As heard on the Future-Proof Podcast with Bill Sheridan

ADVANCE PRAISE from TOP PROFESSIONALS

 

This is a must-read for anybody working in CAS or looking to increase the profitability of their firm and currently not performing CAS.

This book highlights challenges as well as the opportunities out there for an entrepreneurial accountant that is willing to embrace change and think outside the box.

While CAS has been around for a  long time, Hitendra presents a fresh vision on this enthralling topic. The roadmap is there; just follow it!

– Wayne Berson, Chief Executive Officer, BDO USA, Chairman, BDO International

 

Though the title says so, this book is not just about CAS. It is about the right way of offering accounting services. 

While the desktop accounting solutions were helpful, they served a limited purpose. The cloud has completely changed the landscape of client accounting.

This book shows in detail how by taking advantage of the latest technologies, you can completely transform your practice in ways never before possible. 

The insights­­ presented in the book will help you add significant value to your clients’ businesses while boosting your bottom line.

– Chandra Bhansali, Co-founder, AccountantsWorld

 

Hitendra has captured everything necessary to start offering client accounting services to clients. And for those already performing these services, it is a complete guide to best practices in managing a CAS niche.

This book is a fantastic resource and includes some of the taboos that are not usually found in such books.  Hitendra explains and shows how to outsource CAS services effectively and, more importantly, provides a very persuasive reason to do so – that it can easily and inexpensively be done and controlled. 

He makes the argument that accounting is not a services profession, but a knowledge profession with services as the mechanism to deliver the benefits of our knowledge. This one premise with his carefully constructed explanations makes this book a winner, even if that was the only thing in it; but it isn’t.

Client value-added services are illustrated and explained, and I find it hard for someone not to get at least one great idea from what he presents on how to better assist clients.  Also included is an entire litany of pricing these services. I hate to mention specifics because this book is much more than what it appears.  It is really a complete guide to managing a niche segment of a busy practice.

I highly recommend this book to be read and absorbed and then used as a reference source thereafter.

– Edward Mendlowitz, CPA, Partner, WithumSmith+Brown PC, Accounting Today’s Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting for several years

 

CAS builds real, new, and more value for both – accounting firms and their CAS clients.

With many different perceptions of what CAS really is, it is great to see this timely and comprehensive book by Hitendra.

Particularly important is his focus on encouraging accountants to deliver actionable CAS outcomes to their clients.

I’d advise accounting firms to leverage the insights from this book to take advantage of the quick-moving opportunities in CAS to move your firm ahead.

– Allan Koltin, CPA, CGMA, CEO, Koltin Consulting Group

 

As I expected, Hitendra has outdone himself when he made this a comprehensive book to cover all necessary aspects of Client Accounting Services.

In my practice, I have been offering CAS to help clients build their businesses.

Hitendra’s ideas, thoughts, and insights have helped my practice over the years, and he has compiled all his ideas in one place for all to take advantage of as I did.

I was pleasantly surprised to find several more insights in this book that I can easily implement in my practice. As I ventured to create Canethics, a Financial Advisory Services Group for cannabis-related enterprises, I found Hitendra’s “CAS Outcomes” theme extremely useful for Canethics as it did for my CPA practice as Focus CPA Group, Inc.

Any professional accountant who wants to be relevant to clients’ businesses will benefit from this latest book by Hitendra. I highly recommend it.

– Amit Chandel, CPA CTS CTP CTC CVA CTRS CExP CGMA LLM (t), Founder, Canethics Inc, and Focus CPA Group Inc

 

 

The objective of every accountant is to make sure that all clients are buying every service that they need that helps them achieve their goals.

What Hitendra has done is laid out a roadmap on exactly how any accountant can do that with Client Accounting Services. It’s a massive opportunity to double – quadruple – the fee per client while providing insane value.

Absolute MUST READ for any accountant who wants to help their clients.

– Rob Nixon, helping accountants for 26 years to become wealthy. Author of four best-selling books, including “The Wealthy Accountant”

 

I am grateful to all accountants who worked tirelessly during the pandemic to help save hundreds of thousands of businesses and millions of jobs.

When I read Hitendra’s new book on “CAS,” it kept uncovering how much more accountants can do for their clients if they offer CAS.

I am sure every client that benefits from your full-scale CAS offering will have sincere gratitude towards you and your team.

