Tips to Implement App Advisory In Your Accounting Firm

This episode features Robert Davidson a qualified accountant with a rich background that includes playing professional poker for 4 years! With his extensive experience in the industry, and having worked within the Big 4 firms,he started Appacus App Advisory with Matt Flanagan and David Robinson at BlueHub in 2019. Their aim is to help accountants and their clients bridge the gap of understanding between operational and financial systems, enabling them to have maximum control over the often overwhelming app spaces, allowing the to future-proof their practices. Robert is an advocate for cloud accounting and having planned and managed the cloud rollout for a successful national accounting firm in Scotland, its safe to say we have the one of best on this episode to shed further insight! We covered: How a cloud visionary saw what was coming for cloud accounting a few years before everyone else The parallels between professional poker players and professional accountants Is a cloud accounting specialist the best way for firms to go? The complexities accountants face in differentiating between all the different apps when advising clients The skills accountants will need going forward when it comes to apps and technology The current problems: Why accounting source systems like Quickbooks, Sage and Xero might not be the most important system for a business client The accounting app landscape for accountants and their clients is overwhelming - one vendor may offer 2000 updates a year Many accounting firms are lagging with cloud accounting because they don't fully understand the benefits Many accountants feel like they need to know 120% of everything before they give an answer The mistakes accounting firms make when doing app advisory for their clients The required skillset of an accountant is changing rapidly to incorporate the advance of technology The benefits of cloud accounting: Appacus is a community of forward-thinking firms to share best practice on apps and integrations The technology available today is making compliance much quicker and advisory more powerful for accounting firms Advisory for accountants is not management accounts and dashboards - it's the interpretation of that information For accounting clients, advisory is only value if the client can understand it and it helps them make decisions Accounting cloud apps can bring client engagement, sales processes and onboarding down from months and weeks to days Apps are simply tools to solve pain points, provide information and help people make decisions Big Takeaways: Accountants - it's better that you go to your clients with suggestions than the other way around. The worst advice about app advisory that finds its way into the accounting market We are just touching the surface with app advisory - so many more are coming out! https://bdacademy.pro/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/robert_davidson.png () When he’s not working, Robert loves football, walking his rescue dog Mia, travelling and meeting new friends. You can reach him here... https://www.linkedin.com/in/robert-davidson-ba-fcca-☁🏆📈-423547b0/ (Robert on LinkedIn) Phone: (UK) 07535994510 http://www.vcd-fa.co.uk/ (Check out his website here) Email him at [email protected] *********** Today's shownotes created by the excellent https://www.linkedin.com/in/yolandamasamba/ (Yolanda Masamba.) ***********