Growing your firm can be an exciting process. It often involves hiring more people, improving processes, and investing in a new office or more equipment to serve more clients and generate additional revenue. However, many firm leaders have struggled to get what they need out of their current practice management system, which is often tailored for small, growth-oriented firms.

Today’s technology is leaps and bounds ahead of those from just a few years ago, making it unacceptable for firms to use separate systems for internal accounting, client relationship management or CRM, and billing to meet their clients’ demands. These accounting CRM systems must be more comprehensive and perform better than ever to allow accounting firms to continue to grow. Still, firm leaders hesitate to upgrade their systems, as it often comes at a premium price.

Signs You’ve Outgrown Your Current Practice Management System

If you’re wondering whether it’s time to migrate to a newer practice management system, here are four signs that indicate you’ve long outgrown your current one:

    1. Always having to stitch information together
    2. Having difficulty reorienting to solve problems
    3. Concerns about potential downtime
    4. Inability access the same client information

1. Always Having to Stitch Information Together

An accounting firm must always have accurate, timely data to operate effectively. However, aging digital tools have proved insufficient for linking information together, requiring better project management for accountants. If you constantly find your staff tweaking or cobbling together data just to understand what’s going on, you’ll need the best accounting practice management software to save precious time and resources.

2. Having Difficulty Reorienting to Solve Problems

Working with inaccurate or inaccessible information can cost hundreds or thousands of dollars in profit, especially if you don’t have enough visibility into project statuses, how much time your staff has spent on a client, and other information. More mistakes slip through the cracks without seeing such critical data, making it even more challenging to reorient towards a more favorable path. As a result, you may have to recoup your losses by presenting higher fees to your clients, much to their chagrin. To avoid this, you may want to invest in better accounting CRM for your firm, which will give you the information you need to course-correct more easily.

3. Concerns about Potential Downtime

All businesses must be well-prepared to respond to downtime, whether caused by a natural disaster, a power outage, or a cyber-attack. Without this preparation, your firm will suffer long, costly delays, which can negatively impact your reputation and revenue. Even after you resolve the downtime’s cause, it will only repeat itself if you don’t upgrade your practice management system, which comes with more security features. With an air-tight, cloud-based connection, your team can continue working at any time, anywhere, and stay productive.

4. Inability to Access the Same Client Information

If your partners, sales team members, and marketers cannot view or use the same client relationship data, they cannot do a proper job of promoting your firm or improving the client experience. Your reputation may suffer as a result, especially if the right people don’t have access to the data that can overhaul your processes and provide a higher-quality engagement for your clients. If this is a common occurrence, you’ll need to upgrade to a newer practice management system.

Conclusion

These four symptoms indicate that your accounting firm is suffering due to an outdated, poor-performing practice management system. If any of these are familiar to you, it’s high time to move to a more functional system designed to help you scale efficiently, address information gaps, and deliver better client services.

Financial Cents is an easy-to-use cloud-based accounting practice management software. As your team grows, it becomes more challenging to stay on top of all duties and deadlines, which our software can help address. You can create checklists, delegate tasks, monitor their progress, and more to stay on top of all client work. Start your free trial today!