Gratitude strengthens trust, and if you want to be the most trusted advisor of your clients, you must implement insights from this valuable book to evoke gratitude from your clients!

– Chester Elton, Author, “Leading With Gratitude,” and the #1 New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal bestsellers “All In” and “The Carrot Principle.”

 

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The Case for CAS

By Hitendra Patil

(Adapted from Chapter 1)

Client Accounting Services is emerging as the most important new revenue and growth segment for accounting firms of all sizes. But first, CAS is a mindset.

It’s a mindset that lives in every professional accountant. Some know it. Some don’t. Some know that the CAS mindset exists in them but fail to make the most of it.

Instead, they try to become everything to everyone. They become more of “need-fillers” than “accounting entrepreneurs (Accountaneurs®).” They find it challenging to become the “most trusted advisors” of their clients. Those who don’t know that the CAS mindset exists in them feel it will be overwhelmingly difficult to “learn” the CAS mindset. They may try to acquire the mindset but give up too soon.

In this handbook, you’ll learn how to recognize and realize the CAS mindset within you. You will learn how to develop the CAS mindset, how to reactivate the CAS mindset that may be dormant within you.

And, you’ll learn how other CAS accountants gain their insights and take concrete actions to leverage that mindset – the behaviors and attitudes; the strategies, workflows, best practices; and the tools, tactics, and technologies – to achieve undreamed-of success for their firms, themselves, and their clients.

Innumerable studies and surveys confirm that CAS is the fastest growing, more profitable revenue segment for firms of all sizes. Top publications in the accounting profession have relentlessly published content about CAS. Many technology solutions providers, thought leaders, and consultants to the profession have shared their insights about CAS. There are some “certification courses” that teach CAS.

CAS De-Mystified

Yet, CAS can be a triple enigma.

1. What exactly is CAS?
2. Why should I offer CAS?
3. How do I provide CAS?

These three questions are, even today, the topmost common questions accountants ask about CAS.

But in this handbook, you’ll learn the why, what, and how of CAS. The information and insights on these three foundational aspects of CAS discussed in this book have been discovered, tested, and confirmed with thousands of contacts with CAS and non-CAS accounting firms and corroborated with the quantitative and qualitative analysis of data gathered from perhaps the largest CAS survey ever conducted in the accounting profession.

In other words, this handbook is not a work of fiction, or only thoughts and musings. This handbook gives you the powerful advantage of the market intelligence that can save your years of effort and costs, significantly reduce the risk of failure, considerably reduce the time taken to establish your CAS practice, and geometrically enhance the chances of success in your CAS practice – if you embrace the insights and implement them in earnest.

CAS leads your firm to serve more needs and wants of your clients. CAS means you will profitably serve the needs of all your clients, not just those who have larger needs, and hence, can pay you more.

But how do you really know the needs and wants of your clients and prospects?

CAS Communications

If you are like most accountants, you have a “menu of services.” Almost all of your prospects see you from those narrow filters of your services menu. You get pigeonholed. If you’ve ever felt “clients do not value my services and expertise, they just want the lowest price,” you will know what I mean by “getting pigeonholed.”

In this handbook, you will learn how to identify your clients’ needs and wants. People want to pay the least when they “have to” do something, i.e., for their needs. But they pay premium prices for their wants. You’ll get insights on how to show them the life they could live when their wants are met. You will see examples of the needs and wants of the clients that buy each of the most common services accountants provide. We will then go more in-depth to learn client wants on a human level – and how to cater to each of the fundamentally human wants through your services. We will then cover the easy-to-learn, practical, proven ways of targeting which clients can be “CAS-fit.” We will also learn the not-so-easy ways of identifying CAS-fit clients.

Accountants, by profession, are great with numbers. But a lot of accountants are not so great with words, making CAS will be a communications challenge. It can slow down your CAS journey considerably. In this handbook, you’ll find actionable intelligence and practical advice to overcome the communications challenge. You’ll learn how to communicate the value of your CAS offering. You’ll find ways to convince your partners to commit to CAS, and how to get your staff on board for CAS. You will also get insights on how to communicate CAS to your clients and prospects. Armed with this knowledge, we’ll then dive into how to identify the right clients for CAS.

CAS Tools

Knowing and doing are two different things. Success needs both.

What should you do to prepare your firm for CAS?

