Creative Thinking in Your Accounting Practice

The accounting profession is most widely viewed by others as a quiet, static profession that does not make room for creativity or innovation. Numbers always add the same way, debits and credits must always balance, and spreadsheets do not often talk back. Overall, accountants and bookkeepers are not necessarily viewed as a creative population, nor fun and exciting as well. 

When I sit down with a new addition to our bookkeeping team, or when looking to hire a new staff member, one of the first things I tell them is that I expect them to be creative. 

I usually get the same response, “Creative, really?” and I am quick to respond, ‘Yes, creative. I want you to use your brain to think through processes and procedures on how we can better serve clients in an efficient and effective way.”

Now if I made the right choice in hiring, the new employee usually responds with excitement. If not, chances are I chose incorrectly and that person will not be with our firm very long. But if they are the right person, I find that encouraging them to be creative helps improve their attitude towards their training and the cultural concepts we introduce about accounting and bookkeeping that may counter what they have been previously taught. My challenge to them is to take what they are supposed to do and find a better way to complete it. A creative way to make processes better. 

For example, when presented with a new bookkeeping client, our business could simply pay the bills, enter the invoices, record the transactions in the same manner the client has already done them. Essentially the client would be paying for us to simply take over exactly what they are doing for a fee. However, the client has hired us to do a service, which in our mind is beyond bookkeeping. They have hired us to create efficient processes for their bills, invoices and data entry that helps them keep their fees down and gets them the information they need on a timely basis. 

So in what areas do we get creative? There are many that we have experienced and even more on our to do list. Some of these include:

Utilizing new software to communicate with clients. This could be setting up portals for our clients to share documents, utilizing a chat application like Slack or Zoho Cliq, or giving clients report viewing access to their Quickbooks Online files. All simple strategies that increase client satisfaction and accessibility beyond simply sending a pdf Balance Sheet and P&L at the end of the month. 

Setting up a schedule for clients. Simple as it may sound, the concept of having 1 bill payday biweekly is a shocking concept to clients. Often times when it’s suggested, they respond with ‘Wow that is a great idea, I never thought of that!’. Bill pay clients that come to us typically are ignoring their bills or paying them right as they come in. Either way they have no system for reviewing their expenses and cash flow for their business. Introducing this ‘creative’ concept of scheduled bill pay will help business owners manage their cash and bills in an efficient manner. 

Introducing Applications to integrate with Quickbooks Online. Most of our clients use this software and are often underutilizing its capabilities. For example, a client comes to us with a Quickbooks Online file that they use for bookkeeping, but they are keeping track of inventory with InFlow, running payroll in Gusto, and paying bills via hand written checks. A creative bookkeeper would take a look at this client and say – why not integrate InFlow with Quickbooks Online (because it does integrate!), set up payroll in the QB Online file, and add on bills.com to send out payments via ACH or check printed by Intuit. Again proving that in order to supply the best service to accounting clients, bookkeepers must be creative when setting up processes. 

These are just a few examples of how our people have become creative accountants and bookkeepers. Other examples include consolidating reports, attaching back up to entries instead of adding handwritten memo lines, and overall staying up to date with new software that can be applicable to the accounting world. Overall the goal is to provide the best outsourced accounting services possible to the client in the most effective and efficient way possible. 

08/19/2019
By: Hollie Bourne, Quality Back Office LLC