The Offbeat Accountant

Guidelines on how to add up to the surplus side of the Relationship Accounting “If you take care of your people, your people will take care of your customers, and your business will take care of itself -JW Marriot My last post gave something to talk about… As I commented, I introduced the concept of Relationship Accounting at  the kick off meeting of 2017. ( http://theoffbeatccountant.blogspot.com/2017/01/relationship-accounting.html )  However, I believed that was not enough. Personally, I don’t enjoy meetings in which I talk for an hour and the only feedback I receive is “ Yes, we will do that ” or “ we understand ” or the different versions of “ aha..ehem..ok ”. So, to turn the tables a little bit, after I told them the story of “ Paccioli and Co ” I stood quiet.  Silence filled the room, and nervous looks crossed the room. It was clear that in their minds (even in my head) they were recalling all those times in which they add up crosses, either in...

“Get closer than ever to your customers. So close that you tell them what they need well before they realize it themselves” -Steve Jobs A new year has started, and with it comes the kick-off meeting to settle the goals for 2017. As I was planning the topics of the agenda, I remembered a book I read some years ago.  “ Selling the invisible ” by Harry Beckwith deals on the best practices to sell intangible services, comparing them to the industry of products. When a customer buys a product, the simple physical existence of that product acts as a constant reminder of how satisfied they are, and what a good choice they made. But what happen with a service? Services are invisible and finite, which ma kes it difficult to create a positive and constant reminder to a customer.  Beckwith states that many purchasers of services aren't even sure what it is that they are buying, since it hasn't typically been delivered yet. They are buying a promise of fulfilling a n...

“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy,  not to fighting the old,  but on building the new.”                                                                                     - Socrates Last week I attended an annual meeting of an association that gathers accounting firms in Miami. This meeting takes part every year, in different continents, and generally we tackle the same topics: compliance, branding, “Big 4”, IFRS, IASB, IFAC, ISA, ISO, and many other letters that struggle to stand up for something with real meaning… However, this year something caught my attention. The future of accountancy as we know it. I have read several blogs and news on the professions of the future, in which none accountancy appeared. We will be infamously replaced...

"What is straight? A line can be straight, or a street, but the human heart, oh, no, it's curved like a road through mountains." -Tennessee Williams. Streetcar Named Desire Shame on me! It`s been like forever since my last post…one post about how we must learn to manage time, and here I am being absorbed by the daily obligations. Of course the first months of the year are the most hectic for almost every accountant in this part of the world, but that´s no excuse to forget to improve other areas of our life, such as entertainment, sports, reading, learning, traveling and so on. Last week, the one that will remain in history as “the-week-everybody-went-crazy-with-Pokemon”, something unusual happened at the office. One of the guys, just activated an “incense” in the application and shouted “hey guys, get your phones ready, Pokémons are coming”. And during half an hour more than 20 different creatures (mostly repeated) started popping up (virtually) in every ...

Real Knowledge is to know the extent of one´s ignorance Confucius Last week I was perusing Facebook, as I sometimes do when I have some minutes free – more always than sometimes, to be true. I came across with a very interesting image of three clocks, one next to each other. They compared the pace of three different aspects of every day: Time, information and Knowledge Time: the clock hands moved at a regular pace, about 5 seconds to give a full turn. Information: the hands were like crazy, about 20 times the speed of the “time clock” Knowledge: the hands were stuck in number 6, like defeated. They tried to go up, but keep coming back to the 6. I tried to find this gif image again, but I was unable to find it, in spite of googling it by using all the combination of words possible, and rummaging through all my contacts of Facebook. That’s the problem with this amount of information. You can never find it when you really need it. So let`s try to make my poin...