I recently read a discussion on an accountancy website where a client asked for advice on dealing with his accountant. The client wanted to move his records onto Xero to take advantage of the cloud computing they offer but the accountant refused citing what the client saw as flimsy and non-specific reasons.
It’s always struck me as odd that some practicing accounts aren’t willing to make moves towards cloud based software, given the large number of advantages it brings. There are the obvious examples of Xero being far easier to access than any older software packages such as sage, before the shift towards cloud computing we often had to run a dozen slightly different versions of the same piece of accounting software because software companies got into the habit of releasing and charging for a new version every single year. Obviously very few companies are actually going to bother to repurchase the same software with minor improvements each year, it meant there were endless problems with compatibility and having to pass records back and forth on USBs – if one person changed the data while another was working on it you had an immediate data loss as you would now have two separate versions of the same data.
Even outside those improvements it’s a strange stance to take towards your clients. There are a lot of firms out there who adopt the old fashioned accountancy approach of speaking to their clients only once or twice a year to prepare a set of accounts nine months after the year end, but even most of these practices would have been more than willing to give their client some freedom in how they keep their records – especially when it’s a straight upgrade on other systems like excel. It struck me as a pretty good example of terrible customer service in action. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming response to the discussion was that the original poster should find a new accountant.