Twyla Verhelst, the leader of the FreshBooks Accounting Partner Program, talks about how firms can leverage new technologies to improve their client experience.
Transcription:
Dan Hood: (
Welcome to On the Air with Accounting Today, I'm editor-in-chief Dan Hood. You know, it's something of a common place these days to say that all businesses are technology businesses in one way or another, but figuring out exactly how you should be a tech business when you're not actually a tech business can be pretty difficult. And this is as true for accounting firms as for any other type of business, and it's just as pressing a question for them. Here to help us figure it all out and talk more about this subject is Twyla Verhelst. She's a CPA and the head of the accountant channel at FreshBooks. Twyla, thanks for joining us.
Twyla Verhelst: (
Thanks Dan. It's a real pleasure to be here.
Dan Hood: (
Looking forward to the discussion. Let's dive in — I want to talk about first how accountants should be looking at the role of technology in their firms.
Twyla Verhelst: (
Yeah, I think this is such a hot topic. We know that technology is a big piece of everyone's firm these days, as you mentioned in your opening, but how you use it is changing and evolving. And I think the last two years, I like to say that every accountant got a buy or a free pass in terms of how they utilize technology, you needed it for efficiencies and just getting the work done. But I think that there's more that we can pull out of technology to advance our firms and to advance our clients and create a client experience and, and create a more human relationship, offer more services, and really, really change up how we work with clients that I think that there's still work that we can do to really leverage how we use that technology inside of our firms.
Dan Hood: (
Gotcha. You're certainly right. I mean, I think a lot of people, except for the last two years gotta buy. If you could get the technology in place, it didn't matter how you used it as long as you had it, as long as you can actually get the work done. And I think, uh, right, you look around at a lot of firms and they, they have, um, systems in place that they're probably not utilizing the technology the way they should, or they're not approaching it in as thoughtful or progressive a manner as they should. And I maybe wanna dive into that. What should, uh, uh, leaving aside the mess that we made, trying to just, just get through the pandemic or get to this point in the pandemic. What do you, what should firms be looking with if we wanna be progressive about their technology, what does that approach to technology look like for accounting firms?
Twyla Verhelst: (
You know, I think it varies from firm to firm. And one of the things that I think that we have this moment now, uh, inside of the profession is to really almost reconcile or, or reset on what our firm is going to look like going forward. Because as we talked about the last few years, not only did people get a free pass, there was the brink of exhaustion and burnout and, and people that have come out the other side and said, I don't know what I wanna do for the next 10 years, but it sure as heck isn't like that. . And so, uh, create this space to be able to figure out intentionally, what do you want your firm to look like for the next 10, 20, 20 years until you retire or until you sell and to then, then recognize where does technology fit into that?
Twyla Verhelst: (
So whether that's a firm that's gonna double down on a particular niche or a particular industry that they wanna focus on with their clients, or that's a particular service that you're gonna do more of, whether that's more tax, less tax, more advisory. And certainly I can use air quotes with advisory, cuz it's a word that we're all a little tired of hearing, but nonetheless, you could do more of that sort of a cast type service offering versus, um, more traditional. Do you still wanna do bookkeeping? Do you wanna start doing bookkeeping? And so there's all these different ways that we can recreate a firm and that you can build a firm intentionally. And then that unlocks, where does technology fit into that? How do you best use technology to support that sort of an offering those types of clients, the team that you're gonna build to support that vision that you create for the intentional firm. And that, that does look different based off of a tax focus firm versus a cast firm based off of the vertical of, of, uh, clients that are in eCommerce versus the vertical of clients that are professional services. There's different plays that technology, uh, has in, in, in all of those different types of scenarios.
Dan Hood: (
Gotcha. Are there any commonalities sort of at a baseline of your, any accounting firm, whatever you're doing, obviously you said if you're working in cash, you're looking at very differently, your tech stack and very much thinking much more about your tech stack than you may be if you're in tax or, uh, some of those other. So that certainly makes sense that it would be, uh, dependent on, on the type of practice you wanna run, but are there any sort of commonalities of approach or thought that the firm should be adopting regardless of what they're doing?