We’ll examine the tech stack you’ll need for CAS success, depending upon how much your firm already uses cloud technologies. Don’t worry. Even if your firm is just partly into the cloud, we can outline your next steps. You’ll also learn how your clients can interact with your firm using your technology stack, and how it can dramatically enhance the client experience and reduce the cost of client servicing.

What about your CAS team?

• Do you need a different one?
• Do you need to re-skill or up-skill your existing team to turn them into CAS-ninjas?
• If yes, how will you do that? If not, what should you do?

You will get answers to many such important questions. You will see the “how-to.” You’ll get an understanding of top success traits and drivers needed for CAS. You will also acquire knowledge about how to enrich your team’s human skillsets and technical skillsets, and also some ways in which you can train your CAS team. You will also gain deeper insights into staffing choices and how to make sure you manage performance standards and risks.

We’ll examine how you can create your firm’s CAS-specific processes, including:

• What should you include in your CAS-specific engagement letters?
• Why should you aim to make it an “engagement ring” concept-based agreement?
• Will your client communication processes change because of CAS?

We will discuss several ideas and insights into all these critical questions.

CAS Pricing

CAS pricing is a significant decision that can make you nervous and stressed. But help is here.

We’ll first see how the profession charges for CAS:

• What are the most prevalent pricing methods for CAS?
• What are the pricing trends?

After that, we’ll examine how you can decide your firm’s CAS pricing and keep adjusting it to make it more profitable for your firm. At the same time, we’ll dive into the details of the key costs of offering CAS and learn from the experience from the profession about how profitable CAS is compared to other services firms provide.

CAS Marketing

Once you have something new to sell that the market demands and is more profitable for your firm, how should you market your CAS offering? What should you do when your marketing brings in new prospects to ensure your sales processes are effective?

We’ll find many insights from the most effective marketing methods deployed by CAS firms. From my personal experience of working with hundreds of CAS firms, I will share ideas on how to market CAS to existing clients and new prospects. I will also provide insights about generating new leads for your CAS offering without spending much.

The CAS CFO

What about being a virtual/outsourced CFO?

Another opportunity most CAS firms aspire to makes the most of is the CAS-driven ability to offer high-value Chief Financial Officer competencies. Many small but growing businesses will absolutely benefit from having the expertise of a professional CFO on their team, but such companies cannot afford to hire a full-time CFO. And any competent CFO worth the salt will not work full-time for any smaller company as they are in high demand in the industry. This creates a real gap of demand-supply in the market that professional accountants are ideally placed to leverage by becoming a part-time, on-demand, need-based, or shared CFO for multiple companies at once. The “billable rate” for such virtual outsourced CFO work is much higher than most other services accounting firms can offer. Your firm’s senior, more experienced partners and team members can ride on the business intelligence CAS creates to deliver much higher value, higher ROI work.

CAS Performance Review

With experience, your CAS services will mature and become highly effective and more profitable. But it will still require you to review the performance of your firm’s CAS segment periodically.

• Why should you do this review?
• How do you evaluate your CAS performance?
• Why should you involve your clients in reviewing your firm’s CAS performance?

We will learn from the collective experience of the marketplace. Many firms grow their CAS practice to provide more comprehensive and sophisticated offerings, earning them even more “per-client revenue and profit.” The “periodic performance review” can help you connect the dots and bridge the gaps in your CAS offering.

Ideas, Insights, Tips, Tricks, and Best Practices for Your CAS Success

Throughout the book, you will find ideas, insights, tips, tricks, and best practices liberally sprinkled for your CAS success. You will find many of those to be relevant from your perspective. I encourage you to think over, debate, analyze, and explore even those ideas that you may not find immediately applicable in your practice. Several of my recommendations may sound very simple, but many are based on in-depth human behavioral science research findings that I’ve been studying relentlessly for more than 25 years. I have married these findings with my experiences in the accounting profession so that you don’t have to spend a long time figuring out the connection and applicability.

I’m thrilled to culminate this nearly three years of the process of writing this book on CAS. It took me that long to complete this book because everything in this book was ready with me for quite some time, but I wanted to test it against the real-world experience of CAS practitioners out there. It took some re-calibrations of concepts and explanations to align a few things. Before publishing, I shared the pre-publication copy of this book with some leading CAS practitioners across the country. I received great feedback from them.

