A non-institutionally owned financial planning and accounting dealer group has launched an automated Statement of Advice (SoA) tool it claims will cut the time it takes accountants to produce a range of advice documents by up to 80 per cent. The tool produces SOA’s in five key areas: stablishing a self-managed superannuation fund (SMSF); borrowing to invest in real estate under a Limited Recourse …
Accountants advised on outsourcing quality problems
Mitchell Turner released an article on Accountants Daily, explaining that there can be inconsistency issues and wavering quality levels when it comes to outsourcing of operations overseas. This article might have been headed: “Problems with outsourcing”. As the article indicates, one Outsourcing provider notes the problems with controlling and managing outsourcing operations, quite possibly in reference to the recent trend …
Millennials and their impact on Australian Accounting firms… and the fixed offshore resource model
Millennials (also known as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y) are the demographic generation following Generation X. There are no precise dates for when the generation starts and ends; most researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s. The Millennials seem to be making a lot of people worried. With blog postings like …
More Disruption on the way… SMSF’s and free HR Software
Westpac Banking Corporation’s venture capital fund Reinventure Group has invested into Flare HR, a startup that is looking to disrupt the industry super funds’ stranglehold over the market for default super funds. Flare HR provides free HR software to small-to-medium-sized enterprises. The free software is a fully digital on-boarding process for employees and includes employment contracts that are signed electronically by cloud, performance reviews, …
Blockchain technology is going to change the face of finance forever
We’re starting to see some momentum in blockchain, with blockchain being touted as the glue that is going to drive a productivity revolution across the globe on par with what Henry Ford did with the automobile. Big banks around the world are moving at pace to build blockchains. A group of 40 global banks have used different distributed ledger technology to …
Discover the Firm of the Future
If you typed in firm of the future then you would end up on this site, which has a definite Intuit feel (top marks to Intuit for grabbing this site name). But the site is well worth a visit. Intuit invited their accounting client base to submit a short video on being the Firm of the Future and they’ve picked the “Top …
Little evidence of problematic offshoring
The ATO has revealed that while it is aware of rising concerns about more SMSF services being outsourced overseas, it has not yet run into any major issues. To date the ATO has seen little evidence of outsourcing of audit or advisory activities though this is something the ATO is monitoring. As the ATO notes, at the end of the …
The Fintech’s are coming… And how it will impact you…
In our blog 17 March we mentioned the PWC report “How Fintech is shaping financial services”. We’re now seeing more press on how the Australian government is committed to support the industry that is “transforming our financial systems and our economy”. Fintech is one of the fastest growing sectors in the financial services industry globally and Australia. Fintech is happening fast …
Accountants more comfortable with offshoring to experienced providers
Offshoring SMSF administration and compliance work is becoming more common among accountants as the services receive more take-up and the quality of work improves. Krystine Lumanta from SelfManagedSuper writes about the general acceptance of outsourcing in the accounting industry after speaking with Odyssey Resources CEO David Carter. Many small and medium enterprises are already using offshore resources ranging from Virtual assistants …
Digital Australia: Impacts on Accountants
The EY Digital Australia: State of the Nation report provides a view of digital engagement amongst Australians. The report noticed a step change in 2015 in smartphone usage. Smartphone usage pushed through the 80% mark in this survey with 96% of 18-34 year olds using a smartphone. Consumers reveal many Australian companies fail to get the basics right, and the …