Twyla Verhelst: (
I think one is obviously efficiencies. That's where I think we've leaned into technology in the past is to gain efficiencies with doing the work. And, uh, sadly, unfortunately I'm old enough to say that I know what it looked like when we didn't have the technology that we have now and what it even looked like to use the green ledger paper to reconcile a bank and the efficiencies that came along the way. So I think, um, that was kind of fun and, and satisfying to reconcile a bank on a green piece of paper, but it, it wasn't as efficient as doing it inside the technology. Uh, and so I think that that's, that's obviously the number one that I think is still important, but I think there's also, uh, two more things that I think that we need to, to kind of encourage or inspire others to look at with the tech one is the client to experience.
Twyla Verhelst: (
So when we've created these efficiencies and built these tech stacks, have we set the client up for success in that workflow and in utilizing that technology? And I think that there's been some, some, uh, unintentional oversight, uh, that we've sometimes, you know, said this was what works for our team and, and creates efficiencies for, for my, myself and the team and, and the back end. But what does that do for the client and does that then impact your ability to even upsell and give them client advisory services or client to accounting services? Because you've actually ed the relationship, cuz you've put this technology in front of them that they're not really loving using and maybe not even using accurately. So I think there's that piece. The other thing I think that, that we're gonna start to see, and, and I've been talking to some professionals about, is how to use technology to almost change up the types of people that you need on your team in order to deliver the services.
Twyla Verhelst: (
We know that that new students coming into the profession and newly minted CPAs are not at the, the same numbers that they used to be. So is there an opportunity to be really creative with the tech, the workflows, and then the types of folks that we hire inside of a firm to still offer the services that we all wanna evolve and continue to offer for small businesses that don't require the same number of people coming into the firm that have this really strong technical knowledge. So I think that there's something inside of the technology that we could be leveraging in that way. And that that's an exploration of being creative. It's an exploration of, of the tech stack, maybe getting rattled up compared to what we've had previously and also then looking at at how we can move people around inside of the firm so that the technical people were really leaning into their expertise, uh, versus those who don't necessarily have that same sort of level of expertise that they, they can still be a part of the team and a part of the firm and help with the workflow and the deliverables for the clients.
Dan Hood: (
That's a, I wanna, I wanna talk, uh, a lot more about, um, the impact with staff and, and employees and, and also with clients as well. But, uh, before we do that, there was, you talked about the, uh, haven't worked with green ledge paper and the 11 column paper or 13 column paper and all that sort of stuff. And there's a, there is a, there's a sort of a, a theory going around. Um, I dunno if it's a factor or theory what, but anyways, I've heard it said that sort of the last 30 years of technology and accounting have been taking what accountants used to do on paper and digitizing it like reproducing, it sort of dig. I, this is a very broad oversimplification of the advance of technology over 30 years, but, but I think there's some truth to it to say, you know, that was what we did was we took all these things we used to do on paper and we put 'em on computers and, and of late, we're starting to move away from that and move to more like creating new things based on what the technology can do as opposed to recreating what paper could do.
Dan Hood: (
One, I, I wanna get your take on that sort of general assessment of the progress of, I know it's, it is, there's all kinds of exceptions to it, but at that theory, uh, and also what you think the next, you know, what the future of technology and accounting is gonna be like, assuming that holds or if it doesn't hold what you think will, uh, will actually take place.
Twyla Verhelst: (
That's a really fair assumption to say, or a fair philosophy or theory around it's technologies took what we did manually and digitized it. I, I think there's certainly elements of that. Absolutely. Because at the end of the day, you still need the, the debits and the credits and the transactions in there in order to have the foundational information, to be able to work from whether that's tax or compliance or that's cash. Uh, but I think there's also, you know, you can't, you can't say that the last 30 years has been really linear. I think if you, if you chunked it to say, okay, of, of the last 30, uh, the, the most, most recent 10 looked very different than the prior 20. Sorry. So the prior 20, we were much slower with this uptick of technology and what the technology could do, and even thinking about desktop versus cloud versus, you know, now we've got tech stacks that actually run our firms, uh, or that we run our firms on that, that, that evolution was significantly, uh, more efficient and more effective the last 10 years relative to the 20 prior to that.
