[Article] PCG 2021/4 – Recent changes to the Allocation of Professional Firm Profits

Accountants start every year with a big opportunity—to build their practice with better tools. Every year you have a big list of practice improvements you’d like to get to—but never do.

It could be document templates—you have a few, but don’t have the power of an integrated template system to supercharge your practice. That’s leaving aside whether your templates are industry best practice—or even up to date.

It could be workpapers—you’re rolling forward the ones used last year, and never finding time to better present accounts. That’s a risk you take into each year—because without standardised and best practice workpapers, any initial audit can get very deep—very fast.

It could be onboarding systems—you actually end up nervous about winning new clients, because of the frightening setup time on ethical clearance, registries and software onboarding. That’s a serious problem in your business—you’re absorbing big setup costs with zero support.

Whichever of these you’re stuck on, it’s costing you money and time. It’s opening up your practice to serious risk—and brutal opportunity cost.

It matters to you—because it undercuts the year’s hard work ahead. It matters to us—because we’re on a mission to make you more profitable and productive.

Every year we build on our ‘accounting-first’ software to help more accountants.

This year, we’re letting you know how CorePRO can build improvements into your accounting firm DNA.

Engagement Matters

Too many accountants are undervalued by clients—and bear the brunt of the anger of clients with no real idea of the work done or value created by their accountant.

It’s often about scope—and that nearly always stems from engagement letters and processes that leave too much off the table.

The 40+ services descriptions of CorePRO not only automate your engagement letters—they put them in a different league in terms of professional protection. No more scope creep, no more ambiguity. Just clients very clear on what they’re paying for—and what they’re not.

It’s a foundation for pricing for the value you create—and using ChangeGPS over time, you open a new world of pricing and billing that takes the pain out of practice growth.

Communication Matters

Client education is too often lost between the cracks of day to day correspondence. Clients will pay for advice, but it needs to be written down for them to stay clear enough to value it.

Without letters that educate and explain value, there’s pressure on your team to take ‘5-min’ calls that make services clear—which strains the relationship and eats into productive time.

It also puts pressure on the annual meeting—where conversation explaining the basics of work done and billing can put any accountant on the back foot and make a job well done seem like a job barely appreciated.

That’s why CorePRO features 150 pre-written and fully customisable cover letters. So any document you send to your client as a matter of course—from activity statements and notices of assessments all the way through to jury duty requests for exemption—becomes a touchpoint that educates and impresses your clients.

With 150 cover letters on hand—all integrated into a PDF editor and use of digital signatures—your clients get the ‘big firm’ treatment without you paying big firm admin fees. Your time with better educated clients can be spent on proactive conversations—including about new services.

Workpapers Matter

Workpapers are the backbone of frontline accounting—and we’re proud of the back-end grunt work we’ve designed into CorePRO. We’ve included accounts and tax return workpapers for businesses, individuals, and super funds—and then made 40 workpapers across those categories to cover everything you could need.

Our ‘accounting-first’ approach means we’ve kept the technology simple and editable here—with spreadsheets giving you full control to customise and make the workpapers your own.

We believe that too much automation can be more bells and whistles than bread and butter—and that too much automation can lock in a practice or workflow that keeps your own style and insight off the field right when it’s needed most.

Make this Financial Year Matter

For new firms, ChangeGPS can accelerate development by up to 3 years, essentially leapfrogging your practice into a level of maturity that’s usually obtained after some very hard slog. The difference is, you’ll never have to re-invent wheels, because you'll start with the ones stress-tested by decades of best practice.

For firms under pressure—COVID dialled up the pressure on all our businesses, and the case for standardisation has never been stronger. ChangeGPS helps you get standardisation off the wishlist and into the ‘job done’ column in a few simple steps—and that's just the start.

For firms who’ve been burnt before by software vendors—we get it. In fact ChangeGPS was born from similar frustration—that’s why our unique ‘accounting-first’ approach puts the tech cart behind the practice horse.

Every year is reset—a chance to build a better practice on better foundations.

With ChangeGPS those foundations are built for you.

It’s as simple as using them.

Book a demo today — and let ChangeGPS help you have a financial year that matters.