FYI: Why manage your practice when you can automate it?

Does managing your firm conjure up thoughts of corner offices, high backed chairs and power lunches? Thought not. Sadly those days for most businesses have gone.

More likely, you’ll be thinking of the time pressures, client demands and staff retention challenges in a post-COVID world. The accounting landscape has rapidly evolved. And managing a successful practice today means implementing efficiencies that streamline workloads, and improve the experience for both accountants and clients.  

The solution leading the way? Automation

Process automation, as the name suggests, involves automating daily admin tasks and processes. That’s right, so humans don’t have to do them. And while we don’t need to elaborate much to demonstrate the value of that, indulge us just a little.

Enhanced efficiency​

Humans are only human, after all. Which is why manually performing tasks successfully relies on memory, productivity and accuracy. With the benefit of automation technology however, your people can simplify tasks, save time and minimise the chance of errors. 

FYI’s automation engine was developed specifically for accountants. So from onboarding new clients to creating overdue task reminders, sending bulk emails and filing tax returns, FYI does your admin for you.

The time taken to set up a year-end job has been drastically reduced from 20–30 minutes to just two clicks and a three-second automation.

But FYI goes further. You can create your own custom automations and apply it to any repetitive, multi-step process practice wide. From internal processes like onboarding new team members, to regular client processes like quarterly management reporting, FYI lets you automate as many processes as you can think of.

“We're sitting on 94 automations at the moment. It's saved a mountain of paper and a mountain of time.”

Reduced costs

And of course, the upside of higher efficiency? Lower costs.

Gone are the filing cabinets – and valuable time spent filing, scanning, printing and (are we still?) binding. FYI automations ensure every team member’s time is used productively, and practices can effectively meet sustainability objectives by moving to a paperless office.

We didn’t need physical servers anymore. We didn’t need to maintain it; we didn’t need to update it. All the costs associated with that just stopped.

Twenty minutes per job saved on filing, 30 minutes saved on preparing workpapers… the time, and cost, savings add up.

In fact, firms relying on manual processes can expect time-savings of up to 20% just by using FYI’s core feature set. But that’s just for starters. We’re on a mission to save practices up to 50% of time spent on compliance and admin – and with the associated cost savings, that’s a phenomenal return on a small investment. But don’t just take our word for it.

I had to get an accountant to check my numbers because… when we calculated how much we could save, the numbers were phenomenal.

Better decisions

When the practice is automated, every team member works to consistent processes. Consistent templates for documents and emails. Consistent filing rules for clients. And consistent job management.

This makes it easy to find what you need, determine where bottlenecks exist, plan capacity requirements, and better manage workflow. Visibility means quality control. And when you can clearly see what’s happening across the business, it’s natural that you can make better decisions for the business.

From what we’ve seen, this automation will provide a 25–30% time saving, improve our customer experience, and management will have a clearer overview of bottlenecks and budget to actuals.

Happier clients

But the reason we’re all in the business? Clients. 

When efficiency, consistency and accuracy are improved in the practice, the upshot is an enhanced client experience. Faster responses, precise figures and a far superior service. From just £1 per user a day with FYI.

We want the best efficiencies money can buy – because that doesn’t just help us. It helps our clients get better and quicker results.

It’s an outcome practices are quickly achieving with FYI automations. With two hours saved on every compliance job, your teams are freed up to find innovative ways to serve your clients better. It’s a win-win for accountants, and clients.

We’ve made a conscious effort to automate processes as extensively as possible, minimise human involvement and rely on efficient systems – which gives those humans more time back to be doing what they most enjoy – looking after our clients!

Happier team members

Until humans are completely automated out of their jobs (though, nothing we’ll see in the accountancy business), we have to take care of them.

Finding and retaining good people is now more challenging than ever, and providing a pool table in the office no longer cuts it. But automation goes a long way to ensuring satisfaction in the workplace. 

By removing mundane tasks from each day, and enabling your team to focus on more purposeful, fulfilling (and higher value) work, your practice becomes a sought after employer of choice for humans keen to add real value to their firm. Benefitting both your people, and the practice. 

FYI has helped us take away those menial, tedious tasks that just don’t need to be done by an individual. We just want to automate more now – it’s a fantastic feature.

And with FYI, the processes you can automate are only limited by your imagination.

I'm always thinking, ‘What's the next thing I can get FYI to do, so my team doesn't have to do it?

If you’re just beginning the automation journey, start with our core feature set – all these automations come shipped with FYI. And when you’re ready to gain even greater efficiency and productivity, explore the complete FYI automation library.

Manage better with FYI

So what does managing your practice really mean?

Practice success means being as efficient as we possibly can and ensuring our engagement with clients is maximised, which FYI helps us achieve.

Let FYI help you achieve the same. Get started with a platform demo, or free 30-day trial in your practice today.