I have a confession to make. I’m an accountant and while I try and keep it at bay, the accountancy bug still lives inside me (all suggested cures welcome).

My background is that I started in a mid tier accountancy firm, (Moore Stephens before it was Shine Wing) in the taxation consulting division the same day as the GST. The 1st of July 2000. That date will forever be scorched into my brain and I worked there in the tax consulting division until the day I was sitting around the boardroom table and the tax partners were discussing a Dutch Sandwich and the how and why it was better for withholding tax.

Having grown up playing at a dutch founded soccer club, a dutch sandwich was pickled fish in a roll with an extra pickle and secondly I got into accounting to help people and saving 2% withholding tax in Luxembourg while probably great for the client, well I just couldn’t see how it helped anyone. Especially anyones' like my parents who ran a business with my dad as a carpenter on the tools day after day.

So I moved to the Superannuation Division where the other processing staff left almost immediately (hooray!).

I asked the partners if we could consider SMSF outsourcing (I’d been dabbling in outsourcing design work with the Barefoot Investor at the time) and to my utter surprise they agreed…..mainly because the average write off across the Division was $250,000 per year undertaking SMSF compliance work.

After finding and training a team in Coimbatore, India for a few years and turning that $250,000 loss into a $250,000 profit on our SMSF administration business each year I was hired to help Deloitte Private smooth out and grow their flailing Offshore team (in Hydrabad). At Deloitte we put a plan in place immediately that resulted in growing the team from 16 to 72 staff within 24 months with a further plan to grow to 100 within a further 12 months. Which was achieved.

The problem was that I still had a burning desire to help people and small businesses and at the very end of my time at Deloitte, I re-started my own firm called Accountancy Online which I sold a number of years later (my earn out just finished!). I also started an outsourcing firm called Active Outsourcing (that I still operate) at the same time. We operate a mighty fine SMSF outsourcing service to get your SMSF work up to date as well as offering SMSF audit services.

You may be asking yourself, what is the point of this? For me part of doing this is because I like telling stories from my past. Part of it is because this will help me look into new things that interest me about the accounting profession. Part of it is because I've always enjoyed making audio and videos (going all the way back to my student radio days), albeit mostly for other people before. Mostly it's because I find this fun and I have no expectations and seldom do (no or low expectations is a real super power).

Anyway, enough for now. I'll likely post a lot more about my experience with Moore Stephens, my experience with Deloitte and starting my own firm (from nothing) as well as outsourcing and technology issues I've seen along the way. 

If there's anything you'd like me to cover, drop me a line at kane@activeoutsourcing.com.au