Click here to acknowledge that you have read our terms and conditions.
Everyone, it seems, gets to set terms and conditions for accountants these days — and not just software vendors, though they do their fair share of imposing rules on how you access and use the tools you're paying for, and how they access and use the data you're entrusting to them. Regulators and government agencies determine large portions of your schedule, and dictate much of the terms of the interaction. And clients, of course, have always tried to control things, asking you to deliver your services the way they want, and expecting immediate answers whenever they have a question.
Nowadays, even your employees are trying to set the ground rules, expecting schedules that fit their needs and the right to dress however they want and work wherever they want. Worse yet, the very history of the profession tries to tie you down: "This is how we've always done it" and SALY are just different ways of telling you to abide by someone else's T&C.
I began thinking about this because of a recent Accounting Today podcast, in which accounting technology expert Seth Fineberg suggested that accountants rethink their relationships with software vendors — primarily in the form of closer collaboration, but also in terms of saying, "OK, we've seen your terms and conditions; now here are ours."
The fact is that there is more than one place where accountants and accounting firms can start setting their own terms. Not, perhaps, with FASB or the IRS or the PCAOB; rather, start is with your clients. Demand for your services is so high that bold firms can set service expectations that are professional and yet free yourself from being constantly at the client's beck and call. You can also be more confident in your billing, and in picking which clients you want to work with. And if you have a CAS practice, you can probably dictate both the accounting software your clients use and many of their processes. Once you've done that, setting a nonnegotiable deadline for clients to deliver tax documents will seem easy.
Clients are the natural place to start, but impossible as it may seem, you can even set some terms for your staff, by establishing clear expectations of what you need from them when they work remotely, for instance, and what they need to accomplish to advance at your firm.
But perhaps the most important place to start setting your own terms is in your own head. The possibilities available to you in your firm and your career need no longer be limited by what went before, or how it's always been, or the traditional models of the profession.
We stand on the threshold of an era of ever-greater change, when new models and new standards and new terms and conditions will be set and reset on an almost-daily basis — and if you don't set your own terms, you're sure to find yourself bound by someone else's.
