QuickBooks Connect is Intuit's biggest event of the year. We are giving you a preview of the accountant educational tracks in the weeks leading up to the event. We started the series with an overview of the accountant educational track and now are bringing you the details of the accountant track session by session with part 2 of the "Advisor Model".
Tuesday November 3
7:00am 10 Barriers to Service Excellence and How to Overcome Them, Joe Woodard
Accounting professionals often have stressed-infused relationships with their clients. Filing deadlines, urgent financial matters, and other time sensitive small business needs will often drive the accountant into a perpetual reactionary position with the client. To maintain high levels of service, we must be intentional about the way we interact with our clients, we must measure the results of our services regularly and we must perfect our systems, processes and technologies. By doing so, we will overcome the barriers to service excellence inherent within the accounting profession.
During this session you will:
- Discover your firm's unique purpose and the way that purpose drives your employees toward service excellence
- Explore technologies that reduce miscommunication and misalignment with your clients
- Learn practical ways to measure the quality of the services you provide your clients
10:45am Business Process Outsourcing: Practice Management Roadmap, Leslie Jorgenson
Interested in starting or expanding your outsourced accounting support practice? Hear the basics on getting started from Leslie Jorgensen, Founder & CEO of Supporting Strategies, a national provider of outsourced accounting support services. Leslie will provide you with a tactical roadmap to assist you with implementing and managing systems to build a scalable practice that focuses on delivering value to your client base through consistent, quality-level accounting support services.
You will learn how to:
- Recruit, train, manage and retain a talented team
- Develop and close clients as well as manage the relationships with your clients
- Efficiently manage your own back office while monitoring Key Performance Indicators to keep you focused on your financial goals
- Ensure high quality across an ever-increasing remote client base
10:45am Large Firm Talk Series (Part 1) Darren Root
This session includes three "talks" designed specifically for larger, full service CPA firms, and focuses on strategic responses CPAs need to deploy around changing client expectations, technological disruptions, the modernization and revitalization of client account services through data automation, and the shift within the accounting profession toward management consulting, financial analysis, and other forms of trusted advisory services.
Part 1 includes three thought leader presentations (i.e. "talks):
- Expanding Your "Menu": Moving Your Firm Beyond Traditional Tax and Accounting Services
- Establishing a Niche: Honing an Industry Focus to Reach Differentiated Proficiencies and to Attract New Clients
- Packing and Pricing Your Services: Moving Beyond the Timesheet toward a Value-Focused Firm
1:45pm "Think Outside the Books:" Management Consulting for the Accounting Professional, Frank Coker
It is not enough for an accountant to be good with numbers. "Cross-footing, ticking and tying" are low-value skills and are being phased out by ever smarter systems. Value gets created when the numbers become the basis for taking action, developing strategy and making mid-course corrections. Frank Coker, Certified Management Consultant, will draw from his latest book - Pulse: Understanding the Vital Signs of your Business , along with the research done by his students in the University of Washington Masters of Science in Information Management program. The session will outline the new role that accountants are playing with small and medium businesses as a trusted advisor. Frank will also draw from leading-edge courses he teaches on entrepreneurship and business innovation to explain how business leaders are building virtual teams to run their business, using "predictive analytics" to get a clearer picture of where they are headed, and goal management to get their whole team on the same page. Attendees will learn new strategies for building credibility with business owners, processes for staying engaged, ways to convert advisory skills into steady year-round revenue.
Learning Objectives:
- Understand strategies for building credibility with business owners and top decision makers
- Learn how to identify business performance problems before they create serious damage
- Obtain insight into becoming a highly valued advisor while avoiding clerical traps
- Understand methods for building retainer-based advisory services
1:45pm Five Stages of Cloud Adoption Grief, Leslie Shiner
Moving to the cloud can not only be difficult for clients but for ProAdvisors as well. Whether or not it’s you or your clients who are reluctant, find a way to get through this roadblock by exploring the 5 Stages of Cloud Adoption Grief.
In this session, learn how to:
- Create a path for you and your clients to make the most of moving to the cloud,
- Deal with client objections
- Help clients see the benefits of adopting the Cloud
1:45pm Large Firm Talk Series (Part 2), Arianna Campbell
This session includes two "talks" designed specifically for larger, full service CPA firms, and focuses on strategic responses CPAs need to deploy around changing client expectations, technological disruptions, and the modernization and revitalization of client account services through data automation.
Part 2 includes two thought leader presentations (i.e. "talks):
- Lean Six Sigma and the Accounting Practice: Perfecting and Systemizing Processes to Increase Productivity and Profitability
- Elevating Advisory Services: Selecting the Right Technology, Talent and Technique
3:00pm Large Firm Talk Series (Part 3), Darren Root
This session includes two "talks" designed specifically for larger, full service CPA firms, and focuses on strategic responses CPAs need to deploy around the shift within the accounting profession toward management consulting, financial analysis, and other forms of trusted advisory services.
Part 3 includes two thought leader presentations (i.e. "talks):
- Advisory Services: Strategies for Achieving and Maintaining Leadership Status within the Profession
- Leveraging Technology as a Competitive Advantage: Solutions that are Production-Focused, Integration-Rich and Future-Ready
3:00pm Streamlining Taxes In A Digital World, Brady Suggs
Keeping up with the way to most effectively do taxes while ensuring that you are doing what’s best for your business and your clients, is challenging. In a session led by Intuit Product Manager, Brady Suggs, you'll learn the way to streamline the completion of taxes in the digital world - for individuals and businesses - and you'll see how Intuit is building world-class professional tax software with the preparer (and their clients) in mind.
In this session, you will learn about:
- Advantages the web gives you to optimize your workflow
- How to connect Books-to-Tax
- How to collect client data and collaborate digitally
- How to obtain signatures electronically
- How to quickly find and input tax data
- How to leverage mobile technology
Wednesday, November 4
8:30am Implementing Value Pricing in Your Firm - A Practical Approach To Capturing Value and Sharing In It, Mark Wickersham
This session focuses on the practical steps to implementing value pricing in your firm, bridging the gap between the "why" of value pricing to the "how" of value pricing.
During this session you will:
- Understand Why Value Pricing is the Key to Profitability in Today’s World
- Break the Process Down into Manageable, Actionable Steps
- Learn How to Value Price in a Cloud Accounting Environment:
- Discover Tools and Resources Available to Assist in the Process
Haven't signed up for QuickBooks Connect yet? Click here to register and to see the full line up of speakers, exhibitors and entertainment.