Episode 34: The Digitalisation of the Accounting Industry, with Richard McArtney

Sam interviews Richard McArtney from Bentleys Newcastle about his reflections on the last 20 years and future predictions for the Australian Accounting Industry.

Sam and Richard discuss his career journey from Industrial Chemistry to Retail Business to Accounting Partner, and how his prior business experience helped his work as an accountant. They then cover the range of digitalisation changes in the last 20+ years in the Australian Accounting Industry, from Y2K compliance to GST to cloud-based accounting to STP.

Richard and Sam explore why the industry needs to get proactive and stop waiting for legislation to force technology take-up and digitalisation, the opportunities we as an industry missed in the last 20 years to help clients avoid ATO debt and improve cashflow and how we can learn from that and grab those opportunities presented to us now.

Listen to an excerpt

What we cover in this episode

• Richard’s career journey from Industrial Chemistry to Retail Business to Accounting

• How his prior business experience helped his work as an accountant and then partner

• Why Richard was the ‘go to tech guy’ when it came to Y2K compliance

• The year-round increase in workload for the accounting industry since the introduction of GST

• Why the industry needs to get proactive and stop waiting for legislation to force technology take-up and digitalisation

• The problem with the desktop mindset many accountants are still bringing to cloud-based software

• The opportunities we as an industry missed in the last 20 years to help clients avoid ATO debt and improve cashflow

• How we can learn from that and grab those opportunities now

• What is stopping accountants and advisors getting the word out about additional services

• What an In Demand Accountant will look like in 10 years time

• The importance of financial education for our clients and technology education for our staff

• What legacy Richard wants to leave in the industry

• Richard’s top three tips for accountants and advisors heading into the next 20 years of the industry

Quotes

“[Before GST] from January to June, apart from doing some tax planning and preliminary audit work each year, you weren’t that busy. And suddenly, with the advent of GST…we are just busy all year round now. I feel like we’re working twice as hard as we used to and I’m not sure if our remuneration [has changed] accordingly.”

“A lot of these changes have been forced through government as opposed to because it's good management, it’s good to have up to date data, it’s good to have a business grip on it. It's you know, a lot of the changes in our clients behaviour and our [industry’s] behaviour has all been by legislation.” ~ Sam

“My most efficient clients have been the ones that have been putting money aside in a separate bank account and not touching it, saving it there to pay their BAS on time. And other ones have just been making regular payments to the tax office regardless of whether they needed to or not.” ~ Richard

“I think back in 2000, a lot of it was just compliance, just getting the BAS out each quarter. There wasn't much thought put into advisory type work where you help them with cash flows and all the rest of it.” ~ Richard

“When you do cash flow forecasts for a client…so they can monitor it every month, they absolutely love it. I think it's just getting the word out there to the other clients that don't have that, that we can do it for them and that it's going to help them run their business.” ~ Richard

“As an industry, the accounting profession are a bit slow on the uptake with a lot of these things. There's some that do do it well, but I reckon the majority of us…just try and get the work [done] the clients keep dumping on them without having any time to innovate.” ~ Richard

“[Richard’s top tips] Understand the client's needs, create efficiencies in your in your practice and then enjoy what you're doing.” ~ Richard

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