“Accountants are Number Cruncher" - A Limiting Mindset of Accounting Professionals
MD Imdadul Islam (Imdad)
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“Accounting is not about Numbers”. Yes, you read me correctly.
The Headlines of various accounting professionals tend to include references to ‘numbers’ such as Number Cruncher, Number Nerd / the Number Guy. There is nothing wrong with it.
Although the numeric tax & accounting skills are the fundamental of the profession, the irony is that they are not differentiating skills. They are not what make a great accountant.
So, the accounting profession is not about numbers. It is about people
In the history of business, almost in all sectors & industries, low-value skill-sets get outsourced to lower cost providers or get replaced by automation. This is already evident by the outsourcing of bookkeeping by many accounting firms globally. That’s why Accounting Soldier comes into play.
Now is the time to start planning and making changes for a better future for accounting.
Thankfully for accountants, the higher-level advisory work across more complex Tax Planning, KPI - Key Performance Indicator analysis and Financial Advice provide them with a solid future. But it will be a very different future.
The great thing is, all this work still has at its core, numbers.
And the best way that a set of numbers will help a business owner to make effective business decisions is when they are guided by a great advisor someone who can tell the stories behind the numbers.
Warren Buffeett says: “Accounting is the Language of Business”
So, the person to provide this business advice should be the business owner's accountant. After all, they have all the required numbers, data & insights. But all too often accountants don’t provide future-focused advice. They merely write the history where as they have the potential to help their clients make the history.
The clients of accounting firms wanted advice on how to improve their business, but they weren’t getting it from their accountant. Accountants played no advisor role. So their clients looked elsewhere.
Now the question comes: What has caused this?
It results from the accounting professionals’ tendency to revolve around numbers only. "We are number cruncher" is a limiting mindset of accounting professionals which holds them back from maximizing their value to business & society.
I would love to highly encourage the accounting professionals to go beyond the numbers & help clients make the history.
Working with Software & Tech entrepreneurs to develop a successful business giving them financial freedom & security
5 年A lot of this is historical. 30+ years ago we only had the time to crunch the numbers. Most small firms did not have a computer & clients just wanted their year end accounts and tax. Only the larger firms had the time to offer non-compliance services and even then not everybody got the opportunity to get experience there. So there are still a good number of us in the workplace that didn't get the training and experience. We have had to teach ourselves and get help elsewhere. Even now most small and micro business owners just want compliance and persuading clients otherwise is hard work. Some of us are trying very hard, but when clients think they know you only need to provide the compliance and that they know everything else. we are up against it.?? Time based billing is also steeped in decades of tradition. When I set up in 2003 I was quite radical running with fixed fees. This has now morphed more towards value based billing but we have to be careful about scope creep - clients expect everything within that price and get upset when I tell them e.g. that the Mortgage reference is not part of the engagement and that there is an extra fee.?? It's not just about entrepreneurial spirit but also about training clients.
JAGCPA.COM is the way
5 年I read a quote one time that said “a man waste half his life trying to display qualities, he does not possess”...don’t ask your accountant for business advice especially if they charge by the hour... less a very small percentage, very few possess entrepreneurial ability and talents. I would put most lawyers in that bucket as well. There are exceptions (bell curve), but the profession does not attract entrepreneurs. It attracts risk off people. Accountants could be more impactful by learning how to be a finance partner. They can deal with numbers and don’t necessarily need to make impactful decisions.