Not a lot of people understand what monthly accounting is. (After all, it’s not exactly one of the more common accounting solutions.) That means when prospective clients contact us, they often have assumptions about what we do.
Believe it or not, we don’t think assumptions are necessarily bad! If misconceptions make it to the sales process, your consultant’s job is to educate. We just wanted to beat them to it by addressing common misconceptions now.
At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we’ve provided monthly accounting for nearly 60 years. That means we’ve heard a lot of assumptions, including these 4 most common misconceptions about our monthly accounting service.
The 4 Monthly Accounting Misconceptions
Monthly accounting is our primary offering, so we wanted to focus on the four misconceptions specifically around this service:
- “I can use CSI as a standalone bookkeeping, tax, or consulting service.”
- “CSI will handle my bill pay, invoicing, job costing, inventory management, and other one-off items.”
- “CSI guarantees improved profits.”
- “I don’t need to participate in monthly accounting.”
1.) Standalone Services
We offer services in packages, but sometimes prospective clients think they can individually select certain services, even though they’re not standalone offerings.
Our monthly accounting service includes many things in the price – like bookkeeping and taxes. However, some people reach out to us to only handle their business’s bookkeeping, only handle their business’s annual taxes, or even only handle their personal taxes.
Other times, prospective clients see we offer add-on consulting projects. Despite our website stating this is only for our monthly accounting clients (so we have a complete understanding of your business and situation), they think they can just work with us for a one-off consulting project.
2.) Services Provided
Some prospects don’t understand which services we offer. There is high demand for bill pay, invoicing, job costing, inventory management, and other one-off items – but we don’t provide them.
Why? A variety of reasons. We don’t have the manpower to handle bill pay. We can’t standardize invoicing. We would need to ask our clients about each charge to do job costing. We’re not on-site to see your inventory.
The list goes on and on, but ultimately, it comes down to two things: facing the limitations of operating as an outsourced service, and keeping our service as efficient as possible to keep our fees minimized.
Worried about getting these services handled? Ask us! We can make some suggestions.
3.) Your Profits
We promote that we offer profitability advice and the potential for profitability growth – but some prospects see that as a guaranteed profit increase.
Growing your profits directly would mean we bring in sales for you. We can’t control that!
What we can do is advise you on opportunity areas that can lead to more sales, and then minimize your taxes via year-round tax strategy.
4.) Your Participation
Some clients think that they can sign up and then we handle everything. However, you might be surprised at the level of involvement needed from you – especially if you want to see results.
Initially, you need to grant us access to your financial data so we can do the bookkeeping portion. Then, you need to attend monthly meetings and take our advice to see results in your business’s success and minimize your taxes.
At the end of the day, it’s not that much work – it’s just more than a surprising number of small business owners expect.
No More Misconceptions!
Still making some assumptions? If you call us, we’ll start addressing your questions about our service right away.
Now that we’ve cleared the four most common misconceptions about our accounting service, are you ready to get started?
To see if we can be a good fit for your business, click the button below for a free consultation:
Not ready to talk? That’s okay! First, learn more about what it’s like to work with us by clicking the image below:
