Financial Accounting Advisory

The years’ worth of bank activity tells the story of where the money came from and where it has gone. This insight allows you to decode the narrative of their financial life. There’s no degree or credential required to offer advisory services. What is required is the ability to help your clients solve their problems and improve their businesses. So, let’s break down what accounting advisory services really are, what they mean to your firm, and what they can do for your clients. “When you go to advisory services, where the accounting industry is headed towards, it’s a more proactive approach to accounting,” states Alvonn F, MBA, a fractional accountant that specializes in advisory.

Discover the latest insights that are shaping the future of corporate reporting and reporting technology. If you are looking for finance and accounting support, contact us today. Process standardization, technology integration and automation are all great ways to increase business capacity and give employees more time to focus on value-driven work.

Delivering a higher level of insight

Helping them design the right workflows and tech stack and training them in those tools is a powerful part of advisory services. WilliamsMarston is an accounting, tax and valuation advisory firm serving pre-IPO, public and private equity-backed companies managing rapid growth and transformation. We work with leading treasury organisations to provide critical insights into finance and risk issues to help achieve strategic, overarching business and financial objectives. The BW Accounting Advisory Board is comprised of several of Northeast Ohio’s most prominent leaders in the accounting industry. Members volunteer their time to provide critical expertise and support to the undergraduate and graduate accounting programs at the Carmel Boyer School of Business.

Upon completion, you will have core competencies in fundamental client accounting service deliverables. I’m an entrepreneurial CPA that founded Xen Accounting, a 100% cloud-based accounting firm, in 2013. Following its acquisition in 2018, I started Future Firm to help accountants fast-track the growth of a modern, scalable accounting firm of their own. The point is, when you provide services of this kind in 2022, there are now other models to deliver the service. To me, this is the pinnacle of advisory as you provide services to help your client reach their ultimate desired destination.

Shifting your practice from compliance to advisory

CAS allows accountants to use historical reports to analyze client challenges and suggest growth strategies. Examples of these solutions can include tax planning, technology stack implementation and cash flow forecasting. Traditional accounting involves largely retrospective tasks—i.e., looking at historical financial records, preparing tax returns or performing basic bookkeeping tasks. Regardless of who completes the work, there is no way to differentiate the final product. For this reason, CPA firms have been expanding their service offerings by not just reporting on the past, but making suggestions for their clients’ futures. With experience that spans companies of all sizes and industries, our experienced professionals are here to help with your most challenging accounting and financial reporting issues.

So she developed an online course priced at $495 called Not Rocket Finance to help them get up to speed on accounting issues and financial reporting along with others matters so that she can then upsell them on to her virtual CFO services. To avoid scope creep and help shine a spotlight on your advisory expertise, carefully define your menu of services. Advisory services and your financial acumen are what set you apart from every other firm. Also consider creating packages of bundled services to supersize your compliance services with more planning and advisory services. Bundled services can help transition annual compliance engagements into monthly or quarterly advisory engagements, where you can communicate your advisory expertise. Compliance services are required, and there is very little differentiation in the deliverable between practitioners.

What Advisory Can Do for You

MAK Financial CPA, a firm located in San Diego with five U.S.-based and five offshore employees, started doing CAS because it saw a need for it, said owner Michael Khalil, CPA. Most of the accountants in its area who served small businesses focused on taxes and didn’t provide the kind of sophisticated advice business owners needed, Khalil said. He chose to focus on quick-service restaurants as one of his niches, in part because he handled accounting for several of his family members who own franchise pizza restaurants. He suggests that firms assess their current capabilities and their “ability to execute on building a practice area,” and then create a thorough business plan that covers everything from billing practices to staffing to KPIs.

Preparing for an IPO or SPAC transaction requires significant planning and effort. With lean accounting and finance departments and an ever-changing regulatory landscape, companies often struggle with the accounting and financial reporting requirements of non-recurring transactions. When you deliver services focused on compliance, you are preparing the financial statements, dealing with accounting and financial reporting issues and filing any statutory filings with the appropriate authorities. But if you handle complex accounting and analyze the numbers, discuss them with your client, help them look forward and/or help them better plan their affairs, this then shifts into the sphere of advisory work.

Bank Accounting Advisory Series

It can also help a firm streamline its processes, something ACT Services realized when it chose to specialize. The firm started out as generalists, direct cost recalled Tina Moe, CPA, CGMA, the owner and CEO of ACT Services. “I joked that our clients just had to be nice, be compliant, and pay our bill.”

Therefore, knowing these limitations and regulatory issues helps him advise clients on key business decisions. Financial analysis, and especially forecasting, is an essential skill for fulfilling high-level advisory and differentiating your value. With firms now offering flexible CFO solutions, talent must have the technical acumen to perform financial analyses and make strategic recommendations. Talk to an accounting & reporting advisory services professional. BDO professionals have deep experience working with high-growth companies and private equity firms and can help navigate how to go public through the traditional IPO, SPAC or other exit process. Expertise and experience on par with the largest global firms, delivered with unflinching hospitality that business leaders don’t expect from the professional services world.

Ex-Big 4 CPAs exceeding expectations for service & hospitality

“Investing in a proven program, I think, is the fast track to getting a CAS practice set up and on solid ground.” Because starting a CAS practice is such a complex undertaking, firms need to fully commit to it for it to thrive (see the sidebar “Making Pizza Profit”). “If you’re going to do it, you’ve got to go all in,” Fuqua said.

• BDO provides a high-quality audit that delivers transparency to investors and business insights to management teams.
• “The employer can now scale and grow without significantly adding to the headcount,” Moe said.
• Services also include adjacent complex accounting services such as IFRS/ US GAAP/ Local GAAP conversions and financial statement development/restatement support.
• Frequently, business owners are unsure when to purchase assets or implement investment strategies.
• We bring the talent, passion and expertise to the accounting for transactions in organizations across many industries.
• From bookkeeping to financial analysis, Paro provides staff augmentation services to help you build your CAS practice.