Adrenaline accounting

What do accountants, adrenaline sports, a monk, an Olympic gold medalist, and some of the most beautiful scenery in the world have in common?

They were all part of the annual Proactive Accountants Network conference (PAN) held last week in Queenstown, New Zealand. With ‘Revolution’ as the conference theme, it was certainly that and more.

PAN is an industry-leading coaching network that helps Australian & New Zealand accountants and their clients improve organisation and financial performance through coaching content and technology.

When Hindu priest and former monk Dandapani took to the stage, it became obvious this was not your average accounting conference. Years of spiritual learnings were condensed, translated and applied to business practices.

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Phasing-in value based pricing

Let’s continue where we left off in our last blog post on value-based pricing and go in-depth on how to implement value-based pricing as part of the Moving your practice to the Cloud series. As a reminder, I broke the phasing process down into three: Setup, Implementation, and Follow Through.

Phase 1: Setup

Like any initiative, you need a strategy to succeed. The same applies to value-based pricing. You need to determine what you want to do, how to do it, put safeguards in place and begin the change management process. It all starts with a plan:

Step 1: Be strategic and have an initial plan

• Be informed (e.g. read books like “Pricing on Purpose” from Ron Baker)

• Get guidance from your peers and learn from the actions of others

• Make sure you are comfortable with your sales & marketing skills

The first step is always the hardest one. Where to start? What to do? The best first step is to get educated. Read about it – and if you are reading this blog, you are well on your way. Phone a friend, ask your peers, ask the community. Look at what others have done. There is no need to go the path alone and many have gone down it before you. Learn from their experiences – mistakes and successes.

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Overview of value-based pricing

It’s been a bit of a delay since my last post, but I took the opportunity to experience Xerocon NZ (and New Zealand) first hand. I talked to many accounting professionals who have navigated much of the 10 Steps to the Cloud I have been writing about. It was a amazing experience that reinforced all the research we already put into this.

I hope you’ll join me at Xerocon US this September 5th in San Francisco, so you can get this experience yourself from talking to other forward thinking accounting professionals. You might even want to stay longer to catch the opening days of the America’s Cup Finals. You can leave your details on our Xerocon US page to be contacted when more information is available.

In my previous post we covered the fourth step (“Establishing clear rules of engagement with clients”) in our series on Moving your practice to the Cloud. The fifth step is the process of phasing-in value-based pricing. This is a pretty important step and I have decided to dedicate two posts to go into the detail many have asked for. We’ll talk about it at a high-level in this post and then dive into the implementation steps in a few days.

Pricing methods

Let’s first start off looking at the various types of pricing methods you can deploy in your firm. Here is a list of the common ones:

• Hourly-based billing = Set rate per hour for services
• Cost plus pricing = Cost to perform service + markup
• Fixed pricing = A consistent, set cost for a product or service
• Value billing = Billing on your perceived value of service after completion
• Value pricing = Pricing before service is performed and based on customer perceived value

Value billing and value pricing are not the same as they are done at different times and from different perspectives. Value pricing is done before performing the service and priced based on the customer’s perceived value. While you might provide the same service to two customers, the price paid might be different based on the value it drives.

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Sidekick Unwrapped in Auckland and London

Last November we profiled the two day workshop ‘Sidekick Unwrapped’ created by Dave Jessep from djca and industry expert Viv Brownrigg from The Accountant’s RePublic. We were thrilled to see two of our strongest community leaders come together to provide such huge value for Xero partners.

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Picking up on free Practice Manager

If you’ve been growing your Xero client base to the point where you’re a Silver Partner then you are ready to pick up on the free Practice Manager tools that Xero has to offer. You may be flipping your entire client base to Xero, or perhaps you still need to work with other software on the client side.

Never fear, Xero has a dedicated team and implementation partners (depending where you are in the world) that provide project management, full implementation and data conversion services, and onsite or remote training. To name a few, we are very capable of converting data from systems such as MYOB AO, MYOB AE/Viztopia, APS, Iris, Sage and CCH IFirm. Bespoke conversions are also available as needed.

Practice Manager is available globally and is the core part of the new Practice Studio we announced at Xerocon in February. This will ultimately include Tax, Workpapers, and Reporting in all regions. Tax is available in New Zealand and is in the beginning stages of development for Australia. Workpapers is scheduled for public release in New Zealand and Australia in April and is in closed beta for UK and US. Reporting is available in New Zealand and Australia, with UK next cab off the rank followed by the US.

As we roll out Practice Studio you benefit more and more by avoiding the double dipping and monetizing of the accountant side that the desktop software industry has undertaken for years. Xero is revolutionizing the accounting sector and empowering accountants in the process, lowering costs and freeing up time and energy from an over-emphasis on compliance so you can become closer business advisors to your clients.

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