Although there is still an alarming shortage of new graduates entering the public accounting profession compared to our need, it’s a much healthier scenario than would could have been.

In recent years much of our work in public accounting has benefited from automation.

Caseware leads the way as one of the most popular financial statement preparation products ever made. I am old enough to have entered the accounting profession when the only way to prepare a set of financial statements was to use the ‘hand-written extended trial balance’ method.

How odd that seems today.

Instead of taking 30 minutes (if you were good, like me!) to produce a draft Income statement and balance sheet, we can do that in 30 seconds or less now.

We can then do ‘what-if analysis’ in split seconds using excel, for example, to prepare cash flow projections, instead of taking an eraser to a huge file of schedules and recalculating everything by hand (sans calculator).

The way our end product looks, the financial statements, is usually augmented by standard templates with many different options, in Caseview – with or without Jazz-It - again saving extraordinary amounts of time.

Our time & billing records are on the computer system and we can calculate WIP on a file as of last Friday within 10 seconds, as opposed to adding row upon row of timesheet entries on individual record cards for each client.

The quality of our clients’ accounting records has generally also risen substantially, thanks to $300 - $500 accounting software packages such as Quickbooks. (Although sometimes our clients records are a bigger mess if they don’t know how to use the darn thing properly!)

And our own record keeping on computer means that we can view our own receivables with a single keystroke and get on the phones before payroll becomes due.

Communicating with our clients has become instant – with the advent of email – instead of dictating a letter, getting it typed up, proofreading it and then mailing it and waiting 3 or 4 days for our client to receive it, we wait 5 seconds for them to receive our email and we wait for an immediate response.

And prospective clients can get access to a wealth of information about our firm by visiting our web site and reading up on our firm, our services, downloading useful newsletters and other documents.

So, with all these advances (and many more but time and space limit how deep I can go) in how we operate our firms, thank goodness that interest in the accounting profession has reduced in the last decade, otherwise we would have far too many candidates chasing far few jobs.

In recruiting in the public accounting area, the job is difficult enough at present, thank you very much. I am positively delighted that we do not have too many people seeking roles with our accounting firms.

However, we could do with a few more.

Good people are becoming an increasingly scarce commodity. And we all know the economic effect of scarcity, don’t we!

As you may have seen, in my latest Ontario public accounting salary survey results in the last issue of The Bottom Line, salaries are on the rise.

If the average Canadian makes $40,000 a year, what is it that makes a CA earning $120,000 worth three times as much as ‘Joe Average’?

Are they three times smarter? No.

Do they work three times harder? No.

Do they work three times as many hours? No.

What is it, then that makes an accountant worth that much?

Value.

It boils down to the value we can add to our employers, to our firms, and to our clients who ultimately cover these salaries through the fees our firms charge.

This has to be the criteria by which we are judged in future – the value we can bring to the table for the firm and its clients.

Great candidates will offer great value by being able to add value to our clients businesses. This is going to be one of the key differentiators in the coming few years, not just for the accounting firms, but for individuals within.

With adding value in mind, I’m delighted to notice that the ‘infamous’ Paul Dunn (he of RAN-ONE and ‘Accountants Bootcamp’ fame) is back among us after a lengthy sabbatical in France after selling his interest in RAS (or RAN-ONE as it became) .

I was recently treated to a preview of his amazing new product, TRUST, through his new organization, ReNew Group LLC (www.renewgroup.com) and was simply amazed at what he has put together.

This is one visionary who truly understands how to add value to clients through a public accounting firm, and I’d strongly urge you to check it (TRUST) out.

PS – My March column seemed to stir up quite a few feathers, readers either loved my sentiment or hated it, and that’s healthy. If anyone has heard the recent radio advert for Tim Horton’s toasted chicken & bacon sandwich, I think they’ve got it right.

Maybe their ad agency reads my column in The Bottom Line!