Talking Cents

Small business accountant in Sydney choose one system and stick with it

Earlier this week I had an interesting meeting with a potential new client about taking over his accountancy services from another accountant. Now, there were various reasons for this particular small business looking for a new accountant here in Sydney but one of the most alarming aspects of the client/accountant relationship was the advice side of matters. Now I don’t know the current account from a bar of soap and he may well be a very good accountant, but the fact of the matter is that the business owners had been lead down a certain path and had no idea why.

The scenario is that the client was recommended to move their accounts over to Xero from MYOB, a cloud based platform that we love here at mas accountants. The business owners were told that Xero would be great for them but then received very little support from the accountant that recommended Xero. Perhaps, he had just heard good things about it but had no real world experience with Xero. Either way, the more alarming aspect is that the client was told to keep entering their sales invoices for their clients in MYOB, yet everything else was in Xero. Life as a small business operator is complicated enough at the best of times, why would you seek to implement a new system and keep parts of the old one? Duplication leads to unnecessary time wasting and complexity.

As a small business, whether you are using Xero, MYOB or an alternate piece of software the key is to make the most of the available features to reduce the number of systems needed to manage and track your business. This involves either training yourself to an expert status (who has the time for that?), or having the support of an expert in the field whom you can reliably call at any time to clarify any issues. The ideal all-in-one system may never exist but you can get pretty close with the power of cloud technology and the ability to closely integrate systems that talk to each other in real time. Back this up with a strong accountant/client relationship and you will have more time to focus on growing your business, rather than just dealing with day-to-day administrative tasks.

For more information and real world insights, contact mas accountants in Sydney and Melbourne, the original accountants for small business for over fifty years.