Starting an accountancy firm with $20,000

When we started Accountancy Online way back in 2013 we had cobbled together $20,000, but I knew we couldn't rely on a traditional model of accountancy. If we did that we'd burn through $20,000 really fast and I'd be back churning tax sausages for someone else.

Back in 2000 when I started at Moore Stephens we probably had around $20,000 of different accounting software versions in a padlocked cupboard. We would have to submit a request to IT to have version X of MYOB installed on our desktop computer. The reason being that everything was based on a fixed number of licenses and as a big accounting firm if a client had X version of X software then we had to have the same software to access the clients data and do our work.

CRAZY times and why I thought we would really struggle starting out with Accountancy Online from scratch. The good news for us was that when we started was around the time that both Xero and QuickBooks Online started to gain traction in Australia. So we had a chance.

I can remember the conversation with one of my partners at the time.

"So wait....we can get the client to pay for their own software"

"Yes"

"and we can log into it and work inside their software"

"Yes"

"….....WOW," (actually the WOW was really a rude word, but you get my drift)

Because for us the cloud accounting model and the changing software cost was a game changer and a firm saver.

We could:

1. Save money on software

2. Know we were working on the latest version of the software

3. Be more proactive on how we service our clients compared to other traditional accountants

We had found a way to keep the $20,000 of air in our balloon for longer while we found more clients.

It also gave us a marketing story we could tell perspective clients around real time visibility on their accounts and advice around that. Call it Virtual CFO circa 2013, which is what we called it internally, however on our website we labelled these fixed fee packages with random David Bowie song names.

Would I have swapped this experience to go back and buy a fee base. Yes if I'm honest I probably would have, it would have made things much easier starting out, but the story wouldn't be as much fun to tell.

I'm Kane Munro and if there's anything else you'd like me to cover about my time in accountancy, DM me, email me (via www.activeoutsourcing.com.au) or leave a comment wherever you're seeing this. I'd love to hear from you.