The power of tax advisory as a niche

For accounting and tax professionals, tax season can be a whirlwind. You clock in countless hours, navigating the demands and deadlines to ensure your clients are set. But after this intense period, what then? Instead of just catching your breath, it’s prime time to think bigger with advisory services.

After all, your clients have big questions on their minds throughout the year. How can they handle their money better? How should they pay their team? How can they grow their business the right way? They’re looking for answers more than just at tax time. That’s where accounting and tax professionals really come in.

Plus after tax season, if you haven’t transitioned to a zero accounts receivable firm, you can often find yourself chasing after clients for payments. But shifting to advisory services can ease this strain. It’s a steady, year-round gig, and your clients won’t be reeling from a hefty one-off bill. For your sake and theirs, it’s time to step up, offer more support, and help clients navigate their challenges.

Unpacking advisory services

When you offer advisory services, you go beyond number crunching. You want to offer a helping hand to clients in the areas they struggle with the most. This can include financial planning and tax strategy development, and business restructuring advice, to more targeted areas such as succession planning or mergers and acquisitions guidance. Essentially, it’s about using your expertise to deliver strategic insights that drive your clients’ businesses forward.

The power of niche advisory services in our tech-driven age

These niche areas are well worth exploring, because it’s never been more important for you to stand out. Choosing a niche lets you hone a specialty and future proof your firms. It’s your ticket to resilience and continued relevance in the face of lightning-quick technological advancements.

Automation, cloud-based solutions, and artificial intelligence (AI) are revolutionizing the landscape, quickly and efficiently taking over routine tasks. Think data entry, document creation, and even intricate document reviews. This technological shift isn’t here to replace us; instead, it’s here to amplify our value.

Narrow AI—also known as weak AI—which is AI that tackles a specific task, is ramping up accuracy and minimizing the mundane. A couple of examples are invoice processing or tax compliance checking. Combine these with machine learning’s ability to identify financial trends and anomalies, and the potential for transforming our industry for the better is clear.

With our everyday tasks streamlined, you’ll have a leaner operation and more time to become strategic advisors in your chosen niche. This helps differentiate you, enabling you to deliver unparalleled, tailored expertise and insights.

Ultimately, embracing these tech tools lets you do more with less, carving a path to a more profitable business model and strategic survival.

The value of tax advisory as a niche

Tax advisory presents a prime opportunity for you to capitalize on your existing compliance work. By expanding into this area, you could boost your income potential and transition from a seasonal income model to a more stable, year-round revenue stream. This pivot helps mitigate the familiar ebbs and flows you encounter with a traditional tax season, ensuring a steadier flow of cash throughout the year.

What’s more, according to Intuit’s Taxpayer Insights & Intelligence Brief 2022, there’s clear client demand for this type of service. Clients don’t just want you to handle their tax returns. They expect their tax professionals to guide them toward better financial outcomes using the latest methods and technologies.

So how can you deliver on these expectations? Start by using tax forms as a stepping stone to understanding your clients’ overall financial landscape. These documents offer a snapshot that you can use to assess what additional services your clients may need.

So how can you deliver on these expectations? Start by using tax forms as a stepping stone to understanding your clients’ overall financial landscape.

“It’s very easy to file a tax return and very easy to find a bookkeeper, but what they really want and need are insights and advice,” says Sean M. Duncan, president and founder of SMD Consulting & Accounting, LLC. “In fact, a lot of time they assume you’re giving them that advice and it’s not happening. There’s this massive need for people to get insights from their tax experts or bookkeeping professionals.”

So what’s the answer to this gap? It’s time to go beyond basic services and step up as the expert your clients are looking for. From there, you can build tailored offerings, such as cash flow analysis, benchmarking against industry standards, comprehensive budgeting, and strategic tax planning.

By responding to this evolving demand, you can meet and exceed client expectations and position your practice for greater profitability and client loyalty.

The key takeaway is that tax advisory is so much more than a complementary service. It’s your chance to enhance client relationships, modernize operations, and tap into a significant financial opportunity.

Where to go from here

There’s no question tax advisory opens doors for accounting and tax professionals, offering consistent, year-round revenue, and eliminating seasonal revenue peaks and troughs. Sure, there’s hesitation: traditional compliance work, despite its demanding hours, is familiar territory with reliable returns. But in an age when the industry is rapidly pivoting toward digital transformation, clinging to the old ways isn’t a sustainable strategy. Embracing change, especially with tools such as Ignition at your fingertips, is the path forward.

Ready to take the leap and be part of the future of accounting and tax services? Watch an Ignition demo today and unlock your firm’s next potential growth chapter.

Editor’s note: This blog post was co-written with Ignition. I have obtained permission to share it on my website/social media. For the original source of this post, please visit the Ignition blog.