Operating a dental practice can be demanding and stressful. The public health sector is becoming more and more competitive with stricter industry regulations, constant technological advancements and patients who want more for less. The practices that will thrive are those that have effective financial management and insights to manage and maximise profitability. Technological advances are pushing accountants out of their shell to provide more ‘value adding’ advice and strategies.
IN THE PAST THE FOCUS WAS ON COMPLIANCE
In the past, most dentists engaged their accountant to assist them with compliance. This included preparing and lodging BAS, meeting taxation obligations, record keeping and so on. Whilst it is critical (and valuable) to ensure you comply with all legal requirements, there is a lot of untapped value that accountants can provide. However, the challenge for most accountants is finding the time to meet all these compliance obligations such as preparing financial statements, BAS and tax returns. Consequently, they spend very little time on reviewing that information and providing advice and insights to their clients. It’s akin to spending all your time writing a book but then no one reads it!
TECHNOLOGY HAS INCREASED THE PACE OF CHANGE FOR ALL OF US, ESPECIALLY ACCOUNTANTS
The emergence of cloud accounting software products such as Xero and MYOB Essentials over the past decade have greatly streamlined the whole bookkeeping process. These accounting software packages operate online (no software issues or updates) and automatically download your banking transactions. The system learns how to allocate different types of revenue and expenses and automates the process which saves a lot of time. These systems simplify the payroll function and can integrate with fingerprint time clocks to keep track of part-time and casual staff. As artificial intelligence platforms evolve, these accounting packages will complete more and more accounting processes – probably to the extent where all an accountant has to do is provide a review function.
Satellite businesses have also emerged further enhancing the power of these cloud accounting platforms. Applications such as Hubdoc, for example, make invoice tracking and payments so simple. All you do is provide your supplier with a unique email address which they send invoices to and the accounting system will read it and input all the data. This alleviates the need to file paperwork, deal with emails, manage payments and so on.
ACCOUNTANTS NEED TO HELP YOU BENEFIT FROM THIS TECHNOLOGY
A professional accountant should not fight or avoid these technological advances but embrace them. An important role for accountants is to keep abreast of this fast-changing environment and ensure they introduce you to the technology and tools that will help you streamline your practice management. This will result in two main benefits. Firstly, it will save you a lot of time. For example, the accounting and payroll activities for our practice use to take approximately 15 hours per month. With improved technology, this has reduced to approximately three hours per month. Secondly, you (and your accountant) will have more time to analyse this real-time data and identify business improvement strategies.
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