Now that your firm is in the middle of tax season, you know what’s working and what’s not working with your accounting software. How does your software stack up?
As quoted by Albert Einstein, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” While you are in the thick of busy season, it’s imperative to take the time to evaluate your processes and see if it’s efficiently and effectively working for your firm.
Leveraging Avii’s 20+ years in the accounting space, we’ve identified the five most important things to consider if you are ready to upgrade your accounting software experience. We suggest you start simply, write things down, and share with the right people who can influence change management in your firm.
1. Unify Your Client & Teams into a Secure, Collaborative Workspace
Many accounting firms and their clients log into numerous places to get their work done, creating a disjointed experience. Unifying your accounting experience into one place reduces time spent bouncing from app to app, making the process more streamlined and less confusing. It also drives consistent automations, communication, business intelligence, and reporting. It’s time to think beyond “getting work done" with "transactional relationships” in siloed workspaces and move towards improving the experience of your staff and clients.
In a unified workspace + portal like Avii, clients, practitioners, and managers interact with each other, their documents, discussions, dashboards, and many other optional elements in a single place that can include all service lines in your firm. You determine what clients see (or don't see), including document request lists, document folders and files, tasks, schedules, discussions, e-signatures, and status dashboards. Your clients and your firm will appreciate having their accounting experience in one place.
2. Reduce Unneeded Licensing Fees from Disconnected and/or Redundant Apps
Over the past two decades, the SaaS model made it too easy for non-IT staff and teams to add siloed, function-specific software, resulting in a fractured ERP software landscape. At Avii, we work with many accounting firms and find that most have 30-85 mostly disconnected software silos - typically way more than they realize. This “hairball architecture” results in disjointed workflows and data for clients, practitioners, and managers.
Discover software solutions that can help you identify and eliminate those unnecessary apps and connect those that are advancing your business. For example, Avii replaces apps and unifies 3rd-party workflows and data like a skybridge.
When you unify your accounting experience, your firm can reduce those unneeded licenses and associated fees while unifying your overall experience.
3. Supercharge Your Processes & Workflows with Dynamic Automations
Dynamic automations are more than just checklists; they let you automate more of your processes, workflows, and data. Customize how your work will flow, and then automate those processes to make your team more productive and efficient. You can create simple to very extensive automations that overlay, react to, and even advance your work.
The Avii Workspace even automates things you do in non-Avii software systems. Avii becomes the software hub that's your "single source of truth," creating a unified workspace for the majority of your firm's accounting experiences.
4. Connect and Analyze More of Your Firm’s Data
Your firm needs access to the right data, so you can streamline processes, become more efficient, and make better business decisions. But in most cases, firm data is disparate and disconnected. Some software vendors even have policies limiting your access to data, charging firms extra for data usage. It’s time to take a fresh look at how your firm manages data. You can empower your firm and drive business processes with live dashboards, deep data analysis, and visualizations. Connecting and analyzing more of your data will uplift the experiences of your most critical stakeholders - your clients, practitioners, and managers.
If you are serious about doing more with your data, look for a vendor with powerful accounting applications, a robust data warehouse, and a broad bi-directional API set. For example, Avii unifies your data from sources such as Avii, 3rd-party apps, your data warehouse, and more, automating the collection of your data to eliminate reliance on humans and static reports. In addition, Avii does not charge extra for our APIs or data warehouse usage.
5. Create Efficiencies to Allow Your Team and Clients to Focus on What They Do Best
If you want to upgrade your firm’s accounting experience, it’s critical to have software that maximizes your efforts. Automations eliminate human activities that are low-value and time-consuming. Your practitioners are too busy to go through the steps of duplicating their work. Actionable information such as dashboards and live status of clients, projects, teams, and deliverables removes the need for your team members to compile and distribute reports. This improved process allows your firm to gain efficiency and have your team members and clients focus on what's most important.
In Avii, this can extend from CRM and client setup through automations and deliverables. It can even include automated marketing and client satisfaction surveys sent at precisely the right time and presented contextually in the client's customized workspace instead of email delivery.
Your employees can focus on their work and not need to take extra time to check off a task list, send an email, report on it, or pass it to the next person. Avii also incorporates automation of resource planning and assignments. This improved process allows your firm to gain efficiency and have your team members and clients focus on what's most important.
Don’t settle for your current software if it’s not working. We often think about how to fix things for the firm, but it’s also important to consider how we fix things for the client.
Avii is innovative and agile. We consider our clients as partners. We meet regularly with them, listen to their suggestions, and implement them.
We know you are busy with tax season, so let’s connect in May or June when things slow down. But if your firm's Audit or Advisory team is looking for better Accounting Experience ManagementTM, let’s connect now to get your firm on the right track. Connect with Avii
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