Twyla Verhelst: (
True. So I think, I think that it's gone beyond digitizing what we did manually. Uh, I think that there is efficiency gains, even, even if, even if that was the only thing that changed it's now, instead of being on the green ledgers, it's in the cloud, that we can all access. There's still efficiency in that. And there's still the, the transfer of data and the real time data living in one place that's created opportunity. But nonetheless, I also think that, um, that it's also UN unlocked some opportunity to do more for each client. And that's the, that's the trajectory we're on now is okay. It was slow to get here, call it 30 years. Uh, but then now what do we do with where we're going next, where technology is just more powerful. I mean, these things alone, I'm holding up my phone, like this is, this is just an example of how powerful the technology has become versus 30 years ago.
Twyla Verhelst: (
I don't know, but yeah, I didn't have a cell phone. Um, and so, you know, we, and certainly when I did it did not do what our cell phones do today. So we're on a more rapid pace with the technology, which pulls in things like machine learning pulls in things like automations that, that we didn't have before. Things like RPA. So robotic processing automations, like it's even going steps further. Now we're just sort of tipping the iceberg of how we're really gonna leverage that. But I think fundamentally accounting is still accounting. Compliance is still compliance. And so it's still, you know, using that same base of, of data and information, still those same sorts of deliverables tax returns still need to be filed, but it's what we can do with that, that we couldn't do with it before in a more efficient and effective way.
Twyla Verhelst: (
That truly makes it more affordable to more folks. Like when we started to do advisory outside of our firm, before we went fully to the cloud, we could only do it for those who had the budget to afford us to do it with the inefficiencies that it took to get there. Versus once we had cloud technology and we had a tech stack, we unlocked on advisory for firms that were years away from having a controller or CFO on staff. That's a big impact. And so I think that that will continue with this trajectory of now no longer it being a okay, we just needed the table stakes, digitizing what we did manually. I think, I think we're going far beyond that now.
Dan Hood: (
Very cool. Very exciting. It's exciting times. I wanna talk more about, uh, like I said, about the impact on clients and what, what are, what are, what accounting firms can do for clients with the new technology and also how, what they can do with the staff as well. But we're gonna take a quick break. All right. And we're back with trying for healths of fresh books talking about, uh, how technology is gonna be changing, everything in accounting. We've covered it all. No, there's, there's still more to talk about. Um, but we, we, we were talking about that sort of that ongoing shift, uh, in the approach technology and, and the ways in which firms can get more progressive in bringing technology in their firms. And I mentioned that I'd wanna talk more, cause you've mentioned a number of times the impact on clients or the potential impact on clients and what it will allow accountants to do for clients. So maybe we'll start there. And then I like to talk a little bit about what it might mean, what it might mean for staff or what this approach to technology might mean for staff. Why don't we talk, talk with clients? Cause you said the technology is, uh, unleashing a lot of potential opportunities for accounts to serve clients better, more efficiently, more effectively. Maybe we talked a little bit about that. What kind of opportunities you're seeing there.
Twyla Verhelst: (
Yeah, sure. And, and there's no doubt about it, even though I know that we're all a little bit tired of the word advisory. I mean, I it's, it's still a, a, a passion that I have around the service offerings that we provide as accounting professionals, because I think advisory takes this really, uh, uh, unique and expert unique role and expert role. And when I say unique, it's like account accounting professionals are extremely intelligent. They know so much that there's often been this disconnect between almost how much they know, but how much they're really giving to the client. And that I think that advisory starts to, you know, kind of create this path between all of that knowledge and expertise and then distilling it down to what a business owner can really understand and digest and use in their day to day business. So I certainly have a passion around advisor.
Twyla Verhelst: (
So, uh, you know, it's something that, that we had in our firm that was a big part of the, the offering and something that I think has been really a big impact or created a big impact for, for, for small businesses. I mean, part of the advisory piece that that gets me so excited is I grew up inside of an entrepreneurial home. I saw my parents go to their tax professional every year at the end of the year. And my mom struggled with the big green ledger books every, every week and every month to kind of go like doting the, the, the dotted line that took her from that to then the tax professional that kind of gave him that here's what your tax bill is. Here's my bill at the same time. And didn't really help her day to day with what should I be doing?
