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If there's one thing that the accounting profession is sure of it's that advisory accounting services are the future. They might even be the present. Small business owners are crying out for increased business advisory services from the accounting professionals that they work with.
Accounting advisory services are a holistic approach to client relationships that spans a lot further than just cash flow forecasting or compliance services. Small business owners are often pulled from pillar to post so an extra pair of eyes over their finances (plus some handy reporting software) from accounting firms can be invaluable. But we also know that as much as you want to help your clients, you probably don't have many spare hours in the day.
That's where cloud computing software for accounting professionals comes in. Futrli Advisor Alerts can help you deliver business advisory services, in the background, with no extra work from you.
How to best deliver business advisory services - let’s walk through some examples for alerts in advisory accounting…
Bank balance alert
One handy Alert can focus on future bank balances. It’s fairly basic, but almost always critical. For example, you can set it to send an email should future balances, given current levels and projected activity, go below £5,000. We would advise that you add a threshold limit so you will be warned if you go within 20% of this, but the amount can be anything you choose.
Recruitment of new sales staff alert
This Alert is a little more complex. Imagine you are a company with a Recurring Revenue Model and you have your staff projections loaded into Futrli as non-financial information. You could set a formula-driven predictive alert to tell you when you will need to hire new staff or, equally, when you may have too many.
Alerts will predict future issues so be prepared
In the examples discussed, causes and solutions will be fairly easy to determine but this may not always be the case. Imagine this scenario: you run a growing cash-sensitive business and are concerned that you may end up in a position where cash reserves cannot cover liabilities. This is a pretty standard situation for many SMBs so it’s something you must tackle with your eyes wide open.
A smart move would be to set up an alert that keeps an eye on the cash ratio, and set it to go off should current liabilities outweigh available cash at any point in the future.
An alert has been triggered – what do we do?!
As with most growing businesses, there’s a 99.9% chance that the owner is busy with other things and therefore has minimal time to start digging into financials to work out what the problem is. You’ve already saved time with automated alerts so the next step is to use your dashboard. A board set up which has all the key information to hand will help you visually pinpoint the problem. Where it is coming from, how bad it is, and what it can mean for future cash flows.
Understand why and make better decisions for your services and clients
In the example used above, it may or may not be the case that a payment plan already exists for this spend. Having an alert to inform you that cash won’t cover future liabilities, and a tool to investigate the cause of this, Futrli enables you to take action straight away and nip any problem in the bud. This lowers your cash flow risk and keeps your time free to focus on running your business.