With growing competition in the accounting and audit industry, it’s crucial that practices identify key ways of providing a unique, consistent service to their clients. While technology helps to provide the answer, choosing the right technology is extremely important. You don’t want to spend time and money implementing a platform and training staff to then find out that it’s been succeeded by another piece of software that further accommodates the growing demands of your clients.
So, how can auditors and accountants ensure their practice is prepared for a digital future in the long-term?
Automating Audits & Seeing the Bigger Picture
Finding the right automation software is essential if practices are to keep pace with the new digital accounting requirements. Financial Reporting Standards are constantly evolving, making it crucial to have a piece of software that has the flexibility to be regularly updated, adapt to regulation changes and ensure you achieve complete compliance.
Audit software that plugs into your accounting software and potentially bank accounts and emails can also help tie together the full transactional picture. It increases efficiency and reduces the level of labour usually associated with audit creation. Furthermore, the elimination of human error, combined with complete transaction analysis, results in an improvement of the overall quality of the audit file.
This allows auditors to review the audit file as a whole and get the full picture of the data. They can then drill down into any anomalous activity and provide more in depth feedback to their clients. At a time when auditors are competing for audit business, faster audits, greater insights and a consultative approach to presenting the report, will put them in a good position for future business pitches.
To find out more about how audit software can help provide more value to clients, click here.
Communication and Personalisation
A digital accounting solution allows for regular and instant engagement, which is expected from clients who are also used to ways of working digitally. Online portals where clients can upload files and comment on documents directly ensures there is a single version of the truth and a robust audit trail.
In terms of team management, personalisation of a user-friendly dashboard interface can offer a simplified view of an audit’s status for practices. Dashboards allow partners to segment and measure their team’s work accordingly into stages of planning and completion, assisting with identification of bottlenecks and improving productivity.
It’s incredibly important for accountants and finance professionals to stay on top of digital accounting trends, particularly as nearly 50% of accounting and financial services firms name technology and keeping up with trends as their fourth biggest business challenge. Technology that factors in the above elements presents an easy and effective way to keep up with client demands in the long-term, especially with new legislation like Making Tax Digital just around the corner.
If you’d like to find out more about the digital future of accounting, and what this means for your firm, click here.