Hence, I am highly – and realistically – optimistic and confident that this book will significantly help you start and grow your own CAS practice. I have no doubt that what you will learn from this handbook – and when you earnestly apply what you learn – you will be on your path to the CAS success you so richly deserve.

Congratulations, and welcome! Let’s get started.

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COMPREHENSIVE STEP-BY-STEP IMPLEMENTATION PLAN

Table of Contents

BONUS DOWNLOAD: CAS-Fit Assessment Wizard (Excel, sample worksheet)

Client Accounting Services: The Definitive Guide

• The Why, What, and How of CAS
• Your firm’s CAS
• The communication challenge of CAS
• How to prepare your firm for CAS
• How to get your CAS team in place
• CAS processes and pricing
• Marketing and selling CAS
• What about being a virtual/outsourced CFO?
• CAS performance review
• Ideas, insights, tips, tricks, and best practices for your CAS success
  • IMPORTANT: How to Make the Most Out of This Book

PART I: THE CAS MINDSET

• Do You Need a Different Mindset to Offer CAS?
• The other side

How to Develop the CAS Mindset

• Reconnect with your purpose
• Find your impact
• Take the DAIS
• Value your value

PART II: THE WHAT, WHY AND HOW OF CAS

What is CAS?

• How is CAS different than what I am doing now?
• CAS: What is it NOT
• CAS: What it IS
• Types of services offered under CAS
• What is the impact of what CAS is?

CAS and The Accounting Profession

• The CAS survey by CPA Trendlines
• The CAS survey summary

Why YOU Must Offer CAS

• The why before “why CAS”
• Why is CAS a great new revenue growth opportunity?

Your CAS Practice: The How-To

• What next?

PART III: YOUR FIRM’S CAS

Services CAS Clients NEED

• Have your clients’ needs changed now?
• How new expectations turn into new needs
• What are the (now expressed) NEEDS of your clients?
• List of services in your CAS offering
• You can add more services to your existing resources

Services CAS Clients WANT

• I can’t afford your service
• Show them the life they will have when their wants are met
• So, what are the wants of your clients/prospects?
• Can you identify the wants of such clients?
• Your clients’ WANTS at the human level

Which of Your Existing Clients Are CAS-fit?

• The easy ways to identify CAS-fit clients
• The NOT-so-easy ways to identify CAS-fit clients

How to Become an Outsourced/Virtual CFO?

• What is an outsourced/virtual CFO?
• How CAS drives up the demand for O/V-CFOs?
• Which services do O/V-CFOs provide?
• Which services to offer?
• How to prepare to get ready to offer the services you decide?
• How to price your O/V-CFO services?
• When to pitch your O/V-CFO services?

PART IV: COMMUNICATING CAS

How to Communicate the Value of CAS

• Communicating CAS within your firm

Communicating CAS with Your Clients and Prospects

• Communicating CAS to your existing clients
• Communicating CAS with your prospects

Identifying the Right Clients for CAS

• How to evaluate your existing clients, and also prospects

PART V: PREPARING YOUR FIRM FOR CAS

Top Five CAS Killers and How to Overcome Them

• CAS killer #5: CAS not the right fit for our firm
• CAS killer #4: We don’t have the technology for CAS
• CAS killer #3: CAS wouldn’t be as profitable as our other services
• CAS killer #2: Our clients aren’t asking for CAS
• CAS killer #1: We don’t have the staffing for CAS

The Technology Stack You Need for CAS

• CAS does NOT need a technological transformation
• If your firm is already mostly in the cloud
• If your firm is partly in the cloud
• If your firm is hardly in the cloud
• How to decide on your ideal CAS technology stack

Technology and Your CAS Clients

When clients do part of the work

• When clients offload all of the accounting work to your firm
• Core software
• Client service software
• The fundamental requirement
• Ancillary software
• But what about clients that are not tech-savvy?

