accountantscoach

TopCAATs: the auditor's indisputed leader of the gang

Love the name, love the product.

This is a dream product for 'regular' auditors, like me, with a far from sophisticated IT skillset.  Did you ever baulk (or blow the budget) when expected to wheel out CAATs on a sporadic basis? Despite the costly training, by the time you actually get round to using them for real, you've forgotten virtually everything you've learned and any remnants are wiped out as a big dose of panic sets in.

If this sounds familiar then you must read my interview with Charlie Walker from Reinvent Data Limited.  Charlie has created TopCAATS, a suite of tools within excel, designed to be used by non-specialist auditors and accountants quite simply to make our lives easier.

Introducing The Accountants Circle: save time, deliver more

If you haven't found them yourselves, let me introduce you to an exciting new set of services from the fantastic, innovative Accountants Circle.  This is something rather different.  The Accountants Circle offers a unique approach to working with accountants.

The focus is on value, and how that value is delivered.  While The Accountants Circle provides accountants with quality website development and a variety of outsourced services, it's actually the guts of their membership concept that is really different.

At the moment many of you in practice, particularly the smaller practices, use a variety of tools and templates sourced from all sorts of people and places to help you deliver your service. It can be great to get your hands on something that helps, but often these require a fair knowledge of Excel and changes to formula each time they're used... so they can still be time consuming.  Sometimes you or your team spend time creating new templates to do this when nothing else seems easily accessible.

The Accountants Circle start with the premise that most accountant-provided services are not greatly different from one other.  So as a member of the Circle you can access tools designed by accountants for accountants.  And stop re-inventing the wheel!  The Accountants Circle draws on the experiences of its own team, along with the input and demand of its members in providing you with an ongoing development service. This is peer-based collaboration and leverage at its best, albeit with a small monthly membership fee.

As this venture grows, I'm quite curious to see just what they'll be able to offer accountants.  At the moment some of the tools are certainly interesting and should prove great value for many accountants in practice, especially those that deal with SMEs.  These do come personally branded for the practice and can make for some great marketing/promotional tools too.

Examples?   Where shall I start?  Let's try, templates for: preparing management accounts, providing budgets and projections, managing assets and their depreciation.  Remember, if these templates don't suit your needs, you can have them  modified by The Accountants Circle.  The same goes for new templates. If you are looking for a template that's not there yet, ask them to do it for you!  In other words, a bespoke service.   For such a modest monthly membership contribution, it shouldn't be hard to quickly recoup the cost against the value gained in terms of time saved, plus quality and assurance.

So, what are you waiting for.  Just click here and see for yourself.

 

Mind Maps for Accountants

• A system to remember your presentation so you don’t have to read your notes
• A technique that helps you take a project, see the big picture, focus on the key areas and understand all the inter-connections
• A means of making note taking from journals, books, e-articles, quicker, more logical, better organised
• A method for brainstorming that presents ideas logically structured
• An approach to time management, enabling you to focus on your priorities, make efficiencies

How would you like to spend just 10 minutes learning a new skill that will help you in all of the above areas?  In the last year, Mind Mapping has given me all of these rewards and truly revolutionised my approach to knowledge, learning and business.  Read on for the accountant’s introduction to Mind Mapping. 

How to give and receive feedback

Sean McPheat has written this very comprehensive article on 'How to give and receive feedback', jam packed with loads of really practical tips.  Sean is a provider of management training and executive coaching.  Check out his websites at the foot of this post.  His coaching background really shines through, particularly in the latter part of the feature.  When he talks about open questioning, mirroring, reflecting back, maintaining the silence, initiating actions and gaining ownership, these are all golden coaching rules, with a healthy hint of NLP thrown in for good measure.  It got me thinking that my fellow accountants might like to know a bit more about the mechanics of coaching and NLP.  Separately or together,  coaching and NLP provide a valuable skillset which everyone can use in the workplace, with countless practical applications.  What on earth is NLP anyway?  If you want to know more let me know by replying to this post or emailing me at [email protected]

Read and learn, thanks to Sean.

Soft skills for accountants and auditors

Here is my transferable skills checklist for accountants and auditors.  It will help you identify all the 'soft' skills than you may actually have already developed in fulfilling the requirements of your current role and career aspirations.

Download soft_skills_accountants.doc

Read the full article at CPD - banish the fear

The Wheel of Life

One of the most powerful coaching tools I use is the Wheel of Life (click on the image to enlarge). It's a simple tool which helps determine the current focus of your time and energy.  This in turn can help identify areas of relative neglect and thus define where you would like to make improvements.  The coach helps you consider each area of your life in turn and assess what’s ‘off balance’.

The Wheel of Life is powerful because it gives you a vivid visual representation of the way your life is currently, compared with the way you'd ideally like it to be. It is called the "Wheel of Life" because each area of your life is mapped on a circle, like the spoke of a wheel.  In the example above, the client feels that their highest levels of satisfaction are in the areas of Finances and Personal Development which they have rated at 80% (4/5).  The lower scoring areas are Family and Leisure at just 20% and these are likely to be where they would like to focus and make improvements.