This week we discuss relationships with clients and how to grow these.

Clients are arguably one of the most important factors of starting and sustaining a successful business. Without clients you don't have a professional services business.

Even if you think you have a good understanding of your clients you may be surprised at the many ways you can get to know them better...but not too well.

Diane and Kane discuss how they interact with their clients, including:

1. Setting regular check-ins (maybe every few weeks or months)

2. Asking for feedback

3. Setting expectations (and how to do that)

4. Making it relatable to the client.

Good practitioners realise that delivering is about more than just winning a client, it's about maintaining a positive relationship.

That's what grows your business.

Diane (The Bookie aka Bookkeeper) from https://www.directmanagement.com.au and Kane (The Beano aka Accountant) from www.activeoutsourcing.com.au and www.accountancyonline.com.au are professionals practicing who encounter these issues and many more every day.

Workplace relationships greatly impact how we feel about our work, considering we spend 80% of our time at the office. Office relationships can vary from professional through to romantic, so it is important to know how best to manage them within your business.

Investing time and energy in building strong professional relationships is critical to developing

levels of mutual trust and respect in a team environment.

Once we genuinely trust and respect each other, we then allow ourselves engage in regular, honest dialogue about individual and team performance and increase our capacity to improve.

This week we discuss relationships between staff members and how to build these.

Diane (The Bookie aka Bookkeeper) from https://www.directmanagement.com.au and Kane (The Beano aka Accountant) from www.activeoutsourcing.com.au and www.accountancyonline.com.au are professionals practicing who encounter these issues and many more every day.

We discuss our different office situations that we have as well as how this effects things such as office culture and working from home.

For accountants and bookkeepers culture is critical as ultimately we "sell trust" to clients and good accounting and bookkeeping partners/owners, who run good firms, can attract and retain good people.

On the people front we also chat about outsourcing and the part it plays in the industry today and Kane provides some of the tips and hints to make that work well for firms having lead the outsourcing teams at Moore Stephens and Deloitte over the last 11 years.

Diane (The Bookie aka Bookkeeper) from https://www.directmanagement.com.au and Kane (The Beano aka Accountant) from www.activeoutsourcing.com.au and www.accountancyonline.com.au are professionals practicing who encounter these issues and many more every day.

This week we are revisiting the Accountants and Business Expo in Sydney earlier in 2019.

In this episode Kane & Diane chat with:

- Data analysis and visualisation app Zivora.

- Artificial Intelligence App Chata AI

- Scanning and document solution HubDocs

- Workpaper and compliance provider Business Fitness

We hope you enjoy listening to some of the apps out there that can assist your accounting or bookkeeping firm thrive.

As this our last episode of 2019 we hope you have had a productive 2019 and wish you an even more productive year in 2020 and meet those KPIs.

Diane (The Bookie aka Bookkeeper) from https://www.directmanagement.com.au and Kane (The Beano aka Accountant) from www.activeoutsourcing.com.au and www.accountancyonline.com.au are professionals practicing who encounter these issues and many more every day.

A technology stack or "tech stack" is a term used by Hipsters that refers to a set of technologies, software, and tools that are used in the provision of a service.

What a time to be alive. You get into accounting or bookkeeping to assist your clients and all of a sudden you also need to be across all the new technology making our jobs easier.

In fact it seems that technology will continue to be the biggest factors that impact accounting and bookkeeping moving forward.

It's fair to say that technology allows you to shape your client experience and internal efficiencies.

So just what is in our tech stacks?

We discuss our stacks in this episode.

Diane (The Bookie aka Bookkeeper) from https://www.directmanagement.com.au and Kane (The Beano aka Accountant) from www.activeoutsourcing.com.au and www.accountancyonline.com.au are professionals practicing who encounter these issues and many more every day.

This week on The Bookie and The Beano we have something special.

Recently Kane presented with the extremely knowledgable Alan FitzGerald of Practice Connections at the Accountech conference.

We are bringing you a recording of this live session where we discuss:

Replacing your practice management software.