Your Firm’s CAS Team

• CAS – different expectations
• The CAS-Champion
• CAS and human skillsets
• CAS and technical skillsets
• CAS front and back office
• How to train your CAS team

Remote Staffing, Outsourcing, and Offshoring

• Accounting is NOT a services profession
• Why do accounting firms outsource?
• How to know if you should explore outsourcing/offshoring?
• How to mitigate strategic risks in outsourcing
• How coronavirus changed mindsets of accounting firms
• Make your office virtual, at least partially

Your Firm’s Processes

• Your operating processes
• Your client experience management processes

Your Firm’s CAS Processes

• How are CAS processes different?
• Creating CAS reports
• Creating CAS process steps and timelines
• Technology and your firm’s CAS processes

CAS Engagement (Ring) Letter/Agreement

• Statement of work – shared responsibilities
• Your CAS engagement letter/agreement
• Setting and reinforcing the right expectations
• The periodic reset
• Taking the marketing and sales angle
• Service delivery options

CAS Client Service and Communications

• Are CAS client service requirements different?
• How to deliver CAS services to clients

PART VI: PRICING YOUR CAS OFFERING

CAS Pricing and The Accounting Profession

• Pricing insights from the CAS survey
• How are these pricing methods working out for CAS firms?
• The underlying insight on CAS pricing methods
• Why fixed and mixed fees are more popular in CAS?
• The effect of CAS pricing methods on firms’ profitability
• Why CAS provides a superior profit margin?

How to Decide on Your Firm’s CAS Pricing

• Packaging CAS offering levels
• CAS pricing risk management
• How to pitch your CAS packages
• Defining the measurable value from each CAS component
• How to make your CAS pricing more profitable?

PART VII: CAS MARKETING AND SALES

Marketing Your CAS Offering

• CAS sales and marketing methods – survey results
• Referrals, flipped
• Interestingly, some lesser-used marketing methods hold promise 260
• How to identify your firm’s real marketable value
• How to express the marketable value of CAS
• Marketing CAS to existing clients
• Lead generation for CAS
• More lead generation methods
• Marketing CAS to prospects

How to Sell Your CAS Offering

• How to define your “CAS sales process”
• The CAS “sales pitch”
• The CAS “sales collaterals”
• Your existing clients as your CAS salespersons
• The CAS sales process performance measurement

PART VIII: HOW TO REVIEW YOUR FIRM’S CAS PERFORMANCE

• Review your firm’s CAS offering
• Why review your CAS offering periodically?
• When to review?
• What to review?
• How to review?
• Think different

PART IX: BE AN ACCOUNTANEUR®

• Accountaneur® and CAS
• Closing remarks

ADDENDUM

• CAS Tech Stack
• Software Solutions

 

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PLUS: BONUS DOWNLOADABLE TOOLKIT of PDF CHECKLISTS and EXCEL WORKSHEETS

(included in every order)

• CAS Pricing Packages Client-Fit – 3-in-1 – Tools (Excel)

• Accounting Profitability Enhancement Calculator (Excel)

• CAS Client Onboarding Information Template (Excel)

• CAS Tech Stack Software Solutions (PDF)

• Client Accounting Services (CAS) Practice Checklist (PDF)

Look for the link as a .zip file in your Order Confirmation from auto-confirm@cpatrendlines.com or look in the book for the link and the password after the Table of Contents on Page [X]

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About the Author

Hitendra R. Patil is one of the profession’s leading authorities on accounting technology, accounting firm innovation, and client accounting and advisory services (CAS / CAAS).

He is the best-selling author of “The Definitive Success Guide to Client Accounting Services” and “Accountaneur: The Entrepreneurial Accountant.”

Patil is among the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting, the Top 10 Accounting Influencers to Follow on Social Media, and the Top 100 Accounting Social Media Leaderboard.

He is a regularly published author in many leading publications in the United States accounting profession. Accountants have bought his best-selling books in 12 countries across five continents. He frequently provides fresh thought leadership and actionable insights to the accounting profession about CAS/CAAS, practice growth, entrepreneurship in accounting, and emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, blockchain, and cybersecurity.

Patil is the Founder of Accountaneur, where he provides accountants with consulting services to become more successful by leveraging his comprehensive experience and expertise in serving the accounting profession. For over 20 years, he has worked exclusively for the accounting industry, leading several functions, including accounting, payroll, tax, and advisory services and technology solutions used by professional accountants.

Click here for more by Hitendra Patil at cpatrendlines.com

Details: 344 pages, 6 x 9 in., softcover handbook. Available as a PDF e-book (restrictions apply). ISBN: 978-1-7354123-2-0. Copyright 2021 Hitendra R. Patil. All rights reserved. Published by CPA Trendlines, an imprint of Bay Street Group LLC, New York, NY, USA, which is the sole owner of exclusive rights of the work in all media and forms and the authorized agent of the author in all matters pertaining to the work.