Twyla Verhelst: (
Should I be, you know, buying or leasing? Should I, is it time to hire another employer or not yet? And that, that was the, the entrepreneurial life that I saw her having that when I decided to become an accountant, I thought I don't, I, I don't want that for, for entrepreneurs. I think that we can, we can do something different for them. So started sort of on this advisory path before it was really called advisory. And I think that the technology unlocks that advisory. And I think that there's additional ways that we can do that, uh, on top of what I've even shared so far around really working in close collaboration with our clients. Cause right now I feel like we either don't give them that at all. Cuz that's the engagement or the, the relationship that they've got with their financial or, or accounting professional or that we say I'll take everything and I'll take everything has often been the model, the outsource model that, you know, to be honest, I I've done that model where I almost get my clients so detached from it that then it's great that there's a really sticky client for us, but yet it also can create a client who's almost too detached from the information.
Twyla Verhelst: (
And then isn't financially and, and accounting savvy to be able to make real time decisions and as to have really deep conversations and, and rich conversations around how does this operationally affect your business? What else could we do to change this metric? These margins are changing. Why is that? Instead? It, it wasn't quite as deep as, as perhaps it could have been if I had kept them still involved with the finances in one way or another. And it's, it's, it's not comforting also for it's comforting for a business owner to say, please take care of it, but it's also can create some stress and anxiety around now. I don't really know where anything's at. And so I see this, what we, we call here at we call the collaborative accounting model where you still have your client do some piece of that workflow. So there's still in touch with some of the financials day to day, but that you kind of pick up where their knowledge and their, their skillset leaves off in terms of supporting the, the workflow that gets you to that real time data and, and allows you to then offer that advisory.
Twyla Verhelst: (
So you don't expect them to reconcile the bank, but you also don't say don't do anything other than take a picture of your receipts with your phone. Like that's, that's a little too detached relative to what I think an ideal state can be now. Not every client's there, but I think that there's something there that's worth exploring. Now that we're kind of about the other side of this pandemic around again, what is a great client experience look like? How does technology fit into that and how do you create this long lasting relationship with your clients and build a referral source? Uh, they're going to refer other clients to you that enjoy this type of a relationship that you have with them and that it kind of becomes your marketing engine within your firm.
Dan Hood: (
Right? Right. Well, it is interesting. You know, when you talk about that, the clients are desperate, would love to get rid of it. I don't wanna handle it. I don't wanna handle payroll. I don't wanna handle bookkeeping. I don't handle taxes. Um, but by doing that, if they cut themselves off from other, or if the account allows them to be cut off from it, as you say, they lose access to all the insights. Now they weren't able to get the insights themselves. That's what the accountant needs to bring to the table. But, um, some of that's a storytelling issue, which is really a tech issue, but some of it's, uh, you know, the, the, the proliferation of dashboards these days, for instance, is a great example of technology, helping accountants tell the story back, say, listen, I know you hate the data, but look at these numbers, this tells you actual things about, you know, how fast you're literally how fast you're going, uh, in many ways, or, you know, how much gas you've got left, that kind of thing. If you set up the dashboard, right? So there's definitely a huge potential for technology to, uh, to, to support that sort of advisory role, you know, finding that right balance. Then it'll be a different balance, I suppose, for every client between how much they wanna be involved and how much they're willing to give up and how much, uh, you know, at what level they can get the most out of it from the relationship and from the numbers, that's gonna change from client to client, I imagine.
Twyla Verhelst: (
Yeah, absolutely. And that's really the getting to know your client from day one where you, you know, I always, I always talk about the, the, getting to know your client phase, looking like, what, why did you start this? what, where are you going in the next year? Where are you going in the next five years? Is there an exit strategy that you have in mind? And then my favorite question has always been what keeps you up at night? Like, what's your biggest stressor because gosh, we know that being an entrepreneur is stressful. And often that comes down to something that has a dollar sign attached to it that you can alleviate for them. But yet at the same time, you know, to at least have their, let them still have their finger on the pulse in some way, whether that's assisting with estimates and proposals, whether that's assisting with the invoicing that they kind of just have this temperature gauge around, like, geez, it's the 16th of the month.
