working activities: what do your managers do? Are they able to delegate routine activities to consultants? How much time do they spend finding new clients? Are they overwhelmed with administrative and reporting tasks? By looking at the structure of the working activities of employees you can identify new working positions that need to be opened.
- Overtime: compare total planned hours with total spent hours on a project. If much more time is spent than it was planned, you should analyse the reasons for it.
- Number of engaged employee’s per client: did you plan project execution well? If there are too many accountants on the same assignment, maybe planning was not efficient or opposite.
- Revenue/profit per employee: does employee bring more money to you than you pay him/her?
Looking for additional profit as an accounting agency?
Again, profit is not something that will just come. If you use Time Analytics software, it is not guaranteed that you will make a profit. First, you need to understand in the right way the reports that the software generates.
This is where the chance for additional profit lies.
We will return to the beginning of our text again.
- Has the current crisis caused by the COVID 19 virus affected your business?
- Are the consequences already being felt or are more significant effects yet to come?
- How difficult is it to organize the work of an accounting agency from home in the right way?
- And most importantly, is the decline in productivity and profit in the crisis is certain, can it be avoided or used to get a bigger piece of cake on the market?
Every crisis is a serious matter, but you don’t necessarily have to get out of a crisis as a defeat once.
Why not turn the crisis to your advantage?
Our solution can help you become an absolute winner when everyone loses.
Crisis vs. additional profit?
When a crisis occurs, anyone who does not have all the strings in their hands will largely neglect the needs of their existing clients. The main occupation will be its own company.
- Organization in a new situation,
- Work from home,
- Responsibilities,
- Control of employees,
- Communication, etc.
Rarely will a manager neglect his company in the described situation and turn only to Clients, but the crisis has not only affected you but everyone, including your Clients.
But …
A situation in which you have the strings in your hands turns things in your favor and here is the answer to the question of looking for additional profit. When everyone is busy with their own company, you will be able to dedicate yourself to finding new clients.
Things need to be put in place here. Clients won’t immediately run into your arms, they will first turn to their well-known partners, but when their answer is missing, it is your turn.
It is the moment when you take the lead, the moment that separates you from the competition, and the moment when you know that you have managed your company well.
Does it make sense?
Final remarks
The essence is very simple.
- Is Time Analytics an expensive solution?
- How much can you gain and how much can you lose?
- What is the opportunity cost of not using the Time Analytics solution?
There is a saying that says, it is better to do something and regret so than to regret that you did not even try.
If you decide on the first variant, we are sure that you will not regret it, but that you will raise your business to a higher level.
Ready for a ride? Test a time tracking solution for an accounting agency today
Discover what’s possible with Time Analytics.
Request a trial, but first, take a look at what is the most important part:
Time Analytics modules and features.
