Episode 89: Accounting and Bookkeeping Best Practices to Adopt in 2024

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In this week's episode of The Wize Guys Podcast, Brenton Ward, Ed, Chan, Tim Causbrook and Thomas Sphabmixay share their reflections and insights for 2024. 

Find out the best practices for your accounting business that you can start to apply within your firm.  Also, these guys will share tips on how can practice owners spend less time at work. 

Tune in to ignite a transformation that goes beyond the balance sheets, reaching into the very heart of work-life harmony!

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PS: Whenever you’re ready… here are the fastest 3 ways we can help you transform your accounting/bookkeeping practice:

1. Join 40,000+ subscribers to our transformation Friday tips – Every Friday, our Wize Mentor and Thought Leader of the Year, Ed Chan will send one actionable insight from his experience of building a $20 million accounting firm that still runs without him – Subscribe here

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Transcript

Ed Chan: 0:01

You've got to master leading yourself. So that's about self-discipline, that's about experience, that's about controlling your feelings. So you've got to lead yourself.

Brenton Ward: 0:14

From Wize Mentoring is The Wize Guys Podcast, a show about accounting and bookkeeping practice owners and the many stories, lessons, and tips from their experience of transitioning from a time-pull practice to a business that runs without them.

Brenton Ward: 0:35

Kind of comes full circle. Back to our design topic design pillar, I should say and one of the fundamental accelerators in terms of building a business that runs without you is mapping the withdrawal journey, and that's typically where we start with most of the firms we work with. It's where we start in our WizeV ault journey as part of the 18 steps that everyone has access to in the wise vault, but I mean, it's one of the most important pillars in building a business. So I was hoping you might start us off with just a little bit of reflection and insight for the benefit of everyone listening in. Today. You work hands-on well, you've worked hands-on with a lot of practice owners in the last 12 months out across the world. And just wanted to get a glimpse into what's been happening on the inside from the walls of those meetings. What are the trends, what are the things you've been seeing, and anything you'd like to share with the group for the benefit of their ? journey.

Ed Chan: 1:45

Sure. Thanks, Brenton. Yeah, for me personally, the thing that's most rewarding is obviously seeing the firms improve and get better. And there's a lot of pain out there where people are working very long hours and putting in a lot of hard work and they're not getting a return on the hard work they're putting in or it's taking them away from their family and other things have been hurt by the hours they're putting in. And the greatest thing for me is just seeing how they're improving and changing lives and the systems they're putting in. Jamie went from in the first work period working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, couldn't take holidays and couldn't even spend time with the family. When he was on holidays he was answering emails and emailing, and today his business is three times bigger than what it was and he no longer works in it. So that brings me a lot of satisfaction when I see firm owners who follow the wise way and they're getting the same results and outcomes and it's life- changing. So for me, that's the greatest reward that I get out of it. What I see in firms when we work is always the same it's around people.

Ed Chan: 3:18

I've often said that people are our greatest challenge, but they're also our greatest asset and it's and most of us grew up, if you like, in the grinding role and as an owner of a business. We have to know how to manage. But we're never taught to manage, and part of the reason why it's so difficult is because of structure. You know, and you need to have structure. You know, and I use this analogy when you know, have you ever seen like little five-year-old kids play soccer? You know they're all chasing the ball, like there's, you know, 20 of them or 22 of them on the field and they're all chasing the ball. There's no structure in place. But then you know, as they get older, they have. You know, teams, like you've got a goalie, you've got a fullback, you've got the wingers, you've got the forwards, and then they start playing their positions. And then you, the next stage is you find people who are suitable for those positions, so you don't put a winger in a goalie position. You've got a goalie in the winger position.

Ed Chan: 4:29

So you've got to build structure for staff to work within and then you've got to place them in the right role so that they're working in their flow. And if they're working in their flow, then they're really happy and they're really productive and accounting firms run flat teams where they're just focusing on the productivity and they just want to throw more bodies at the workload and it doesn't work. It's a lot more sophisticated than that. So, yes, working with the firms it's around people, but people are around structure. Because when people work for you, you know they can do the work, but they need you to lead them and you've got to put these structures in place so they know, you know what they're supposed to do. And then you've got to fit them in their flow so they're working within in their flow, not working against their flow.

