Tips For Adding Business Advisory Services To Your Tax Planning And Prep Office

As a company that offers commercial tax planning and preparation, it's a natural transition to add business advisory services as well. Offering business advisory services can be a seamless extension of your services since business advisory includes assessing financial, tax, legal, and current market factors that could affect an expansion or change in a company's operation. Here's what you need to know about some of the struggles you may have and some tips to overcome them when you start offering business advisory services to your tax planning and preparation clients.

No Cloud Access To Data

Since tax planning and preparation is often done with simple statistical reports, you don't always have cloud access to all of the operational data that you need for effective business advisory services. You will need to work with your clients to transition their operational records to a cloud-based platform that allows you to manipulate the data, generate reports, and build forecasts.

This doesn't necessarily mean that the clients themselves have to transition to an all-new platform. You can always work with an advisory platform that allows you to import records from other operational databases. In those situations, your clients can simply send you data exports monthly for you to import into your advisory platform.

You Lack Advisory Specialists

Adding business advisory services can be a major transition, especially when you have an operation that's essentially built up of accountants. Financial analysts can more easily make the transition and add the skillset necessary for business advisory services, but junior accountants and similar staff will need far more training.

You can always start small and work the advisory services yourself if you have a small business. This can give you the time you need to train more of your staff so that they are ready to pitch in and take on accounts as your advisory services grow beyond your personal means.

You Service Clients In Many Industries

When your clients work across a variety of industries, offering business advisory services takes on a unique challenge. For example, in order to provide business advisory services, you need to have some understanding of the performance indicators relevant to each of those industries. However, it is not feasible to expect yourself to be an expert in all of those industries.

You can lean on your staff for their expertise if you want to offer clients services from someone well-versed in their industry, but this isn't necessary. As long as you have an understanding of the performance metrics that need to be measured and the key industry risks, you can offer advisory services for most any industry.