How monitoring software can help improve your offering & process

Accountancy is undergoing its biggest shakeup in decades, whether it is new technology and software changing how accountants work and what services they can offer, increasing client expectations, or even the very role an accountant plays to their clients.

Trying to keep up with these changes and not be outpaced by your competitors can make it feel like your time, effort, and money are being spent simply to remain in the same place and it is easy to forget the fact that new tools offer new ways for you work and to improve or add to your services and ultimately increase your practices money making capability.

One such new tool that is available to accountants is monitoring software.

Monitoring software alerts you to any developments at your clients, whether they are positive, negative, or just require you to update your records.

How it works

Company monitoring tools are usually a part of a larger credit risk or business data software. These provide business credit reports, with varying degrees of depth, and pull in data from various sources to create them.

Once you have selected a company to monitor you will be alerted if there are any changes to the business credit report. This could be changes to their credit score, if they have received a new CCJ, or if a company director has been added or removed. As such, the more detailed the business reports and the more data sources that they draw from the more nuanced and expansive a monitoring tool will be.

How it helps your practice

1. Know about developments at your clients without waiting for them to tell you

Your clients expect you to understand their business as well as they do but do not always provide you with information you need to be so in a timely manner. Updating their accountant is not at the forefront of a busy company director’s mind and they often do not have the training or specialist knowledge to know exactly which developments are important for you to be able to perform your role effectively.

Monitoring software effectively removes the need for your clients to actively update you on their business and allows you to have a near real time understanding of their businesses.

2. Provide better and more timely advice

Now more than ever accountants are held in a position of a trusted advisor to company directors and clients actively expect you to provide them with advice on how to best run their business and to help them should any adversity arise. For your part, you want financially stable customers who can pay your fees on time and view you as vital to their business.

With the correct monitoring tool you will be able to proactively provide advice to your clients as soon as it is needed rather than when they come to you. This allows you to nip problems in the bud or to help your clients exploit opportunities sooner and more effectively, such as if they have received a CCJ or if there has been positive changes to their lending capability.

In fact, you may even be made aware of events before your clients themselves.

3. Monitor your clients key customers

Should you client experience a key account turning into a bad debt it can be devastating to their business, threatening their solvency and by extension their ability to pay fees. Traditionally, you have only been able to help your clients deal with the fall out of bad debts but by monitoring their key clients you are able to advise them it that business is showing signs of financial distress or failure.

You can then advise them to chase any outstanding debts, limit or stop any future credit, and to seek for a new customer. Conversely, if their client is showing signs of growth you can advise that they are prime for the upsell.

Not only does this protect your business by protecting your clients’ revenue but it offers an opportunity to bill for an additional service whilst increasing the value of your service to your clients.

4. Builds stronger client relationships

To both do your job more effectively and secure reliable future revenue you need your clients to trust you, value your service, and view you as indispensable to their business. Not only does monitoring software allow you to improve your service to your clients as discussed above but by doing so it gives you more opportunities to get on the phone to your clients, discuss their business and strengthen your relationship with them.

To find out more about Credit risk, monitoring and AML services from Practice Portfolio - please click here.