It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a…cloud accountant?
If the term cloud accountant sounds like something out of a mythical universe filled with unicorns and ethereal visions, well, you might be a tiny bit disappointed. But wait—you might also learn something really useful here! So don’t run away just yet.
A cloud accountant is just like a traditional bookkeeper or accountant that you may have worked with in the past. The biggest difference is that you and the cloud accountant collaborate virtually instead of meeting in person. By working with you online and reviewing your financial picture in real time, a cloud accountant can provide extremely valuable support to a growing business.
To truly understand how you work with a cloud accountant, we wanted to give you a glimpse into their daily lives. Here’s an average day for a cloud accountant at GCT.
8:47 am: Arrive at the office. Sometimes I work remotely, but we have a team meeting this afternoon. Make a beeline for coffee before settling in at my desk.
9:02 am: Look through emails that came in overnight. One of my clients is having an issue with Expensify transactions not showing up in Xero. I log into both systems to see what’s up. Turns out the Expensify transactions are waiting for manager approval. Again. We had this same issue 3 weeks ago, but it’s pretty common for new systems to take a while to click for everybody involved. I reply to my client’s email to remind her that the manager needs to review and approve all expense transactions.
9:35 am: Check my calendar. I’m scheduled to spend the morning reviewing the Xero files for Brew-YAH, a local brew-pub and one of my favorite clients. I log into Brew-YAH’s Xero portal and start looking around. Hey, these guys had their biggest weekend ever in sales! I make a mental note to congratulate them when I send them an email later.
10:42 am: Finish up with Brew-YAH’s books. Since they started using Xero about a year ago, their books have gotten so much more manageable. Our first few months together were pretty painful, and it’s hard to believe I can review everything in just over an hour now. Based on what I saw, their revenues are continuing to grow. I send a Slack message to our tax team to ask them to look at Brew-YAH’s accounts and see if they need to make any changes for tax purposes.
11:00 am: Launch a Zoom meeting for my call with Smith Construction, another one of my clients. They have a high-touch package for bookkeeping, so we have a standing weekly call to review their progress migrating to the cloud.
12:02 pm: Wrap up with Smith Construction. Our calls are always productive, but they’ve been a challenging client so far. I’m looking at my list of all the tasks I need to complete for them when Shelly’s head pops around the corner. She asks if I want to make a Chick-fil-a run, and the answer is always yes!
12:37 pm: Return from lunch and start prepping for our team meeting this afternoon.
1:00 pm: Time for our weekly team meeting!
2:45 pm: Back at my desk reviewing my to-do list from the team meeting. Two of our cloud accountants will be on vacation next week, so we reviewed all of their accounts to make sure the clients will have seamless coverage. I’ll be taking on three of those clients next week, so I spend a little time glancing through their Xero files to make sure I don’t have any big questions.
3:23 pm: Phone rings. It’s the client from this morning with the manager who isn’t approving reports in Expensify. She kindly asks me to walk the manager through the process again. We jump on a quick Zoom call so I can share my screen, and I record the session to send for future use.
4:00 pm: Training webinar with team Xero. Fortunately my client call wrapped up just in time. I grab some coffee and settle in for the webinar.
4:40 pm: Webinar wraps and I have a few outstanding emails to answer before the end of the day.
All in a day’s work! As you can see, a cloud accountant’s days are varied, but the common thread is an intense focus on customer service. At GCT, there are many sets of eyes looking at your business all the time, which means you receive real-time advisory services and proactive accounting. Little mistakes are fixed before they turn into big headaches. Changes and issues are anticipated in time for you to make the best possible business decisions. If you’ve looked at your accounting as a historical record of activity, you’re missing out on a goldmine of opportunity for streamlining and growing your business.
Are you ready to meet your own personal cloud accountant? Contact us today to get started.