What's Next For Accounting? - Issue #148

Delegation comes easier to some than others. Nobody rolls out of bed knowing how to do it one day, but it’s a muscle you can develop. It looks like:

Abandoning “it’s free if I do it” in favor of “under $100/hr is an immediate yes”

Asking “is my team capable of this” rather than “can I do this”

Trading “they won’t do it like me” for “here’s the desired outcome”

Getting to something better means breaking an assumption you hold today. 6 ideas to get your wheels turning:

1. Hire an assistant - Become the type of person who has an assistant. It beats pretending you don’t need it, and everyone around you paying the price.

2. Assign an expert for everything - Every subject matter, app, and process needs an owner. Questions that come to you are routed to the owner. Get a question without a home? Assign or hire a new owner. You can fire yourself from every single job, and I promise you’ll still have work to do value.

3. Hire a chief of staff - Did you know many CEOs have a single direct report? They hire a right-hand person. That’s it. Imagine that! It’s my preferred way to run a business. I’m the boss to 1, the fun uncle & mentor to the rest.

4. Build a proper org chart - The traditional partnership model silos production, and asks partners to be everything for their teams. Centralize fulfillment, make partners your relationship managers, define success metrics for each role and create supporting infrastructure to enable them.

5. All problems are people problems - Great news: There’s somebody out there who’s better than you at every thing you do. Don’t surround yourself with subordinates. You’ll get stuck with a pile of work.

6. Be a fly on the wall - Some lessons can be taught. Most must be learned. Resist the temptation to correct, and let your team think for themselves in all but the most critical decisions.

Most of us spend decades trading time for money. The script has to flip at some point, when you finally start trading money for time. You want it for others. Your family wants it for you.

The only resource that matters in life is time.

Delegation is the opportunity to offer other people a path to escape that game. The ultimate gift!

If you’re willing to get out of the way.

💎 This Week's Sponsor

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📅 This Week

• I’m at Xerocon in 𝒯𝒽𝑒 𝒩𝒶𝓈𝒽 today! If you’re here I’d love to meet you

• 8 software companies building solutions for firms sent me 90 second pitches. Watch this to learn about some apps & dodge some sales calls

• If you run a tax practice:

  • This week I outlined the tax software your firm should and should not be using for tax prep, tax advisory, tax resolution and tax workflow + why new AI has changed some of my recommendations Video Audio

  • For solo tax practice runners, check out this upcoming virtual con, run by firm owner Josie Parr who I recently had on the pod

• Create slick looking graphs with Graphy

• At Xerocon this week Accounting Cornerstone Foundation sponsored 3 people to attend their first accounting conference at Xerocon this week. If attending your first conference is cost prohibitive, consider applying for sponsorship. If you’re in a position to support growing accountants, consider making a donation

🎨 Meme Of The Week

Have a great accounting meme? Send it over and if it’s used in a future week I’ll send you a $20 Golden Corral gift card.

🤓 Nerd Corner

• I chatted with Andrew Wall on his weekly Fridai show about the state of accounting AI adoption, and my predictions for the next 24 mos

• “Rate My Spreadsheet” finally assigns a number to your spreadsheet skillz

• Over 180 people joined Chad Davis’ AutomationTown community in the week since launch 🤯 don’t miss the boat if you’re an accountant looking to automate workflows

• Sparkle promises to “organize your files automatically with AI” and is a great example of how AI is set to simplify workpaper management, file naming etc. All the stuff that’s hard to get humans to do consistently

• Anthropic’s “prompt caching” just reduced the cost of repeated large context API calls by 90%

🔮 Q&A

Should firms have relationship managers, or does it fragment the client relationship? Link
There are many wrong ways to do this (outlined in the link above), and a few killer ways to do it. The benefit is a member of your team is advocating on the client’s behalf, and ensuring we’re making progress on their most important projects, while your technical team is 100% focused on the technical. The incentives of team members must be aligned to make this work, but when done well it’s a great way to put the focus back on the client relationship.

How can firms make baby steps into social media marketing? Link
Create specific, useful content. Broad content won’t find anyone, avoid the vanity metrics, provide insane value to a tiny group. The wider you go the higher the bar. Don't fall into the trap of trying to appeal to every small biz out there, it’s not a game any of us are going to win.

How should firms manage tax resolution work? Link
Centralize it to a specific member or members of your team, and put the right tools in their hands. Look at tax resolution apps like Pitbull, Canopy tax res or Tax help Software. A dedicated team will knock out the work in a quarter of the time, do it better, and instead of it being an afterthought for your preparers you’ve now made it someone’s job to be great at it.

💼 Jason.Careers

🔥 10 accountants joined this week

I help forward-thinking accountants go to work for modern firms in my audience. All roles remote. Firms and applicants US-only for now. 5 roles we’re actively placing applicants into this month (among 30+):

Nonprofit Controller | 100-140k
Adding the next controller to our current group of seven
100% QBO, 70% Ramp / 30% BILL (migrating to 100% Ramp), 100% LiveFlow, Front, Asana

Tax Manager | 120-160k
Need centralized ops & tax manager to get me out of the way
GoSystems Tax, Canopy, Quickbooks Online

Junior Bookkeeper - Up to 50k
Seeking self-directed professionals who can thrive in a remote environment
Karbon, Lacerte, QBO, O365/SharePoint, Ignition

Tax Senior - 80-95k
Need more champions of change as our industry evolves
Axcess Tax, Axcess Workflow, Engagement, BNA Tax Planner, Acrobat

Client Lead - 65-75k
We can use more folks who love to automate & optimize
QBO, Gusto, Bill, Ramp, Karbon, Keeper, Teams, Zapier, Loom

Sign up at Jason.Careers to get started.