Exit Planning Advice for Accountants
At Abacus, we’re here to help you get the very most out of your Accounting business.
Our top priority is to ensure that you not only enjoy your work now, but also exit your Accounting practice seamlessly and successfully when the time comes.
Whether you’re looking to pass your firm down to the next generation or transfer ownership to someone else, our team at Abacus is dedicated to helping you achieve maximum value — all on your preferred exit strategy!
Optimising Your Accounting Practice
Your Accounting practice has not only been your life’s work, your lifeblood and your reputation, but a large portion of your wealth is tied up in your practice. This is why we believe it’s imperative to commence the process of business value optimisation to ensure you get top-dollar for the practice you’ve worked so hard to develop — Simply flipping your practice at the click of our fingers doesn’t honour what you’ve built.
Getting your exit plan just right deserves a lot of time and attention, this is why the best time to start the process is now, so there’s plenty of time to implement your exit strategy.
Our experts will guide you through the process of enhancing profitability, streamlining operations, and identifying key personnel to retain, all with the ultimate aim of leaving your practice in the best possible shape. We provide you with short, medium and long-term recommendations.
We’ll work closely with you to develop a customised plan that takes into account your unique needs and goals. With our support, you can rest assured that your exit from the Accounting profession will be a positive and rewarding experience.
Our practice optimisation and exit planning advice helps you establish a rewarding succession plan for your exit, and allows you to secure the best price upon selling your practice.
Talk to us about your plans, we can help get you there.
How We Help With Your Accounting Practice Exit Plan
1. Exit Strategy
The path to exiting your Accountancy practice will remain unclear unless you have a plan mapped out. We help by stepping through your ideal plan for retirement, including how you’d prefer to exit, and of course your timeframe. By comprehensively assessing your business value, we can uncover options you may not have considered, and advise what is going to be a realistic outcome.
2. Succession Plan & Finding a Candidate
While selling and getting out quickly can sometimes seem attractive, succession plans have numerous benefits. We can help you partner with someone internal or we can source a quality candidate elsewhere. Our experience can guide you step by step through the process.
3. Best Price at Sale
If you do prefer to sell, we can help you get the best price possible, given the time available and your situation. We can develop an action plan to improve the practice in the lead up to selling, identifying where to invest time and resources and where to cut back. Remember, that a buyer may have conditions, i.e all records are to be digitised, or losing clients during the transition period will result in losing amounts from the sale price (known as ‘claw-backs’).
4. Invest, Upgrade and streamline
Improving a practice’s value generally means looking at a number of areas, including technology, staff, services & fees (e.g. charge-out) rates, and client base. We can identify areas of improvement and develop a clear action plan and timeline to help you work through this process.
5. Getting the most equity from current clients
Increasing revenue doesn’t just mean finding new clients, it can mean adopting new services, restructuring your fees or upgrading existing clients. We can help your team develop more clarity around their service levels and the expertise and value they offer to clients. We also have strategies to ensure clients understand the value of their services and have regular opportunities to upgrade.
We’ll help you find more time for what you love and add value to your practice — both now and in the future.
Talk to us about your Accounting Practice today.
Steve Toews, Principal
We’d love to book a free consultation call with you, to discuss your personal business goals and challenges and see how we can help.
Get in touch or book your call today.