To help your accounting firm make sure what you are building is totally modern and innovative, today on the Rules of Thumb blog from MoneyThumb we are going to share what several experts have to say about what it takes to build the modern accounting firm.

This article from Karbon titled, Structuring a Modern Accounting Firm, states that "The way most accounting firms have been run for decades isn’t right for the modern practice. Yet, many firms are still proportioning their managers and staff and structuring their teams based on guidelines that included desktop systems, yearly meetings with clients (and charging calls by 15-minute increments), and services that could achieve differentiation by simply being done right.

In the early 2000s, an efficient firm commonly had a ratio of 5:1 (5 accountants to 1 partner/manager), in the same office. Today, the modern accounting firm’s ratio is anywhere from 7:1 to 15:1, and often includes multiple locations.

Along the road, you have probably made reactionary changes to your team structure to improve efficiency, cut costs, or cope with personnel changes. But this type of minor tweaking can do more harm than good and negatively affect the way your team works together. If your strategies, goals, processes, or services change, your structure needs to keep pace. This requires more than a casual readjustment—you need to redesign how the roles and functions integrate within your team to suit your new direction.

This article on LinkedIn from Jamie Shulman, co-founder of Hubdoc, titled Building the Modern Accounting Practice: Hiring a Technology Lead, states that 'the foundation of every modern accounting firm is technology," and goes on to offer 5 core responsibilities of the person or team in charge of your technology. To drive efficiency and volume (the keys to a firm’s profitability and revenue), it’s a combination of leveraging technology as a foundation and inputting smart people to operationalize it into a technology-based workflow.

Ace Cloud Hosting has this great post on their blog, What Does it Mean to Become a Modern Accounting Firm? The article has been made into a video as well if you'd prefer watching a video to learn what Ace Accounting has to say about becoming a modern accounting firm. We have included that video below:

Last but certainly not least, CPA Practice Advisor is offering this free ebook written by Rootworks titled The Modern Firm, and they actually have a trademark on that title. It is described as "a succinct guide on what it takes to build an agile, sustainable, and highly profitable accounting firm that delivers an exceptional client experience."

The Rootworks Performance Model brings structure and clarity to the processes and the steps required to build a firm for the modern era. The Modern Firm eBook will stimulate your thinking like an entrepreneur and leader, rather than just an accountant.

The team at MoneyThumb hopes the above information will help your firm get on the road to make sure you are totally modern. We would appreciate it if you could share this Rules of Thumb blog post on your social media page so your accounting peers can benefit from it.

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Things are changing so fast these days. It seems everything has accelerated and times moves more swiftly. Never has that been more evident when it comes to digital technology. If you are an accountant, CPA, or bookkeeper, you already realize that if you haven't already adapted new ways of working using technology, now is the time to start.

To help you get started implementing new technology and practices that will serve you and your accounting clients better, and stay on the cutting edge of new trends that are happening in 2018, the Rules of Thumb blog from MoneyThumb would like to offer our readers the following pieces of advice:

Keeping Up With Technological Accounting Trends in 2018

• Switching to a fixed pricing and/or value-based pricing model. Hourly billing is actually becoming a thing of the past when it comes to accounting. This is largely due to increases in automation, which make things run so much more efficiently. Ultimately, the switch to fixed pricing won’t just benefit accountants – it will also benefit your clients because it will emphasize the value of the services you provide instead of the time to execute.
• Increase the variety of your services. A 2016 survey found that 76% of clients are using a wider variety of services supplied by their tax and accounting firms. Embracing automation tools will allow you to offer more to your clients, including more proactive advice in more areas of their business. By doing this, you will be able to focus on developing proactive strategies to improve your service, maintain stronger client relationships, and recognize an increase in the bottom line, for both you and your client.
• Leverage business intelligence tools. Automation is being driven by the desire for increased data quality, data governance, and business intelligence. Spend less time crunching the numbers and reporting on history, and more time understanding what comes next. Providing these types of insights are what will ultimately increase your value-add as an accountant. By using the software created by MoneyThumb, you will be taking a big step toward leveraging business intelligence tools.
• Be More Accessible. The Sleeter Group reports a disconnect between small business clients who want strategic advice from their accountant or bookkeeper and those that were actually receiving it. This is a strong indication that accountants need to learn to reach out more, check with clients to see if they are satisfied with your service, and have great, instant reply customer service at hand for your clients and potential clients. 
• Show Client Appreciation. As an extension of reaching out to accounting clients, finding little ways to thank them for their business is always a good idea. Not only will this build client trust, being grateful for your clients' business and expressing it can also increase customer loyalty and retention, which is key for the survival of your firm.
• Leveraging customization. A whitepaper by Fox Financial Planning Network concluded that automating workflows is a critical step in efficiently delivering client services. However, an even more important issue to delivering a personalized experience is to put in place workflow architecture that has flexibility. Using technology to standardize your workflow is critical, but it’s also important to take a modular approach to building an accounting technology stack so you can customize your workflows according to your clients’ needs.

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