Guest blog post by Karen Reyburn of The Profitable Firm
Having worked with accountants for well over 15 years, and now owning a business that exclusively works with accountants and accountancy firms, I thought I knew a few things about having an accountant myself.
“My Accountancy Place have completely changed the game when it comes to accounting.
Having an accountant is not one of those ‘ughh, I have to get this done’ tasks – they’ve become part of our business and we would even consider them friends.”
My own business provides marketing for accountants. (For full disclosure, we provide a good portion of the marketing you see delivered by My Accountancy Place.) So we’re well used to helping accountants proclaim how they are (truly) different, or better, or stand out from the crowd.
We always do that with full integrity – the accountants we work with need to actually be different, or better, or stand out – but what is so incredible about My Accountancy Place is that they seem to do all these ‘different’ things as naturally as breathing.
It’s not just their expertise and help and quick response times that I love – it’s our accounting platform (Xero), and all the integrations (Crunchboards and ReceiptBank and Gocardless and many more), and the events (the Digital Roundtable), and how all of these combined have truly made my business and life so much better. Easier. Happier. And more profitable.
So, here’s what I love about them.
They are extremely swift to respond.
I know that if I have a question ‘out of hours’ it will be treated with the same interest and care as during the day. Having dealt with many ‘9 to 5 only’ businesses, it’s so refreshing to know that I don’t have to try to fit my extremely busy life around the old-school ‘office hours’.
The whole team knows me personally.
Amanda knows who I am when I ring up and we often have a wee blether for five minutes before I suddenly realise I actually phoned for Martyn to ask him a VAT question. She puts me through to Martyn and the whole process begins again!
They specialise in digital creatives.
This is hugely important. When we were considering changing accountants, this was the one tipping point, the reason above all reasons that made it an absolute no-brainer.
They not only understand the challenges that digital creatives face, but they really enjoy knowing about the work we do.
And the more creatives they work with, the better, because they can tell us about what’s working or what isn’t or the new and coolest gadgets or integrations or apps or APIs. They know what APIs are, and they care. Which leads us to…
They talk our language.
I don’t just mean that they understand the words I say (which considering that I’m a dual British-American citizen living in Scotland, could be a little confusing!). They use the terminology we do, and the online tools, and the cloud integrations – and if they don’t, they’re really willing to learn. Not only willing, but excited. ‘Oh, that sounds interesting! We’ll try that for ourselves!’
What a fun attitude from your accountant.
They’re creative themselves.
It’s rare to find an accountancy firm that doesn’t want to be like other accountants, or look at what they’re doing, or follow the accounting trends.
They look at creative businesses and model their business accordingly. They use Macs. They wear jeans. When I’m working on a Saturday morning or late on a Wednesday night, Paul is one of the few clients who emails me back… because he’s doing the same. Not because he has to, but because that’s just who he is.
They work virtually.
Our entire business is done remotely. We do have offices in Nottingham, but I work from home in Scotland and we have team members in Kansas and New Zealand and London and India and other far flung places. So the fact that they’re located in Manchester, and we’re not, doesn’t matter in the slightest.
As a matter of fact I’m starting to find that I visit Manchester more often than I ever did – but that’s purely my choice. I wanted to come to their digital roundtable event …and then I found myself deciding to stick around for a day or two so we could have more meetings and, of course, more Starbucks coffee.
They’re really good at accounting.
You may find it interesting that I didn’t put this at the top of the list – but that was pretty much a given before we hired them. We never doubted their accounting abilities or tax knowledge or their ability to contact HMRC on our behalf. Most accountants can do these things, to a certain level. But when you combine their really excellent accounting knowledge with all the items above (they’re friendly, they respond, they’re creative, they work virtually, etc), it’s an amazing combination that sets them above.
They’re honest, and work with integrity.
This is an absolute must-have for anyone we work with.
We will never be associated with cutting corners, cheating, using the back door, or trying a quick fix to save a few pounds. But My Accountancy Place go above and beyond, because that’s who they are.
An example of this is the time that Paul casually mentioned that if they get referral fees from any other supplier, they pass those on to their clients as a matter of principle. This struck me very powerfully. Paul didn’t want to get the 10% discount he got from a supplier, as though the reason they referred us to that product or that business was to get a little extra money on the side. It became very evident that they would only refer us to someone if they genuinely, truly believed it was right for us – and that’s worth more than money.
We were so impressed with this that we’ve started doing the same at The Profitable Firm. I’ve referred a few of my clients recently to a social media specialist, and when they sign up the company tells them, ‘Oh by the way, the Profitable Firm has asked us to pass on our normal 10% referral discount to you.’ Our clients love it – for the same reasons we love what My Accountancy Place has done.
I could probably go on all day long, but it’s about time to wrap up this blog post. As if this wasn’t enough reason for you to connect with these guys today, I’m going to write another one on ‘reasons you don’t change accountants’ – because I know what it’s like to have an existing accountant who is okay, and gets the job done, and doesn’t charge much, and you feel bad leaving them.
I don’t feel bad anymore. I wonder why I didn’t do it earlier.
Thanks guys! Here’s to more Starbucks coffee and cool integrations and Macbook Airs and swish new offices! …Oh, and accounting. That too.
