COVID-19 has displaced workforces in Australia, more so in the more heavily populated capital and major cities of Australia. This has meant the rapid evolution and deployment of the new age of digital platforms supporting online collaboration. At the same time, there is a thinning of the traditional hierarchy of accounting firms, through disintermediation of the organisation. Timesheets are disappearing …
Australian tax compliance: Do 12 hour working days do anything more than blunt the edge?
There was a large accounting firm interviewing one of their junior partners the other day, and we were struck by the antique nature of the partner business model. Do your time, work hard, work up the ladder, and make it to partner. The female junior partner had taken 15 years to make it to partner level. “Fast Track”. As the …
Australian compliance: Working from home isn’t just about moving your office computer home
COVID-19 has displaced workforce around the world, including offshore locations where staff are usually working in a secure office environment. Many offshore providers note their security restrictions such as no iphones in the office, 24 hour security guards, restricted fingerprint access to office environment. The list goes on. What’s really interesting, is many of these have jumped on the internet …
Remote workers: Pulling the plug and impacts on profitability
We’ve previously touched on risks that offshore labour services providers like to gloss over when selling their “cheap and cheerful” full time labour resources. These risks include pushing the foreign exchange risk back onto the Australian accountant, wherein paying for the actual salary of a full time worker in foreign currency leaves the Australian accounting firm exposed to detrimental movements …
Australian accountants working at home: Is the myth of the full time home worker finally over?
For those of us that have been trying to work from home, while at the same time keeping a glancing eye on our children also doing school from at home, there must have been some questions in the backs of our minds, especially related to the fees we are paying for our children’s education. Regardless of whether our children are …
Australian accounting outsourcing: Is the genie out of the bottle?
We’re already seeing some interesting changes in the Australian medical profession recently. More doctors are doing online consultations, and it’s a new strange world. Are we one step away from allowing foreign doctors handle online consultations. There are already specialists in offshore places analysing x-rays and various reports. How far away are we from a computerised system that can handle …
Australian accounting tax Outsourcing: ” The bitterness of poor quality remains long after the sweetness of low price is forgotten”
More than ever Australian accounting firms are looking at utilizing offshore resources to assist with their compliance work, and in this unsure age where the SME client numbers are unstable, more Australian accounting firm owners are looking to ad-hoc resource suppliers, just in case the workload increases significantly beyond inhouse capacity. At the same time, the complexity of the recent …
Australian tax specialists: Remote learning options coming to the fore
With many Australian accountants being under restricted movements, the requirements for professional learning haven’t ceased. At the same time, with social distancing rules in place across much of Australia, the bottom has fallen out of physical conferences, as well as the opportunity for many suppliers to get their services or products in front of Australian accountants. Hence there is a …
Australian accountants: Are you working as best as you can in remote mode?
We’re seeing and hearing from our clients that some of them have been taken by surprise by the recent and quick move to lock down in Australia. Despite providing pretty much the same compliance services to the public, remote work for firms has been a huge range from “not a problem” to “very difficult”. For more progressive firm owners who …
Accounting Compliance firms valuation drops in the face of SME closures
I was speaking to an accountant who has a business assisting accounting firms get their practices ready for sale, usually when they are retiring. He assists both buyers and sellers. Basically the premise of valuation of an accounting firm is a multiple of the annual revenue, with individual returns having a lower multiple than other “stickier” clients. There’s a lot …
