You are not creating value for clients when you are offering historical services, aka compliance. The vast majority of the profession has the vast majority of their revenue in compliance.

Offering compliance services is being an intermediary between the client and the government. Your role is to facilitate, between the client and the government, the right amount of cash around the right time. Some would say that tax minimization is part of compliance, but I disagree.

How can you add value to your client this month when you’re talking about last year’s numbers? You just can’t. That’s redundant data accounting! It’s rear-view mirror accounting that has to be done, but offers little to no value. It’s a grudge purchase.

If you want to create value for your clients, you must be work with real-time data, not redundant data. If you have the real-time data, then you can advise in real time. That means the client must be on a cloud accounting platform, such as QuickBooks® Online. As clients are transacting, at their end, the accounting system is being updated and you have complete visibility to the real-time numbers whenever you want. If you’ve got access to real-time data, you can make a massive difference to your clients’ financial condition.

Once you have access to the real-time numbers, you can offer a range of new services. Based on 22 years advising accountants all over the world, I would advise that you should stay “close to the numbers.” It’s what your clients expect, and you can leverage the service by getting other people to deliver the service.

Here is a list of 10 services that you could add to really help your clients:

1. Cashflow analysis, forecasting program
2. Revenue/Profit Improvement program
3. Debt restructuring/refinance program
4. Interest reduction service
5. Receivables/Inventory management service
6. Virtual Management Accounting
7. Cloud conversions
8. Sort out the numbers program
9. Planning session
10. Monitoring & Accountability program.

All these services offer tremendous value to your clients, and they should all be priced on value-based fees.

Get all your business clients on cloud accounting, stay close to the numbers and become a real-time accountant.