Accountancy practice management software has come a long way. Today, features like automated billing and reconciliations are easily integrated into the day-to-day practice workflow of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting UK customers.

Our employees work side by side with our customers to create and manage these solutions – driven by a deep understanding of their needs and addressing the rapid changes in their environment.

However, it’s often hard to look beyond improving performance in day-to-day operations. Amid Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and other disruptions, accountancy practices and their clients are dealing with an unpredictable economic landscape. Future business planning can appear daunting.

However, technology can support accountancy practices (and their clients) in making informed business decisions, and planning for the future. In the first part of our Accountancy Practice Management for Future-Fit Growth series, we’ll explore how they can use technology to define and easily track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Doing so gives practices closer control of performance tracking, and deeper insights that will inform strategic growth plans.

Saving Time

For several decades, business technology platforms have enabled practices to track performance metrics that they have customised. This highlights areas that qualify for improvement and underpins strategic planning.

Contemporary technology, such as CCH KPI Monitoring, makes setting up KPIs faster and easier for accountancy practices than ever before. This is vital today. The current business landscape demands that firms assess and amend KPIs more frequently, based on fresh market variables. KPIs such as client retention rate and business time-to-recovery have become increasingly prominent performance indicators in the past year. If clunky technology makes KPI management difficult, practices have less time and insight to plan future growth.

Reducing Risk
CCH KPI Monitoring makes it far easier to track KPIs and report on them. This is fundamental in minimising risk. For example, if a KPI is set to track and escalate debt filtered by overdue dates, the ability to easily set alerts and automatically generate reports is critical to practice performance management.

Some practices are manually running monthly reports to measure KPIs. Others are running real-time reporting engines, a key feature of CCH KPI Monitoring. This latter solution allows practices to review essential data at any time – covering both performance management and compliance requirements. They can do so remotely or on-premise.

This means that firms can assess issues before they become problems, and thus act proactively. Real-time reporting is a true asset in building a future-fit practice.

The Proof is in the Practice
A number of Wolters Kluwer customers have been using CCH KPI Monitoring for several years now. Our customers look to us when they need to be right. Ryecroft Glenton has successfully integrated CCH KPI Monitoring with its own system. This consolidates information from several sources, including CCH Central and CCH Practice Management.

“We can use the year end date to trigger a sequence of reminders. Have we asked for the books? Have they been received? If a request to a client has been outstanding for a certain period, the partner will receive an alert via email. For limited companies, we can monitor the corporation tax and Companies House filing deadlines – as well as the different deadlines for pension schemes”

– Ian Smith, partner at Ryecroft Glenton

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

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Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Adoption of Open Banking has been driven by remote working and increasing audit quality scrutiny over the past two years. Highlighted by the 5 million open banking users milestone reached in February this year.

Despite the acceleration of open banking adoption, it remains a relatively new concept (first mandated in the UK in 2018), putting banking data in the hands of businesses and consumers, this is just the tip of the iceberg compared to open finance.

Open finance has the potential to give consumers and businesses unparalleled control over their data, across the whole financial services ecosystem, rather than just the banks mandated under Open Banking. In turn, for auditors and more broadly accountants the opportunity to generate more value for clients through real-time visibility on cashflow to preform higher quality risk assessments and specifically for auditors, improving efficiency & quality of audit procedures.

What is open finance?
Open finance goes one step beyond open banking, which uses third-party APIs to pull together banking data across a range of different providers.

By comparison, open finance allows users to fully take control of their finances by using APIs to centralise all of their financial information in one place. Sourcing data from a broader range of financial services ecosystem including pensions, insurance and investments. Through the use of an Open Banking Provider auditors & accountants can then also tie into this improved visibility of a clients assets.

Adoption of Open Banking has been driven by remote working and increasing audit quality scrutiny over the past two years. Highlighted by the 5 million open banking users milestone reached in February this year.

Despite the acceleration of open banking adoption, it remains a relatively new concept (first mandated in the UK in 2018), putting banking data in the hands of businesses and consumers, this is just the tip of the iceberg compared to open finance.

Open finance has the potential to give consumers and businesses unparalleled control over their data, across the whole financial services ecosystem, rather than just the banks mandated under Open Banking. In turn, for auditors and more broadly accountants the opportunity to generate more value for clients through real-time visibility on cashflow to preform higher quality risk assessments and specifically for auditors, improving efficiency & quality of audit procedures.

How will open finance impact accountants?
Open finance will help accountants perform a more value-adding role, rather than just focusing on compliance.

Having complete visibility of finance through open finance tools will allow accountants to switch suppliers so that businesses are making cost-effective and relevant purchases. For example, this could include renegotiating business insurance so that it provides adequate coverage.

Additionally, accountants in practice will be able to continue their shift to advisory services by making it fast and easy for clients to access loans by using open finance to automate data collection and generate funding options at the click of the button.

The centralising of data collection will also save significant time when completing self-assessment returns for clients. These tasks typically require collecting financial data from a number of different sources (ie pensions, personal savings accounts, and share trading platforms) but being able to pull in all of this information from one data source will help speed up the time it takes to complete tax returns and ease client relationships by not having to chase them.

Similarly, auditors will be able to validate transactional and supporting data instead of relying on paper audit trails and frequent requests to busy clients. One particular use case is crypto wallets.

Coinbase’s API means that it is now possible for auditors to use tools to validate clients’ digital assets directly from the exchange. It will likely serve the needs of a growing number of businesses that are now accepting bitcoin as a payment method. This is similar to how auditors are using Open Banking to confirm clients’ bank balances directly from the bank.

Conclusion
We are still very early in the rollout of open finance services, but policymakers and regulators are in listening mode (the FCA recently published feedback on their call related to input on open finance), and a UK wide Pensions Dashboard (centralising information from providers) is due to be introduced from 2023. Beginning with Open Banking is the natural first step, especially for audit teams who are feeling the busy season strain, immediate efficiencies can be secured within a comfortable and client friendly environment.Watch this space!

May 2022

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Accountancy Practice Management
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