Ed Chan: 5:21

So a grinder often can't be a minder and if you promote a grinder to a minder, then you know it's going to be, it's going to, you're going to have problems and sometimes even with training, you know you just can't change the leopard spots.

Ed Chan: 5:38

So you've got to understand all the HR issues, you've got to understand all the structure issues and you're the coach and you know and you can't jump on the field and play the game, then take out a, you know, do the job of the player and jump in there because they're not doing it properly. You've got to either train them to do that, to play their position properly, or you find a new player and you don't jump in there and take their position, and I see people do that all the time. You know like it's quick too. I just do it myself, so they do it themselves. So yeah, it's around people, mainly, and systems and processes, and you know you've got to develop those systems and that's what Wize does. It's already all developed, it's tested, it works. It's been tested for many, many years and it works. And you know you just got to implement it. And that's all the challenges ahead for most practices.

Brenton Ward: 6:39

Tim, I would like to give some insights from you if you don't mind sharing both as a mentor and working with firms as well over the last 12 months. But you know internally at Causbrooks with your own practice, any particular highlights or insights that stand out from your mentoring meetings throughout the year.

Tim Causbrook: 7:01

Just the importance of knowing what you want to get out of the business. We begin with the end of mind and everyone wants different things out of it, so it's really important to step back. It's probably a good time for you to do it, to step back another year down the drain and just think about whether is this getting me closer to my goal, or what is my goal. And, yeah, just take stock, it's very, very crazy and hectic in this industry. So it's really good every now and then and we do that in the monthly board meetings I do as well as a really good example of why they're really good, because it forces you to take some time out each month to think about those quad B and those bigger, bigger picture things. But, yeah, that would be, that would be key.

Tim Causbrook: 7:40

Also, just document everything you do. It's impossible to delegate and withdraw unless you document how to do things in the first place. Don't wait until you get the process perfect. It's never perfect. Often I don't realize where the problems are in a process until we start documenting the process. So, yeah, that's. That's another one that sounds really simple, Jamie. Jamie bangs on about that one a lot, but we've seen huge, huge benefits from doing that this year and we're going to do a lot more of it for you to come Great.

Brenton Ward: 8:09

Thomas, anything from your sub-links at TMS or, again , the mentoring you've been doing firms throughout the year.

Thomas Sphabmixay: 8:17

Yeah, it's been a great year of mentoring and I actually have my own board meeting with Ed this afternoon, so I have to report in the same way other people report to us. The greatest thing was being able to hone all the structures in so that reporting at Fruta, fab 5, KPI allows you to just tell so much from these KPIs and when the structure is in place, it's easier to captain the ship through the Fab 5, then if it was like this chaotic marketplace that's going on because people are just honed in around that, and that's what I found this year with FernsWords. It's all like Ed said, it's about the people a lot of recruiting, a lot of team designing, restructuring, evaluating people whether they belong in the right role or not, so that they can start honing themselves around targets, and that's it's been a highlight of that year, this year.

Brenton Ward: 9:13

Yeah, it's a really good point you touch on there, because if we look at the Fab 5 and the WIS within the WizeH ub, which everyone has access to, and if you don't have your own WIS hub set up, I encourage you to get in touch with Selina and we'll set you up with it. It's been a system that we've developed internally in Sky Accountants and Jamie's practice over the last 10 years with the help of Ed and Jamie's fine- tuning the Fab 5 dashboard, which is driving KPIs in the practice. It does take time to implement and it's another one of these things. It's a quad-two activity that does take investment, not only from the practice owner but getting the right people in place in order to fill the data points and things like that. But once it is in place, it's just such a fantastic tool to be able to have an oversight and manage from the bottom up, as you would say, Ed, and keep your finger on the pulse of the health of the practice. So I encourage everyone, if you don't have your WizeH ub and your Fab 5 set up, to put that on your 2022 project list, because it's just a brilliant tool.

Brenton Ward: 10:27

Thanks for tuning in. If you liked this episode, please remember to subscribe and leave us a five-star review For more practical Wize tips on how to build a business that runs without you. Head over to wizementoring. com/ podcast to download a free copy of The Accountants 20-hour WorkWeek Playbook. We've included a link in the show notes below. See you on the next episode!