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Wave Accounting Plans Online Accountant Listings

Online accounting software provider Wave Accounting plans to soon offer a listing of local accountants and bookkeepers on its Web site for small businesses to consult for help.

The company specializes in offering software to small businesses of nine employees or less. Approximately 65 percent of its customers are self-employed, according to Wave Accounting president and CEO Kirk Simpson. He believes his user base could benefit from professional advice, especially from small firms and sole practitioners.

“Very soon you will see a Wave pro listing on our site where our users can find accountants and bookkeepers who use Wave in their geography,” he said last Thursday. “If they don’t have an accountant or bookkeeper already, they can find somebody who will work with them. We already have close to 1,000 accountants and bookkeepers in our pro network.”

The majority of the professionals in Wave’s network are either sole practitioners or in smaller firms, who are accustomed to dealing with small business clients.

“What’s interesting for that group is that the guys who are in the smaller end of the market have typically been very low-margin clients for accountants and bookkeepers, because so much of their time has been in organizing and making sense of this mess of receipts and spreadsheets that are sent to them,” said Simpson. “The nice thing is there is this great value proposition for them, which is to help get their customers set up on Wave, allow them to stay on top of their books and feel more in control of their business through the year. Then when it’s tax time you can increase your margins because businesses are better prepared and you’re doing less manual entry and cleanup, and doing more consultation.”

The software automatically bring in transactions on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis and categorizes them for so a small businesses owner doesn’t have to try to remember months later if an expense was business or personal. The transaction can then be deducted by a qualified accountant advising the business on the right thing to do at tax time and throughout the year.

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