Accountant-Centric Applications--The Next Frontier Puts Accountants Back In The Driver's Seat. 

It's ironic.

Although accountants are the key individuals who play a pivotal role in the accounting function for small business clients, the developers of accounting applications for small-to-medium-size-businesses treat them like backstage actors. These vendors certainly woo accountants to sell their applications, but when designing their applications they don’t even consider the accountant's crucial role.

The simple truth is that today's accounting software programs are designed to be used by businesses, with the underlying assumption that these businesses alone will perform all accounting functions—from entering transactions to creating the complete financial statements—without any involvement of their accountants.

We all know that this assumption is far removed from reality. Most small business clients do little more, if at all, than enter transactions, while the accountant performs many or all of the remaining crucial functions—from making adjusting entries, to preparing bank reconciliations to creating the finished financial statements.

Worse yet, the accountant wastes an enormous amount of time correcting client mistakes and importing or re-keying client data. You're the accountant, but you are forced to accept and work around the idiosyncrasies of these applications. The painful truth is accountants have lost the control of the accounting process—surrendering it to programs that ignore their crucial role.

There is another problem that's a direct byproduct of today's accounting software. Clients think they are doing most of the work that the accountant has done in the past, and this belief has resulted in fee resistance and erosion. In reality, however, client use of today's accounting software does not necessarily result in a meaningful reduction in your workload. That's why most accountants have experienced an actual reduction in the bottom line obtained from client accounting services.

Today's accounting software simply is not designed for the accountant, causing the accountant to lose control of the accounting process—and significant revenues—as well as data compatibility and a host of other problems.

A true solution to this problem requires turning the entire paradigm of accounting applications upside down. Accountants need Accountant-Centric solutions that reestablish the accountant's control over client engagements and create new revenue opportunities for accountants.

The Internet now makes this Accountant-Centric revolution possible by enabling both accountants and clients to use the same application and share the same data, with the accountant controlling the entire workflow process. With an Accountant-Centric application, the accountant is able to customize an application differently for each client, based on that client's unique needs and abilities, establishing control over the entire workflow process for everyone's mutual benefit. While many applications will no doubt claim to be Accountant-Centric, very few truly will be. It is crucial to understand the defining attributes of the true Accountant-Centric application.

The hallmarks of true Accountant-Centric applications

• Accountant-Centric applications must put the accountant in the driver's seat. This means Accountant-Centric applications must be offered only to accountants, who in turn decide how to use and offer them to their clients to best meet the needs of individual clients.
  
  
• Accountant-Centric applications must enable accountants and their clients to work together collaboratively. For starters, this means that accountants and their clients must share the same data and use the same core application. In the final analysis, the Accountant-Centric application must transform the concept of Collaborative Client Engagements into reality.
  
  
• While Accountant-Centric applications require accountants and their clients to use the same core application, accountants must have the ability to configure the application selectively for each client as needed. Not only should clients have access only to those functions they have been given permission, they should not see the other functions at all.
  
  For example, a fully developed, properly designed Accountant-Centric accounting application may include general ledger, write-up, trial balance and even audit/review capabilities. However, you may give some of your clients only the ability to enter transactions, while allowing other clients access to more powerful tools. In this case, when the transaction-only enabled clients log on to the application, they should only see the screens for entering transactions and not see the tools made available to your other clients or available for your firm's use.
  
  
• Accountant-Centric applications empower accountants with supervision and monitoring capabilities that help accountants minimize client errors.
  
  
• To meet all these requirements, Accountant-Centric applications must be web-based.

Accountant-Centric applications will change the way accountants perform client engagements forever, creating an unprecedented productivity boost for both clients and accountants. This "AC" world will save clients time and money while helping accountants raise their own bottom line.

Once AC applications give accountants full control of the workflow process, accountants will be able to tailor these applications to match the resources and technical sophistication of each client to achieve optimal performance. By assigning routine tasks to clients, accountants will be able to spend their time performing more productive, more profitable and more useful activities for their clients.

Accountant-Centric solutions will also help accountants regain the business they have lost to competing forces in the past. Until now, accountants have fed payroll service bureaus billions of dollars worth of payroll business. Accountant-Centric payroll solutions will help accountants regain that business. Sooner than we ever thought, payroll processing will become a gold mine for accountants, just as it has been for payroll service bureaus all these years.

Accountant-Centric solutions are certainly the next frontier that will put accountants back in the driver's seat. During the next couple of years, the profession will see some remarkable innovations that will have a profound lasting impact! Stay tuned.

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Thank you very much for your support.
Dr. Chandra Bhansali, President
Laurence K. Zuckerman, CPA, MST

PS: If you would like to see a demonstration of an Accountant Centric solution from Accountants World that will show you how accountants are now able to offer highly profitable payroll services to their clients, click here. Please note: this demonstration requires high speed Internet access.