Are you ready to take your firm to the next level? Are you sick and tired of refocusing your energy from one industry to another? Are you ready to get paid your worth? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you need to consider a niche for your firm.
A niche firm focuses on an industry, demographic or histographic to serve. The more you focus on your niche, the more work evolves, helping you to gain credibility and reach new clients. Certainly, to make your niche successful, you need some industry specific software to accompany you on your domination. Industry specific software will allow the business owner to feel comfortable in running their business. Owners love when software speaks their language, and I always tell my clients, “Let us handle the debits and credits.”
At Small Batch Standard, we work with brewery owners to streamline their accounting process. Here is the #RecipeForSuccess that we use to dominate the Craft Brewing industry.
What is a #RecipeforSuccess? It’s a campaign that provides key ingredients and steps for accounting pros and their small business clients to achieve success. Search “recipe” on this site for similar articles.
Master Chef: Chris Farmand
Key Ingredients:
- QuickBooks®Online
- EKOS Brewmaster
- Bill.com
- Expense reporting software (i.e. Expensify and Concur)
Steps:
Step 1: Define how the work gets done. Understand the connectivity between the platforms. Determine what tasks you will assign to the customer and what your office will do. For our situation, we can serve breweries all over the country only if they are diligent with EKOS, a brewery management software. We handle the rest, including Bill.com, reconciliation and closing the books.
Step 2: Be able to troubleshoot any question that may arise. Most of our success comes from the fact that we know just about everything there is to know about each piece of software. I require my staff to be very familiar with each software piece. If you are lacking in this area, find the youngest staff member at the firm and crown them the champion of the software stack. They need to become intimate with each program so that they can teach others in the firm and troubleshoot for clients.
Step 3: Earn leads by sharing best practices about back office process. Who better to explain process than a CPA who understands an industry specific software? When you decide to niche, you will harbor a ton of industry knowledge, and if you can apply that knowledge to help earn the client’s trust and business, it’s a double win.
Step 4: Make your life easier with Bill.com. Regardless of the niche you choose, Bill.com should be part of your arsenal. Bill.com is our eyes and ears on the ground for all the breweries we work with. Everything is scanned into Bill.com, and our team routes the paperwork from there.
Step 5: Take advantage of an expense tracking app. Expense tracking is a big deal in the brewery industry. So, in this case, we rely on expense tracking software, such as Expensify or Concur, to get the correct monthly reports and copies of the receipts to our team.
Once you have all the software pieces in place, the owner is free to develop their craft and leave the accounting and reporting to the professionals – us.
