Why accountants should offer financial education

As an accountant, you help your clients understand their finances and file taxes. But with the increasingly automated accounting world, people may need you less and less. So, how will you stay valuable to clients?  

As a financial expert, you can offer financial education services to increase your usefulness. These services will make your accounting firm more marketable and worth investing in. 

Providing financial courses can also improve your clients’ financial management and make your job easier. 

This guide covers why to offer financial education as an accountant, including how it:

• Helps improve clients’ financial accuracy. 
• Promotes stronger client finances. 
• Makes it easier to work with clients.
• Allows you to earn more from your business. 

If you introduce financial education to your accounting clients, you can help improve how they approach their finances. 

Your services will simplify their time-consuming financial admin, leading to greater client satisfaction. 

Let’s go over some of the ways financial literacy can help clients.

Teaching financial management basics will make your clients’ lives easier. It allows your clients to maintain more accurate books and better understand their finances.  

You won’t be there to hold clients’ hands through every invoice and expense transaction. But with a finance toolkit, they can feel more confident and productive. 

Your clients will have tips for: 

• Keeping up with their money.
• Filling out records correctly.
• Tracking their cash flow and profits.
• Creating accurate financial statements.

With these skills, they’ll have fewer errors and more transparent financial data, which can feel rewarding and reduce stress. 

If you want some tips for helping clients with expenses, check out our article on helping your clients work smarter: the five best ways to manage expenses.

You can also introduce clients to digital skills and tools that simplify their bookkeeping process. For example, consider recommending modern accounting software and showing them how to use it. 

With software, clients can save time on their financial admin with: 

• Automated tools like expense categorisation.
• Efficient and straightforward invoicing.
• Cash flow insights.
• Tax estimates. 

These tools can help clients stay on top of their finances. On top of that, software lets them track their financial performance and plan for the future of their business. 

If you work with single-person businesses, you might suggest they try Countingup, the business current account with built-in accounting software. With this, business owners can manage their finances all in one place. 

Plus, Countingup is Making Tax Digital compliant. Clients can easily share their financial data with you without worrying about lags, duplicates, or errors.  

It may feel, at times, that your clients can’t grasp the words you use as an accountant. But, if you educate them on key financial terms, they can better understand and communicate with you. 

Clients can feel more comfortable working with you when they understand the vocabulary. It’ll also be easier to keep up with everything surrounding their business finances. 

So, learning the essentials of finance can help your clients organise and understand their finances. But it can also help them improve their money. 

As your clients strengthen their financial management skills, it’ll be easier to spot positive and negative cash trends. This knowledge can strengthen their budgeting and help them cut unnecessary costs. 

If clients are more aware of their money, they can increase their profitability. You’ve given them the skills to succeed and grow their business.  

Sure, financial education can help your clients. But it can also improve your accounting firm and make it more agile. Here are a few main things you can look forward to. 

Do you ever struggle to work with clients who are disorganised or confused by their finances? Sure, your job is to help them make sense of it all, but it’s challenging to help clients who don’t give you accurate financial information. 

Giving your clients the right knowledge will make it easier for them to keep organised financial records. This organisation can also: 

• Promote timeliness and help them meet deadlines – they won’t be struggling to make sense of it. 
• Help you communicate with them – if they know the main terms, they can speak your language and speed up the process. 

Basically, it’s a great way to overcome some of the common challenges of being an accountant. The knowledge you give them will simplify your process and services, making it easier to get your job done.

You can charge a fee for your financial education services to diversify your firm’s income. This added service will help you earn more while also enhancing your client experience. 

Plus, it’ll set you apart from automated or digital accounting services. You can provide a personable experience that clarifies essential information. This can draw in clients. 

But even offering free education can help you earn more. These skills can strengthen your clients’ finances and lead to greater business profits.  

Say you charge clients based on a percentage of their income. The more they earn, the more profitable they are to you. On top of this, if they’re satisfied with their experience, they’re more likely to refer you to others. 

Introducing financial education services to your accounting firm can lead to more robust business and prepare you for the changing market. By developing a course or covering the basics, you can help clients: 

• Improve their record-keeping methods.
• Understand financial terms.
• Simplify their process with the right tools. 

As a result, it’ll be easier to work with your clients, and you can earn more money for your firm. 

But as you improve your client relationships, also consider how you can improve your services. Save your practice time on manual admin and help your clients keep organised records with Countingup’s free accounting software. 

It’s built specifically to help you manage your self-employed and sole trader clients.

The app automates time-consuming bookkeeping admin for your clients so they can focus on running their business — and send you accurate, structured data to work from. Find out more here.