Twyla Verhelst: (
And I've only sent out one invoice so far, uh, versus, you know, when they're detached from that entirely, they kind of lose sight of it. And then as you mentioned, dashboards, dashboards can be very digestible pieces of information that, you know, whether it's somebody who's really creative or somebody who gets overwhelmed by financial statements or spreadsheets, that dashboards can be a visual that's digestible. And every client's different with what matters to them where they're gonna see the value in what you're providing, how they want to get that information and what it is that keeps them up at night that you can alleviate to, to fill that void and, and kind of have what I'd almost call like the quick win. What's the quick win of how you're gonna solve something for them or, or support them. That just deepens that relationship really early in, in the journey with them.
Dan Hood: (
Gotcha. Excellent. All right. That's a, there's a lot of value for the client there. Um, accountants, accountants work that out and figure out how to bring the value. I wanna talk sort of flip it around a little bit, because I think you talked to a lot of firms. Many of them will say clients, we got plenty of clients got too much work, lots of clients. Yes, we can serve them better and we wanna serve them better and bring more value. But I got plenty of, whereas staff, I don't have anywhere near enough staff. We talk to firms all the time that are saying, you know, just can't hire enough. Can't find anybody to do the work we're turning away work cuz we don't have the people. Is there a role for technology in, uh, finding and keeping and nurturing sort of the next generation of accounting talent? Do you think?
Twyla Verhelst: (
I, I think that there is, I think that's again looking at, at how you've structured your firm in terms of, do you have roles of where people are, are really serve that role? Well, if they were more of a technologist versus an accountant, I also think that as we split up workflows that we can't say that with certainty, that we've said somebody with technical expertise is not gonna do anything that they shouldn't be doing. Like if you think of the philosophy of like, I shouldn't touch things that I shouldn't be doing, like where is my time best spent? Usually we think about this as a manager, but we don't always think about it at all tiers of our firm to say, do we have somebody who's a designated accountant? That's actually going back to the client to say, Hey, could you upload X, Y, Z documents so that I can reconcile and provide you with your bank statement or your, uh, financial statements.
Twyla Verhelst: (
So I think that there's ways to get creative in there that you could start to kind of get people into the firm that don't have that same level of expertise. Yet. You could also have people that are technology focused. You could have people that are client experience focused. I mean, there's, there's reason to believe that that in some cases, if we're the introverted accountants, we might not be always the one who's delivering the best client experience because of reasons that our personality don't align with or leaders, uh, accountants aren't taught to how to be leaders. And so is the team lead of your bookkeeping team or your accounting team? Is that the right team leader, is that the person who is here the longest that it made the most sense for that person to lead the team, but we really haven't supported them in their leadership skills.
Twyla Verhelst: (
And so not only does that impact the entire team it's underneath them, it impacts the person who's trying to be a leader. And it's kind of feeling like they're drowning, which can lead to things like burnout, dissatisfaction, et cetera. And one of my favorite uses of technology that I've heard most recently is that instead of us looking at the tech to say, how much more efficient can we get so that we can do more for each client or have more clients instead, how much more efficient can we get so that I can give some of my team their life back. Yeah. Like give them some work life balance, or let them work on a project that they feel really matters to them. And is it impact project that is very important to some of these newer team members that are coming into these, these firms work life balance. What's the impact I have. And it, you can use some of that efficiency gain to give them some of that time back to go hiking with their, with their loved ones or to have a different side project that makes them feel like they're contributing in a different way or contributing to environment or other sort of social issues that we didn't have space for before.
Dan Hood: (
Right. I think that's probably important to, for, for every firm leader out there to remember that, uh, just because you get more efficient doesn't mean that you've just freed up your staff to do more work necessarily. You might have freed 'em up, cuz you said, uh, to live their life or to get some balance or to, to, to recover from cuz it has been the last three years, accounting is always very, very, very, you know, stressful and there's a lot of work and there's a lot of workload compression. The last three years have just blown that off the chart. So, uh, anything they can do to, uh, let people get some rest, let people get some rec uh, some recuperation is probably a good idea. All right, Twyla Verhelst, thank you so much. It's been a great conversation, a lot, a lot of interesting thoughts about, uh, technology it's role in the future of accounting firms, how they need to be thinking about it, how they need to be approaching in terms of, uh, themselves, their staff and their clients. Good stuff. Thank you very much. Thanks Dan. My pleasure. Thank you all for listening. This episode of on the air was produced by Accounting Today. Remember to review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accountingtoday.com. Thanks again to our guest and thank you for listening.