What It Takes to Build The Modern Accounting Firm

In this day and age, especially post-lockdown after Covid-19, accountants are reimagining what it takes to build a truly modern accounting firm. Many accounting firms are taking a look at their firm with new eyes.

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.