6 Challenging and Stressful Parts of Being a Small Accounting Firm

Accounting can be a rewarding career. And especially if you go out on your own and start a firm.

Yet like any business, there will be challenging and stressful times.

But for small accounting firms, you’ll often face other hardships that are a bit different from being a general large business owner.

Recently, we saw this LinkedIn post diving into this topic and wanted to highlight some of the common responses. As well as some of our thoughts after working with thousands of accountants and bookkeepers.
 

 

Hardest Part of Being a Small Accounting Firm?

After reading through the comments on this question posed on LinkedIn by Gabriel Malavolti, we found plenty of similarities to what we hear as well.

Let’s get into these challenges and some of our thoughts.
 

1. The Balance of Good Work And Communication

“In my opinion, it is the balance between doing solid work and communicating with clients and staff in a proactive and efficient manner.

Not only doing that individually, but as employees or contractors are added teaching them how to handle this issue in a way that keeps clients happy without sacrificing the amount of work that has to happen.” –  Gabriel Malavolti, JD, LLM, CPA, CPCU

Mike Payne, JD – CPA also chimed in with similar thoughts.

“For me, It’s balancing doing the work and keeping up with communications. I could literally spend all day on emails and never get to my projects.”

But before his closing comment, Mike dropped in what has helped him navigate this challenge as a firm owner.

“The biggest thing I’ve done to help with this (besides adding staff to do the work) is getting help with my email. My executive assistant does a great job clearing out the garbage and delegating to the team so that the only emails I need to address are emails that need my personal attention.”
 

2. Maintaining Reliable Staffing While Scaling

“Finding good, reliable resources that would like to stay with a small company. “ – Eylem Ozturk Alper

And Gabriel followed up with: “Staffing is definitely the biggest issue with scaling. Super hard at small firm rates to pay top dollar for good talent + show them enough upside.”

Tracy Brantingham, CPA then shared how she is solving this challenge:

“Profit margin is smaller than I would like because I pay for quality staff and provide competitive benefits. I want to attract and keep quality teammates! So far it is paying off as we are moving towards more automation, so we can take on more clients with the same resources which means better profit margin and more money for the team.”
 

3. Having to “Wear All the Hats”

Yuri Kapilovich, CPA stated,

“Honestly for me it is definitely the ‘wearing all the hats’ aspect. Social media posting, client communication, billing, the work itself. Some days it truly feels like I am doing everything but the work and some days I feel like all I did was work and the emails just pile on.Truly a challenge that I am working through.”

Kevon McIntosh, CPA(US), CA, PA also had similar thoughts,

“For me, just starting out, having to be the Admin, Sales Rep, In-House Accountant, Client Facing Consultant, can all be a bit daunting. Trying my hardest to use the resources at my disposal as efficiently as possible to manage time and expectations.”

Our thoughts:

As a small business owner, wearing multiple hats is truly the essence of being a founder. But overtime, you do want to free up time and delegate tasks. Otherwise you can burnout or stop delivering quality work for clients.

Here are some key areas to implement to better coordinate your schedule (what you do also depends on what you prefer as a firm owner):

• Find an affordable virtual assistant that can help with time consuming tasks.
• Coordinate your time with your calendar or project management tools on what you work on and when.
• Automate recurring tasks, certain emails, and prioritize where it makes sense. It might not solve all your problems, but if it frees up an hour or two a week that’s a big win.

4. Choosing the Right Software and Learning How To Use It

John T. Drawdy, Jr., CPA dropped these two comments:

“Picking out and learning the proper software. I have a phobia I’ll put tens of thousands of dollars and thousands of hours into a set of software and then find out it’s not the best for what I need. I want the set up to last 15 years or more…”

The good news about tech is there are more great platforms and tools to better your work as a firm owner. But alternatively, the bad news is there are so many platforms that it’s challenging to know which are worth your time and solves your challenges best.

We’ve certainly heard this ourselves from accountants and firm owners. Our tips when it comes to evaluating software for your firm:

• What are your biggest pain points you are trying to solve for your firm? You may have multiple, but start with the largest issues first that would be a game changer for you.
• If you have employees find out what challenges are they facing in their everyday work. Understand what might make their work lives better. It could be different than yours as the firm owner or very similar.
• Research solutions to your main challenges. Ask other firm owners. If you belong to any membership or communities for accountants, ask for software recommendations, etc.
• When you have your list of particular vendors, research them. How long have they been around? What do the reviews say about them? What types of customers do they have? What’s their pricing and does it fit your budget?

5. Taking Time Without Work Falling Behind

Rob Sewell commented:

“Managing the peaks and troughs of workload while still delivering a top service. And being able to take time off without everything coming to a screaming halt.”

This is one we’ve heard often over the years. And often the simple way to solve this is workflow management software. It allows you to get organized, view the status of client work, and easily delegate to team members when you are on vacation.

Similarly, this comment from Isaac St. John, CPA we are sure will resonate with many small accounting firm owners:

“For me personally the most stressful element is balancing flexibility and availability to my family with my desire to grow Acorn & Oak PLLC and build a successful brand.”
 

6. Aligning What Type of Work To Take On

As a firm owner, it’s easy to want to say “Yes!” to every client and work request that comes your way. Afterall, you need to pay the bills and generate business revenue!

And not only that, but you end up taking on ALL the work yourself.

However, that’s a quick way to stress yourself out. Instead, start doing the following:

• Focus on the right clients only, where you can build a long term relationship with.
• Saying “No” to revenue when the client doesn’t fit your best fit customer profiles.
• Better delegate tasks and work to your team, assistants, etc.

Tracy Kyte, CPA mentioned:

“Balancing the doing of the work with allllll the other stuff (communicating with current clients, following up with leads, etc). Automation is helping. Delegating is helping. Being realllllly clear on who we want to work with and types of projects we want and not taking on work outside that doesn’t align with this is the next step we are working towards.”

Henry Huie, CPA had similar thoughts:

“Right now I think one of the hardest things to do is saying ‘no’ to revenue when the client isn’t the right fit long term so I can make room for ‘yes’ for a client that I can see a long term relationship.”

Final Thoughts

As you can see from above, many solo accountants and smaller firms have various areas of challenges to running their firm successfully.

But the majority would still pursue owning and operating their own firm, even knowing the challenges they face..

And today there is more knowledge, helpful services, and technologies that help alleviate many of these pain points.

For example automation, AI, outsourcing, accounting communities and alliances. and workflow management to name a few.

Cheers to growing a successful firm!