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Beam
Me Up, Scotty!
Remember the Star Trek TV show and the movies that followed?
While we don’t yet have ‘teleporters’ that can move
people from a spacecraft to the surface of a remote planet, and back,
we do have some pretty cool toys today that radically change how we
work.
Let me expand...
Portals
As we all know, sending sensitive data to clients via e-mail is NOT
a secure method to deliver tax returns and financial statements. Indeed,
one CPA firm in Florida, USA, were the victim of an innocent mistake
by an overzealous staff member, when they sent a set of financial statements
and a tax return to the WRONG client by email.
An honest mistake, but one that cost them dearly. As you might imagine,
the recipient wasn’t too impressed and reported the error to the
firm’s professional body, the AICPA.
After an investigation, the firm was reprimanded and forced to send
an email to ALL of their clients informing them of the error and asking
them to check that they too had not received the wrong client’s
data.
Imagine the response of the clients of that firm – not good!
Don’t let that happen to you. We now have a 100% safe and secure
tool to use for sending such data. It’s called a client portal.
This is a web space that uses the same encryption and security as you
use every day – when you bank online. Simply create a space for
client, upload the documents you want them to have access to and with
a couple of clicks of your mouse, there it is, safe and secure for your
client to download as many copies as they wish.
This may have seemed like science fiction a few short years ago, but
it is a reality today, and a tool that almost all accountants, I believe,
will be using in the not too distant future.
Live Scribe Pen
I love this tool! Imagine attending a client meeting and one of your
colleagues is taking notes.
When you get back to the office you discover that:
1. You can’t read their handwriting, and
2. They haven’t captured half of the most important information
from the meeting
Enter the Live Scribe Echo Pen.
This works
just like any other pen – you write your notes in a special notebook
(supplied with the pen) but you can also plug the pen into your computer
and the text can be captured as a ‘pdf’ file, and with their
software, can be converted into a text file to keep in your client file.
Not only that, but the Echo can also record the entire conversation
and save it to your hard drive as an audio file!
Never miss any important points from meetings now with this incredible
tool, and the cost? Just $199.
Scan with Auto-Flow
Another favourite of mine is scanning. I’m a great believer in
scanning TT slips, for example. Today, we have the tools to scan the
T-slips but at the same time, take the data from those forms and populate
the client’s tax return.
Amazing!
With this
tool we can reduce the time it takes to complete a basic tax return
from say 30 minutes, to maybe just 1 minute, but, of course, we’re
not going to bill for this based on time, are we? No!
In fact,
I can see the day coming when we can train monkeys to feed T-slips through
a scanner.
But seriously, we can put our receptionist to work generating revenue
with little training and free-up some of our professional staff to do
more valuable things for our clients.
From compliance to reliance
I have great hopes for the profession going forward. We now have some
great business planning tools on which we can build a business advisory
practice, getting clients into our firm based on the old favourite need
– tax compliance – and moving the client through our ‘what-if
analysis’ service, showing where the client’s business is
weak and where it is strong, showing how they combine to either hold
the financial performance of the business back, and offer suggestions
on how to fix it, or focusing on the strengths and making them stronger.
These could be no more than an hour long, with a hour’s preparation
before the meeting, but the value to the client could be extraordinarily
high.
I see firms
asking, and getting, over $1,500 an hour for this type of work, and
their clients LOVE it!
The Future
It is not beyond the realms of possibilities when Starbucks and H &
R Block could do a deal to create the first drive-through tax shop.
Imagine pulling up to one window, dropping off a thumb drive and some
T-slips for processing, then moving on to the next window.
At this window you order your extra hot skinny latte, light foam, at
the next you pay for your coffee and collect it, and at the final window
you pick up your tax return and hand over your credit card to pay the
fee for the preparation and e-filing of your return.
Not beyond the realms of possibilities, and it’s all made possible
by technology.
© 2003-2011,
Steve McIntyre-Smith. All Rights Reserved. |
