1000+
customers

50+ countries
across the world

Outsourcing leader
since 2008

Technology-driven
services

Stringent
quality processes

Blog » A Comprehensive Guide to Setting Realistic Revenue Goals for CPA Firms

A Comprehensive Guide to Setting Realistic Revenue Goals for CPA Firms

Last updated: 10 Oct, 2023 By | 6 Minutes Read

cpa firm growth strategies

Setting realistic business goals is crucial for every business, including CPA firms. A CPA firm’s goals can be anything from annual revenue targets to acquiring a certain number of new clients and expanding the company to a certain level. With no milestones to measure the achievement, realizing business success can be a far-forgotten dream. To hold the title of a ‘successful CPA firm, you must start working today. A roadmap with several meaningful CPA firm growth strategies and steps is crucial in setting your company on the journey to success and growth.

12 Important CPA Firm Growth Strategies

1. Set your annual goal and then break it into quarterly goals

Achieving smaller goals to accomplish a long-term goal is the ideal approach. However, once you have set your annual growth, you must consider how it can be divided into smaller segments and made more achievable.

When doing so, you must consider the company’s historical data and make the entire business goal achievement timeline more realistic. For example, the target for each quarter would be different as a business gets influenced due to several reasons during different quarters.

2. Understand your current position

Revenue goals are set for individual service lines, and to ensure you have a realistic approach, you must consider the past business done for every individual service line.

Chalk out the busiest quarter, slowest growth phase, better performing, and better revenue-generating service lines to make the process easier. Then, make an informed decision based on last year’s information and data.

3. Segregate the market into segments

Do not target the market as a whole but make segments to create easy targets. Further, identify which market segments performed better in the last year. Happenstance and serendipity are two basic factors used by CPA Firms when creating market niches and generating a well-thought portfolio of clients. In addition to this, businesses must also consider competition in every market when setting revenue goals.

4. Financial Considerations

After developing  solid CPA firm growth strategies, it is now time to focus on economic factors and business needs. In the early business stage, you may find it challenging to make the right profits, and there would be greater challenges to overcome. However, this is just a phase and will pass on.

You must be prepared to achieve and, along with the financial factors, be considerate about current assets, personal debt, payment schedule, estimated startup and operating cost, revenue, cash management, borrowing costs, cost needed for office space, equipment costs, and staffing costs, are also some core considerations to not miss out on.

5. Determine how many new clients you need onboard

Now that you have set your annual and quarterly financial goals, it is time to evaluate how many new clients you need to achieve them. You must make this calculation per service line to have a clearer picture of what to achieve and how to achieve it.

6. Make an action plan for 3-5 years

When it comes to evaluation, a 10-year plan often fails but a shorter, say 3-5 year plan offers a realistic picture and results in due time. Your short-term goals in terms of revenue, lead generation, and overall growth can be motivating and more realistic than ten years of planning.

    7. Take a strategic hiring approach and value skills

    Headhunting is a tough process made even tougher by old-school CPA firms offering virtual accounting services as they start the process with titles in mind without assessing their strength and weaknesses. If you want to last longer and better, you must first know your positives and negatives. Then, you can acquire skills and talent to bridge the gap with a clear understanding of your weak points.

    The ideal approach toward hiring is focusing on acquiring skills and not titles. However, a detailed job description plays a crucial role in the process.

    8. Maintain transparency

    Building a trustworthy reputation is crucial for CPA firms and virtual accounting services providers. Clients trust businesses that take a transparent approach toward their clients and have information easily accessible to the authorized party.

    Instead of being a tightly wrapped company, you must be willing to share with your client whatever information is deemed fit. With clients more involved in the process and updated with progress reports from time to time, you can earn better business and client trust to scale your business and achieve revenue goals.

    9. Share your plan and do it often

    Your business plan should be common knowledge to your teammates. This will give them a clear understanding of their role and how to contribute. Transparency in your internal work environment can make significant steps toward goal achievement and earn employee satisfaction.

    Value each level of the employee chain, offering authority to top talents to lead and motivating the lower level employees to adhere and earn.

    10. Segregate your service offerings from competitors

    “Service is important to every firm and, of course, it’s important to the client; but people’s definition of service differs,” says an expert. You must make yourself unique to become more identifiable; to do this; you must make effective combos of talent, knowledge, and skills.

    You and your competitor offer the same services, but your approach to the service makes you unique. Also, you must emphasize offering outstanding virtual accounting, bookkeeping, and tax services, which are in great demand in the current unstable market scenario.

    11. Expand beyond borders

    It is high time to limit yourself to geographical boundaries. With the new reality of virtual accounting services, you must prepare to venture into newer markets beyond borders. However, this would also increase the level of competition and hence the demand for a tougher and more effective competitive analysis and strategy.

    12. Make strong partnerships

    Bookkeeping expenses are one of the most revenue-consuming parts of running a CPA firm. However, if you consider outsourcing bookkeeping services, you can save a lot of money and resources to focus on your core business activities.

    Conclusion

    CPA firms must fasten up their belts and make realistic revenue goals. It is important to expand service lines and make per service line goals. Also, virtual accounting services plays an important role in making the business plan more goal-forward. Accounting firms must partner with reliable CPA accounting service providers to become more resourceful and desiccated to their financial goals.

    At Cogneesol, we are a team offering flawless virtual accounting services while contributing to your short and long-term business goals. We understand your business goals and make effective plans to achieve them. Some of the many benefits that you enjoy when working with Cogneesol include:

    • Better decision-making power based on a realistic analysis of financial data
    • Effective lean and peak accounting seasons management
    • Minimized shortage of resources
    • Trained and skilled employees with up-to-date accounting software understanding.

    We guarantee:

    • Guaranteed Cost Savings (up to 50% savings on the salary costs)
    • Increasing Capacity to Scale (access to highly-skilled, senior accountants)
    • Improving Quality & Accuracy (dedicated offshore accountants
    • Adding New Service Offerings

    To get more information about our offering and pricing, contact us at [email protected] or call us at +1646-688-2821.

    X