Streamline An Accounting Practice: Family Office Partnerships

Most accountants know the best way to streamline an accounting practice is to successfully apply technology. But an often-overlooked aspect of streamlining an accounting practice is becoming more strategic about partnerships. So, this post will describe how working with a family office can help streamline an accounting practice and refocus on higher value clients.

Managing records, bookkeeping, and reporting can be daunting (and annoying) tasks for many accountants. Especially those focusing on compliance for individual taxpayers, professionals, and business owners. However, the right partners can transform these challenges into opportunities.

Our family office works with wealthy investors and foundations. We’ve successfully applied software and AI to streamline our own business. So here, we share our best practices for documentation, bookkeeping, and reporting to help streamline an accounting practice.

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Streamline Your Documentation Process

Effective documentation is the foundation of a successful family office. We collaborate closely with our client’s bankers and investment advisors to receive monthly statements and a flow of data in standard formats we can plug into our software.

• For bankers, we typically work with our clients’ private bankers to obtain delegated view-only access to their accounts (dashboards).
• Similarly, with brokerages, we receive monthly statements and raw data via email or portal from our client’s advisor teams and custodians.

This access allows us to download transactions and monthly statements, which we then save to a shared folder, such as Google Drive. We may share this with the client’s other advisors.

This results in a neatly organized system of up-to-date statements for all accounts. Without the hassle of chasing clients to obtain their records.

Enhance Bookkeeping Efficiency

Our team ensures that software clients use for bookkeeping such as QuickBooks, Sage, and Xero are always accurate and up to date.

When tax season arrives, our clients and their accountants have immediate access to organized trial balances, general ledgers, and financial statements or data. So, they can directly plug it into their own software to prepare returns.

We provide all supporting documentation, including statements (already saved to shared folders or uploaded to accounting drives) and T-slips as they become available.

Our year-round commitment to up-to-date and organized bookkeeping practically eliminates the rush and stress typically associated with tax time.

Improve Reporting Processes

Our family office uses Addepar to generate customized financial reports for our clients. These reports cater to the specific needs of wealthy investors, charitable foundations, and their advisors.

Reports incorporate all investments and holdings including bank accounts, stocks, bonds, investment funds, private equity, real estate, mortgages, impact investments, family loans, and charitable foundations into consolidated reports showing performance and tax info.

Our reports are accessible to clients and their advisors in the form of monthly, quarterly, or annual PDF statements or on demand via our online portal.

Data is updated on an end-of-day basis, ensuring valuations are accurate and current based on daily closing prices.

PDF statements and real-time portals are customized for each user (client, family, trustees, committee members, accountants, investment advisors, etc) to show the financial metrics in formats each user desires.

Transforming Client Relationships

By leveraging our expertise in documentation, bookkeeping, and reporting, we transform an accountant’s “worst clients into their best clients.”

Our sophisticated approach ensures that financial data is organized, accessible, and up-to-date. Plus, we provide data in whatever format our client’s accountants prefer. So, they can add it quickly to their own software. This makes it easy for the accountants we work with to fulfill their compliance duties.

Streamline An Accounting Practice

Streamlining compliance processes can significantly enhance the profitability and growth potential of an accounting practice. By partnering with a family office like ours, accountants can offload the time-consuming tasks of documentation, bookkeeping, and reporting to our team. This allows accountants we partner with to focus on more profitable, higher-value clients and services.

Deeper engagement with higher value clients enables the accountants we work with to provide additional tailored, value-added advice that goes beyond standard compliance services.

Grow Your Practice with High-Value Clients

Aligning your accounting practice with a family office opens up new opportunities for growth. At our family office, we understand the complexities and nuances of managing significant wealth. Our expertise in this area ensures that all financial records are meticulously maintained and up-to-date. Providing a solid foundation to attract new clients who have a desire for advanced tax advice and wealth management.

Streamline An Accounting Practice to Focus on Value-Added Services

With the administrative burden of compliance lifted, accountants can redirect their efforts towards delivering value-added services. This shift not only enhances client satisfaction but also positions the practice for more profitable growth.

Plus, fees for value added advice are spread during the entire year instead of being concentrated into each tax season.

Final Thoughts on Streamlining Your Accounting Practice

We hope we have convinced you of the immense accounting benefits that arise from partnering with family offices. If you’re an accountant who wants to streamline your accounting practice to focus on wealthy investors, we invite you to contact us. Learn more about the partnerships our family office has developed. Our support goes far beyond compliance and extends into working on business development so that we can grow together. Contact us to learn more.

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