Edmonton Small Business Accountant | Should Accountants Upgrade Their Technology

There are several reasons why Edmonton small business accountant firms may not think that having improved technology matters. One of the first reasons, is because most accounting firms and build their clients on an hourly basis, and therefore their emphasis is not on speed. Therefore, upgrading their computers on a regular basis to have the fastest computer is not usually a priority for these accounting offices. Also, because accounting firms are not seen as needing particularly fast computers, they often do not see the value in upgrading their computers, because there is not a high enough return on investment. However, there is 1 Accounting Office in Edmonton that is changing the way accounting offices work. At Spurrell and Associates, they have embraced technology, and also embraced collaborative working environment, so that they can provide an even better service to their business owner clients.

At Spurrell and Associates, this Edmonton small business accountant office has developed workstations that allow their accountants to work collaboratively as a team. This way, every single clients that they have, is assigned to accounting students who are articling, to work on any file. By allowing entrepreneurs to have two accountants working on their files, they can be assured that no matter what is happening, they will never have an interruption of service, because they have two accountants in the know at all times. Not only did they have two accountants assigned to each client, but they will work at the same time on those files. This type of collaborative work ensures that not only can they get the same amount of work done in half the time, but there able to bounce ideas off of each other, and problem solve. The fact that their students allows spiral and Associates to keep the costs down, and pass the savings on to their customers. The also ensure that they have a designate chartered professional accountant who is able to sit at those collaborative workstations in order to train them, review their files and oversee client information.

This is extremely beneficial to entrepreneurs to work with Edmonton small business accountant firms like this. In order to ensure that this collaborative workstation works effectively, it is set up so that accountants sit three across, the team of two will work on either end of the station, with the chartered professional accountant or manager who is going to be helping them can sit in the middle as needed. Because of this set up, everyone needs to be able to see everyone elseís monitors very clearly, and it is important that they have three monitors each. Because of the need to have three monitors and see everybody elseís, they are mounted in front of the desks one on top of the other, that are large enough in high-resolution enough that they can all see each otherís monitors clearly, and can read the information on them.

By embracing technology in their Edmonton small business accountant office, spiral and Associates are changing the way they are helping their clients.

Most Edmonton small business accountant offices do not see the value for the return on investment in updating their technology on a regular basis. The reason for this, is because they do not think they need extremely fast computers in order to accomplish their accounting duties. And even more accountants are moving towards a cloud-based system, and so it is not important to have an extremely large computer. Unfortunately, cloud-based technology relies on a fast Internet connection in order to work quickly, and that is not always consistently available. Also, accounting firms do not see the return on investments for upgrading their technology, because they bill hourly, therefore if there working a little bit slower on files, they get to Bill a higher amount. This is bizarre set up, that ends up building distrust between accountants and their clients, because they wonder if everything that they are getting billed for is absolutely necessary.

However, the accountants at Spurrell and Associates are changing the way they are doing business, so that clients never wonder if they are doing more work than absolutely necessary, all while giving them quick service, and bill that they can anticipate and plan for every single month. The way this Edmonton small business accountant office does that, is by embracing technology and ensuring they have very fast computers, collaborative workstations and a flat monthly fee.

The reason why flat monthly fee is so important, is because giving entrepreneurs a consistent bill every single month that does not change help them manage the cash flow in their business, and budget for that expense effectively. They can count on the same bill regardless of if they are getting their corporate finances done, business or tax planning, or help with their payroll. That level of consistency ensures that they are confident that all of the services that they are getting are needed for them.

By building a monthly fee, that puts the importance of working quickly back onto the Edmonton small business accountant that is working on the files. In order to do that, they have operated all of the computers at Spurrell and Associates to two terabyte hard drives. However a very large hard drive is not going to matter very much to an accountant unless it can also run very fast. These hard drives are also a solid-state which means they operate more like a cell phone, and can work extraordinarily fast. They plug directly into the motherboard so that these computers are extremely large and extremely fast. They can store a lot of information and work on them quickly. This non-reliance on cloud-based technology allows accountants to be able to be very fast.

My embracing technology in their Edmonton small business accountant office, spiral and Associates are changing the way accounting firms operate, that is not only changing their industry, but making things better for their clients to be able to have the information they need to run their business.