The hottest topics in accountancy: your views

Question Title

* 1. Describe your relationship with clients (please pick all that apply)

Clients are more appreciative of the work we do, compared to pre-pandemic

Client relationships have stayed the same in the last 18 months

Clients put more pressure on us to deliver advisory work on top of day-to-day compliance work within current fees

Clients are using us more as a trusted business advisor

Clients only view us as compliance partners

Not applicable to my role

Question Title

* 2. What area(s) keeps you awake at night? [external focused]

Moving clients to MTD

Preparing the practice for MTD

Keeping clients’ businesses afloat

Keeping the accountancy firm afloat

Being replaced by technology

How to market our services to new audiences

Other (please specify)

Question Title

* 3. What area(s) keeps you awake at night? [internal focused]

Managing work-life balance

Hiring staff amid the skills & salary war

Retaining staff amid the skills & salary war

Creating a strong company culture

How to support a culture of diversity & inclusion

Mental wellbeing and support for staff

Flexible & hybrid working arrangements

Other

Question Title

* 4. What fee-paying area(s) would you like to grow in the next 12 months? (Please tick all that apply)

Strategic business planning and coaching

Business tax

Payroll services

HR services

Bookkeeping

Tax advice

Management accounts

Tax planning

Company secretarial

Core compliance

Forecasting

Consultation on financial performance

Auditing

Cashflow forecasting

Not applicable – we don’t want to grow any fee-paying areas

Other

Question Title

* 5. What would prevent your firm from growing fees in the next 12 months?

The current skillset of my employees

Time to work on implementing the business growth strategy

Not enough time and/or skill to market the business

Technology infrastructure to support a larger team

Ability to move from compliance to advisory services

We want to introduce value-added services but we’re time poor supporting existing clients

We struggle to implement advisory services due to internal resistance

We mainly focus on compliance work, and likely always will

External economic factors

Other

Question Title

* 6. What technology has your firm started using in the last 18 months?

CRM (customer relationship marketing)

Database

Practice Management

Cloud Bookkeeping

Cloud Payroll software

Analytics tools

Compliance software

RPA (Robotic Process Automation)

Not applicable – we don’t automate any areas

None of these

Other

Question Title

* 7. How much of your future work would you like to automate?

Less than 10%

10-30%

31-50%

51-70%

71-90%

Nearly 100%

Question Title

* 8. Has your accounting firm:

Seen significant efficiencies since using new technologies and tools

Seen little improvement since using new technologies and tools

Had backlash from staff concerned about the safety of their job when new technologies were brought into the firm

Struggled with knowing where to start bringing new technologies and tools into the firm

Seen revenues increase since using new technologies and tools

Got plans to automate more areas of the firm in the next 12-18 months

Other

Question Title

* 9. On MTD, does your accounting firm:

Agree with the most recent delay to ITSA

Need more guidance on how to convince clients of MTD’s benefits

Have regular conversations with clients about how to best implement MTD

Have the right technology & tools to support clients transitioning to MTD

Think HMRC needs to listen to accountants more when deciding the MTD roadmap

Think MTD is the best thing for clients

Question Title

* 10. What best describes your cloud technology strategy?

We don’t have one

We’re thinking about it but don’t know where to start

We’re in the process of moving some operations to the cloud

We’re fully cloud and have been for some time

We were born in the cloud

Question Title

* 11. Do you or your company use any IRIS products?

Yes

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* 12. Are you happy for IRIS to contact you regarding this survey? If so, please confirm your contact details below.

Name

Company

Email Address

Phone Number