Yesterday we were excited to hear that we were named one of the Top 50 Cloud Accountants of the Year by Hubdoc. This is what they had to say about us:
"Cristina knows the power of community and never hesitates to help others. The Cloud changed her practice in 2014 and she hasn't looked back! In 2015, she won Xero's 'Living the Dream' award. In 2016, she continued to go from strength to strength: scaling her practice, speaking at many accounting conferences and events and casually, just being an accounting superhero (NBD)!"
What the heck does it mean to be a "Top Cloud Accountant"?
Well, for one, we spend an insane amount of time finding and testing tools to work with our clients. We watch demos, ask questions, build product matrices, develop relationships, and get everything connected so you, our client, doesn't have to struggle with your accounting. I am a small business owner and it irks me to have go back in time and work against the technology that is available to us. We are consistently trying to find ways to improve the customer experience, locate communication/data break downs and create solutions that works for everyone. Do we charge to discover these best practices? Nope. We do, however, win the loyalty of our clients who love how we work with one another. We also get to save our sanity, which is priceless.
We also do our best to help others in our community. You may have met me at Xerocon, Xero Hour, or a slew other events across the United States. I absolutely believe that by going to these events and spending time to learn and share with others, I will be able to bring myself and the others around me up to another level. In the age of information, not much is proprietary and I see that as a good thing. We need to crowd source best practices! We should be able to talk candidly with our peers and ask them to tell us like it is. You should be able to ask if you are totally screwing up client relations, if you need to up your game, and what is the best way to do that. The more people who actively share their knowledge, the higher client satisfaction will be- across the board. Connecting a tool like Hubdoc to Xero isn't rocket science and if I can just save one person the headache of receipt collection/document management, I am doing it right. I remember the days where I used to collect paper (ick) from my clients and scan documents in (ugh), so we could get our work done. What a huge waste of time, right? Imagine doing that with 50, 100, or 200 clients. Your job went from accountant to paper chaser and who wants to do that?
What is next?
I am excited to see that the people around me are not only using the best technology, but telling others about it. If more and more people adopt a software like Hubdoc, that means that Hubdoc will naturally get better and better because the masses will demand it. Hubdoc will be able to afford to hire designers, product managers, and developers who will ask what we want, and then make it so. It is an upward spiral where everyone wins. So, while winning Top 50 Cloud Accountants of the Year may seem like just a title, to me it means something much more. By getting recognition, more people pay attention to we are doing and adopt our best practices. More of my peers will shift their practices to the cloud, will stress less, and will be better employers. Employees will be happier, which means clients will work with people who are excited to work on their file, and business will tick up. So winning this title isn't such a small thing after all- once you look at how it affects everyone around us.
Pretty f'in neat.
Enzo : May 14, 2015
