For all businesses, good accounting and financial management can be the difference between success and failure; a key element of this is effective ‘Management Accounts’.

As an Accounting firm, you can expand and create meaningful strategies for your SME clients, by offering good management accounting, and we’re going to explore just how your firm can alter the trajectory of your clients’ business.

Help your clients understand ‘Management Accounting’.

Management accounts are financial reports produced for businesses and leadership that help to inform important decisions and plans for the wider company. They can be monthly, quarterly, or even annually for some smaller businesses.

For business owners or leaders who are managing accounting internally, the importance of management accounting is often overlooked. It falls on accountants and firms to educate clients on the power these reports can have on the wider business and provide an introduction to the benefits without unnecessary technical details.

Why Your Clients Need Management Accounts ?

There are many uses that make management accounts a must for your clients’ business and it will often be a very easy sell when they learn of the benefits.

• It can measure performance and identify where the business is succeeding or struggling.
• It is used to stay on top of liquidity and manage cash flow.
• It helps to establish and monitor the point at which the business breaks even for effective KPI and target-setting.
• It allows the business to monitor overheads and profit.
• It helps to maintain consistent records of finances for evidencing and progress tracking.
• It assists in creating effective plans for the future based on evidence of the past.
• It allows the business, with the help of your firm, to monitor financial trends and identify good (or bad) practices.

Your Role as An Accountant in Management Accounting

As an accountant, you can choose the important variables related to your clients’ business operations and produce quality reports to help leaders make educated and informed decisions.

Planning – Management accounting is entwined in planning and forecasting. The reports provided by you are used to expose flaws in the workflow, under-performers, bottle necks that help keep your clients’ business on track in achieving its goals and providing accurate information for decision making.  

Organising – With the help of reports and information provided by management accounting, you can help your clients regulate or adjust their business operations and activities, depending on the changing conditions.

Communication – Management accounting can be an important tool for communication as different levels of management need different types of information.
The data shared by you in management accounting can act as a communication link within the organisation and with the outside world.

Outsourcing Accounting To Provide Better Value To Clients

You are trusted by your clients to provide an accurate service that adds a lot of value, but sometimes the everyday stuff can prevent you from doing the great stuff.

To free up capacity in the firm to push management accounting, ‘Outsourcing’ some of your account’s functions can provide you with the resources required to fill that gap.

The founders at The dot HQ have over 20 years’ experience in supporting teams with their accounting needs by creating external partnerships that bring all of the necessary skills and knowledge to the table.

For accounting firms, this means not having to expand internal teams, and for your clients, this can be the difference between management accounts that “do the job” and those that transform their business.

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