I had a potential client call up this week and we spent a bit of time talking about the return on investment (ROI) of the work that Nudge does. Having only started her business in August, she wanted to get on top of the numbers. And she was interested in what Nudge could offer her business. But most of all, she wanted to understand what return her business would generate from one of our monthly Nudge packages.
It was a really good question. How do you assess the ROI on the work that your accountant does? From a Nudge perspective, we think about it as follows:
- Traditional accountants generally help you comply with your taxes. The return that you generate from them doing this work can be broken down into (1) you are not an expert in it so let them do it all and (2) the time you need to spend getting them the work. This work really can be viewed as something to help you stay on the right side of the ATO but does it really add any value to your business.
- On top of the cost of a traditional accountant, you have the following choices in getting your books up to speed. You can do it yourself, at a considerable time cost (time which you could spend getting more sales through the door) or you can hire a bookkeeper which is another separate cost.
- How do you track your income and expenses? Often you will need to go and buy some accounting software to help you manage the business finances and to do your invoicing. You need to pay for this on top of your accounting and bookkeeping costs.
- Then, because you bookkeeper and accountant work for different companies, you need to help them talk to each other and often when they have questions, you somehow get involved in answering them.
Is something missing here? With this complicated, timely and expensive process, have you noticed that no one is talking about how this helps your small business grow!
