This article first appeared in the CPA Practice Advisor’s Special Report: Spend Management Advisory: A Growing Opportunity for Accounting Firms in January 2025.
Marketing expert and best-selling author Seth Godin once said, “Don’t find customers for your products, find products for your customers.” If you substitute the word “services” for “products,” Godin’s quote becomes tailor-made for accounting firms, especially those with client advisory services (CAS) practices.
With the business environment becoming more complex, small and midsized businesses (SMBs) are seeking services from their trusted advisors that will help them survive and thrive.
Accounting firm marketing strategies can help communicate the full range of standardized services including spend management as a high-impact offering within a CAS practice. SMB clients who have expressed pain points with their existing expense management processes might be good candidates for spend management advisory services.
“SMB clients are very solution-oriented. Technology-driven spend management solves a lot of problems for clients, a key one being it gives them a view into their cash flow that they’ve never been able to see before. Business happens in real-time, and leaders at SMBs need technology that fits that pace. That’s where firms can become trusted advisors like never before,” said Kim Blascoe, senior director of CAS professional services at CPA.com and a former CAS leader for a top 100 firm.
Questions to ask clients
Here are some questions you can ask clients to initiate a spend management conversation:
- Does your spend regularly exceed allotted budgets?
- How do your current spending habits compare to previous years?
- Are you seeking more control and visibility into expenses on a monthly/weekly basis?
- Are you satisfied with the way expenses are categorized and reported on?
- Do you spend more on credit cards? Or via check and ACH?
- Do you have difficulty closing the books in a timely manner?
Another talking point to consider is whether you would want your clients to adopt a spend management solution as part of these services.
One CPA firm, Chaney & Associates, uses BILL Spend & Expense. If a client is against switching to the platform, CEO Steve Chaney believes it’s probably not worth the time and effort to work with them. The firm, however, can explain BILL’s solution in 10 seconds, and the client is usually persuaded to use it, Chaney said.
“The first thing a client signs with Chaney & Associates is their contract or engagement letter,” Steve Chaney said. “The second thing is their application for BILL Spend & Expense.”
What to include in your sales presentation
Now that you’ve identified clients as possible candidates for spend management advisory services and asked them questions about their pain points, it’s time to start talking to them about spend management and using a spend management solution. In their own words, here is some advice from those who have successfully done it.
Jody Grunden, partner and virtual CFO practice leader at Anders CPAs + Advisors: “We tell our clients that spend management solutions like BILL Spend & Expense give them visibility into their budgets. Clients have peace of mind when it comes to spend management for themselves and their employees because there are spend controls and caps in place.
“Without spend management technology, employees and even business owners won’t know until after they’ve spent money whether the business has the funds to pay for an expense or not. Maybe going over budget one time doesn’t seem that costly, but if this happens time and time again, overspending will quickly impact a business's growth.”
Megan Bronson, partner, Squire & Company: “I truly feel that every business should use a spend management tool like BILL Spend & Expense. But most businesses see expense management as a necessary evil, and they aren’t going to consider moving the dial—the decision-making process—until the necessary evil achieves ‘bane of existence’ status. When there are so many problems to solve as a management team, this seems important but not urgent enough to act on when there are fires to put out yesterday. So, as a trusted advisor, I watch for the pain points that indicate the client might be willing to learn more about spend management.”
Some of those pain points include:
- “I wish our management team would reign in our sales reps. They’re spending on the most ridiculous things, but we can’t say anything because ‘sales.’” BILL Spend & Expense allows you to set up a budget for each sales rep. It can be automatically renewed each month. They don’t have to spend the money, and if they need more than what is allocated, they can request it before it’s spent. Then, everyone is settled on the amounts they’re spending instead of just letting it happen.
- “I wish I didn’t have to ask my employees to go spend on their own cards. That’s not fair to them, especially if they can’t afford the buffer until they’re reimbursed, or worse, hand over my card so they can spend. That’s not secure.” BILL Spend & Expense allows you to create a credit card for each employee you want, setting the credit limit at $0 until you allocate funds to them through a budget. This makes the employee feel empowered to work within your budget without paying out of pocket.
- “I wish we could set up a card specific to a vendor instead of always putting the costs onto an employee’s card.” BILL Spend & Expense allows you to set up unlimited virtual cards. You can set limits, too, to prevent a vendor from charging your card multiple times. You can set up one-time cards or cards that stay open for recurring charges.
- “We’re ready as a company to set a budget and hold the department heads accountable for their spend.” BILL Spend & Expense is perfect for this situation. In fact, why wait until the end of the month, plus three or four weeks, to find out how each department has done? The software tracks all spend against the budget in a timely manner, as soon as the spend happens.
Matt Gardner, co-founder and CEO, Hiline: “When we make a pitch, we’re always pitching a fully loaded experience and solution for finance. We refer to this as HilineOS. As part of our overall pitch, we emphasize how valuable BILL Spend & Expense is in managing company spending, streamlining approval processes, and offering key insights to enable informed financial decision-making.”
Eric Cohen, managing director and head of technology, Hiline: “We totally get the ‘I love my credit card rewards’ sentiment. I love them, too. However, we help our clients understand that there is also a high cost for inefficiency that, combined with the upside realized through controlling budgets and getting timely visibility, far outweighs the cost of a seven-day Caribbean vacation for the CEO. It’s a major change that we approach by starting slow with clients, getting them to start by adding all recurring spend to virtual cards.”
Be a hero
Accountants are the unsung heroes of their clients, saving SMB owners from such evils as manual processes, after-the-fact expense management, and overspending by attacking their problems head-on with expertise and technology. Spend management is one such tool in your arsenal of services you can provide to clients—and save the day.
About CPA.com’s Preferred Spend and Expense Management Partner
BILL Spend & Expense, formerly Divvy, is the all-in-one expense management solution that combines free software with corporate cards to provide you with real-time visibility and customizable control over your business finances.
Firm Benefits:
- Automating manual accounting tasks
- An Accountant Console to manage all of your clients in one place
- User-friendly apps with real-time categorization and budget controls
- Seamless software integrations
- Real-time visibility
- Dedicated support from the BILL team
Client Benefits:
- Assign physical or virtual cards to all staff
- Set and implement enforceable budgets
- Instant expense categorization and timely spend notifications
- Optimized financial management
- Seamless accounting software integrations and a real-time dashboard
- Hassle-free reimbursements.
Explore the following resources to continue your spend management journey:
Resources:
- Watch a one-minute spend management overview video to understand the value of this service.
- Read this Spend Management 101 blog: How spend management can save your clients time and money
- View the clickable and interactive demo of BILL Spend & Expense
Join the BILL Accountant Partner Program
The BILL Accountant Partner Program, delivered in partnership with CPA.com, is designed to provide support and value to our partners at every step of the relationship. As a member of the program, your firm will be able to close your clients’ books faster than ever, expand your CAS practice to include AP, AR and spend and expense management, all while being a strategic partner your clients can turn to for help growing their business.
Learn more about how BILL Spend & Expense, formerly Divvy, can save your firm time and money by visiting www.cpa.com/spendmanagement
About the author: Kimberly K. Blascoe, CPA, leads CPA.com’s CAS 2.0 practice transformation programs, focusing on helping firms establish and grow optimized CAS practices through consulting, practice development and training offerings. Prior to joining CPA.com, Kim spent more than 30 years in public accounting, which included leading the CAS practice for a Top 20 firm.
