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E-Myth – “Why most small businesses don’t work & what to do about it”

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Edmonton Small Business Accountant | Using Technology And Accounting Firms


One of the reasons why typical Edmonton small business accountant offices it do not embrace technology is because they do not see that there is a high enough return on investment. The reason for that is because most accounting firms charge their clients an hourly rate. That means the slower accountant works on a file, the larger amount they get to build them. Therefore if they get extremely fast computers, they will end up building their clients less money, meaning that they do not have enough of a reason to regularly upgrade their technology. However, Jim Collins who is the author of six business books has repeatedly said this about technology, ìtechnology is important. You cannot remain a laggard and hope to be greatî. There is one accounting firm and Edmonton called spiral and Associates who did not like the hourly billing fee, because it rewarded accountants for being slow, therefore they sought to charge their clients a flat monthly fee. When they did this, the importance of technology in their business became extremely important.

Because of charging their clients a flat monthly fee, the Edmonton small business accountant spiral and Associates had to change the way they did their accounting services, in order to make this fee worthwhile. Not only did they decide to work and collaborative groups, but they discovered that working very fast was very necessary to make this model work. Therefore, the upgraded every single computer for every accountant to a to terabyte hard drive. However, by having an extremely large computer did not necessarily mean that accountants would be able to work faster unless that hard drive was able to go fast as well. Therefore, in addition to a to terabyte hard drive, they ensured that it was a solid-state drive similar to a cell phone instead of a spinning disc hard drive in most computers. They also ensure that it plugged directly into the motherboard which meant it did not need a core. All of this translates into an extremely large memory computer that can compute very fast. That meant that their accountants could work on a large amount of information, pull it up fast, change it and save it quickly and then moved to the next document.

Not only was it important for this Edmonton small business accountant to upgrade their computers, they also needed to upgrade their monitors. They discovered that using three monitors was extremely important to the speed and productivity of their accountants, most likely because they need to be looking at three documents every change they make, therefore having three monitors is beneficial to their productivity. The size of these is extremely important because each accountant needed to have a lot of information in text form on their computer screen. Not only was size important, but they discovered that this Edmonton small business accountant office that resolution was also important did not matter how large the monitors were, if they had a low resolution, the text would be fuzzy and unclear, making it hard to read and less productive.

Edmonton small business accountant offices typically were not seen as hotbeds for embracing technology. Part of the reason is because they did not have to utilize their computer for anything more than updating QuickBooks files, and since they build on an hourly fee, doing that very fast meant that they were building their clients a lower fee. However, by learning how to embrace technology in their accounting office, they can change the way they service their clients to increase their business, but also be providing an extremely high level of service to their clients that can help them grow. By doing that, they can attract clients that wish to utilize that service in their business to grow, to ensure that they can help the right clients.

The way that this Edmonton small business accountant firm accomplishes that, was to develop collaborative workstations so that their accountants could utilize teamwork to work more efficiently. Every single client that they had in their office was assigned to a team of two accounting students. Because these accounting students had already passed their CPA degree, they need articling experience. That way, the accountants that is Burrell Associates were able to hire extremely high level students, who just needs experience at a lower rate than they would be able to hire fully trained chartered professional accountants. The fact that they are high level meant that they can do an extremely good job for their clients, and they cost much lower than traditional accountants. This means that they pass the savings on to their clients, which allows them to only pay a flat monthly fee instead of hourly.

However, the fact that their students mean that there needs to be a desk at this collaborative station for a chartered professional accountant or manager to be able to sit at the workstation with them to train them, review the files their working on and oversee their info since the our students and still require training. This allows spiral and Associates to be able to train world-class accountants, on their world-class workstations, all while keeping their cost to their clients down.

By having a team of people working with their clients, should ensure that their clients are getting an extremely high level of service, as well as ensuring that they never missed getting serviced, even if one of their accountants was sick, on vacation or for some reason had left the firm. By having to team members aware of all of the clients files, and their situation, clients can be certain that they will always have someone in the firm whose familiar with their file and can help them.

By utilizing collaborative workstations, the accountants at spiral and Associates can ensure that they are providing world-class service to their clients, at a price that they can afford, on a consistent basis because it is a flat monthly fee that will never increase no matter what services they get.