ACCOUNTANTS
CPA pays off Practice Purchase & Increases Billings by 40% in Less Than One Year
Having worked for a practice for twenty-five years, it was time to break away and enjoy the benefits of ownership. Starting out with a small client base made becoming self-employed feasible for this CPA. And he quickly acquired another practice which also helped.
After one year, the owner had grown the practice modestly due to client referrals. However, much of his profit was going to pay the previous owner and the rewards for the effort required were not sufficient.
When we helped him implement a marketing strategy to take advantage not only of online marketing but also referral sources the owner had not considered before, billings greatly accelerated. In addition, a program was promoted to existing clients to provide them with additional services. Work came pouring in, and by the end of the following tax season, practice gross billings were up 40% over the previous year!
About the same time, the owner started to have issues with one of his staff – who was requiring constant monitoring to ensure he was following through with work assigned. We implemented a plan of action for this staff member. When it became clear that the employee was not responding to the plan, the owner knew it was time to let him go. When we pointed out that this gave him an opportunity to restructure his practice, he enlisted our help in the hiring process. Instead of hiring another bookkeeper, we decided to hire a receptionist/office manager who also had an accounting background. In addition, we hired a CPA, part time who could help him with higher level work that he was now generating more and more of.
With the personnel changes in place, the owner is now able to turnaround more work in a lot less time, than before, as well as free up time to implement the additional marketing strategies that we’ve provided him with.
Practice Owner implements efficiency systems & learns how to delegate
In this practice, the owner felt he had to do everything himself. He was personally reviewing every financial statement and every document. He prepared every tax return before it went out the door. Of course, he wanted to make sure it was done exactly right, but since he was re-doing the work for his staff, they expected him to always do so and did not improve. He felt it was faster to do the work himself and this attitude was preventing him from training his staff. Some of his workload was due to lack of staff training but also there was no system of tracking work which caused the owner to be in a constant state of stress about whether work that came in was getting done or not.
With our help, we devised an organizational chart for the practice, which detailed all of the duties in the firm and who was responsible for them. We created job descriptions for the staff which enabled the owner to delegate work.
We standardized processes and trained the staff on them resulting in everyone being on the same page, and thus more productive and efficient.
Now the practice functions when the owner is away, as it would if he were there. His hours in the practice have greatly reduced - 40 hours per week during tax season and less than 30 hours per week in the off season. With the increased revenues as a result of more efficiency, the owner takes off six weeks every year to travel with his wife, and children—all without worrying about his practice.
Practice Owner Able to Make Staff Changes & get free of the burdensome workload!
Because the owner was maxed out doing the work, practice growth was limited. The owner did not have time to look for more business or try to expand, knowing he couldn’t handle any more. He didn’t think he could get by without his staff so he let them dump their half-done work on his desk and stayed at night to finish it while they got to leave at a reasonable hour.
There were no standard procedures in the practice, everyone had their own way of doing things. One employee might take two hours to complete a job while another did it in half the time. This was inefficient and caused billing discrepancies, which meant they were less profitable.