We recognise it is as fun as dental work - but you don't have to live with archaic systems.

You can radically improve productivity without having to start from scratch.

Find out which parts of your practice stack you can replace easily and how to stop paying for software and servers you no longer need.

•Discover what a modern practice tech stack looks like that will grow with your business.

•Learn how your practice can be more efficient and productive online.

•Hear how to evaluate an online solution without any risk to your current setup.

Be it a bookkeeping firm or an accounting firm if you want to grow you need the right technology in place.

Diane (The Bookie aka Bookkeeper) from https://www.directmanagement.com.au and Kane (The Beano aka Accountant) from www.activeoutsourcing.com.au and www.accountancyonline.com.au are professionals practicing who encounter these issues and many more every day.

If you're a bookkeeper or accountant or anyone who has worked in either profession in the last 25 years chances are you have heard of Wayne Schmidt.

With over 25 years experience in the accounting industry spearheading the Australian expansion for Xero, MYOB and Reckon, Wayne is passionate about helping accounting practices to grow, embrace change and become more profitable.

In the last 3 years Wayne and his wife Sally have become digital nomads.

We discuss:

•some of Wayne's history in Australia

•what a digital nomad is

•why and how Wayne became a digital nomad

•what Wayne is focusing on now.

Since becoming digital nomads Wayne has launched https://www.socialforgood.org where he shows Not For Profits how to connect with their existing donors, gain more donors and most importantly spread the message about their cause.

Diane (The Bookie aka Bookkeeper) from https://www.directmanagement.com.au and Kane (The Beano aka Accountant) from www.activeoutsourcing.com.au and www.accountancyonline.com.au are professionals practicing who encounter these issues and many more every day.

Value-based pricing is basically the method of setting a price by which a firm calculates (and tries to earn) the differentiated worth of its product for a particular customer segment when compared to its competitor.

So what does it mean practically?

Diane is a big advocate of Value Billing, so much so she has taken what she does in her bookkeeping firm and launched: https://www.zuloomi.com

This week Diane discusses the practical aspects of value pricing and what she does in her firm.

Kane asks her a lot of questions and relates some of his experiences and skepticism on the broader concept of value pricing/billing.

Both Kane and Diane are presenting FREE Intuit Table talks at Accountech on 12th and 13th November. You can register to attend at:

https://l.feathr.co/accountechlive-2019-custom-lpspeaker-kane-munro

Diane (The Bookie aka Bookkeeper) from https://www.directmanagement.com.au and Kane (The Beano aka Accountant) from www.activeoutsourcing.com.au and www.accountancyonline.com.au are professionals practicing who encounter these issues and many more every day.

Processes are extremely important in accountancy and bookkeeping firms.

It's impossible to scale, grow or even sell your business without having a good set of professes in place.

A robust process will ensure you get the same (or similar) result regardless of who is undertaking the work.

In this weeks episode we discuss the different way we capture processes as well as what we capture.

Kane is presenting a FREE Intuit Table talk on Process Mapping at Accountech at 12pm and 3:15pm on both days. You can register to attend at:

https://l.feathr.co/accountechlive-2019-custom-lpspeaker-kane-munro

Diane (The Bookie aka Bookkeeper) from https://www.directmanagement.com.au and Kane (The Beano aka Accountant) from www.activeoutsourcing.com.au and www.accountancyonline.com.au are professionals practicing who encounter these issues and many more every day.

While many factors decide customer satisfaction including competency another important factor is touch points.

A touch point is just business jargon for interacting with your clients.

A customer touch point is created every time your customer or audience interacts with your brand or service. For example when a new customer looks at your website or receives a piece of work from you. Interactions are how relationships are formed, managing the success of these interactions is vital to the success of your business.

We discuss some touch points in this weeks episode and how you can easily keep in touch with your clients.

Diane (The Bookie aka Bookkeeper) from https://www.directmanagement.com.au and Kane (The Beano aka Accountant) from www.activeoutsourcing.com.au and www.accountancyonline.com.au are professionals practicing who encounter these issues and many more every day.