What’s the most effective way to move your practice to the cloud?

Accounting and bookkeeping professionals are often divided.

More and more firms are making the move to the cloud. They understand the benefits such as increased efficiency and profitability, better mobility, and easier collaboration with clients. But moving your business online changes the way you work. Most professionals agree that the cloud is the future, but there’s rarely agreement on a clear 'best practice' for making the transition.

Making the change

It's not easy to go from being a traditional accounting practice to becoming a modern firm that enjoys the benefits of the cloud. You’re reinventing the way you work and engage with your clients.

Your practice will be more efficient once you’re up and running in the cloud, but you'll need to get there first. There's a cost of change upfront, but these steps will help:

Step 1: Make the commitment to start using cloud solutions

Most software vendors offer free learning resources and the ability to get certified. But getting educated is table stakes. The best way to learn new technology is with hands-on experience, and the same goes for cloud accounting. Start with an initial pilot to put it through the paces. Select a subset of clients as “guinea pigs” to test it out. What’s important is that you need to get scale. If you only have a couple clients online it’s not going to feel like you’re making progress. You need to have a pilot big enough to see the efficiencies of going online. How big? The number can vary depending on the size of your practice, but I suggest at least 10-15 clients per staff member involved.

Step 2: Identify ideal clients

What clients are you putting online? I’ve seen the greatest success with firms who start with simple, internally controlled clients. This includes year end write ups, shoebox clients, and those who have no preference what software is being used.

The inability to select the right type of clients to move online is where so many practices and firms who have the best of intentions, fail.

The benefit of starting with these more simplistic clients is it insulates you and your team. It allows you to focus on you, get comfortable, and nail your processes before you scale bigger. As you scale with more labour intensive clients, they will have their own set of questions and needs. At that point you’ll be in a better, more confident position to support them having already been through a successful pilot.

Clients that have robust inventory, complex software integrations, or high transactional volumes should be avoided. Moving these clients to the cloud will be a more complex process. It's easier to target these once you're completely confident with your chosen cloud accounting software.

Step 3: Set up, convert, and learn

As you move your first clients to the cloud, take time to evaluate what works and what doesn't. Learn from the process and decide what your next course of action should be so you can pivot as needed.

Every client you transition to the cloud will teach you more about the process, so it’s important to reflect on what happened. This will help you refine and improve your migration process for future clients. Once you and your initial clients feel comfortable working in the cloud, you can scale and begin moving other clients over. As you rinse and repeat, the process should become easier each time.

We'd love to help

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