Knowify Certifications
The fact that you read newsletters like Insightful Accountant means that you’re probably one of the more plugged-in accountants / bookkeepers in the industry. You’ve no doubt seen the many different product certification tags your peers include in their emails or websites, and perhaps you’ve even collected a few yourself. They may seem trivial – undeniably, they can look like electronic merit badges – but they aren’t; rather, they’re important cues to both your prospective clients (i.e., companies) and your vendor partners (i.e., T-Sheets, Gusto, Hubdoc) that you have put in the time to earn that certification, and can thus be trusted to render sound advice regarding that product. Let’s take a look:
Client Perspective
Census data show more than 110,000 accounting and bookkeeping businesses in the USA. With so many to choose from, how is a client supposed to find the right fit? One way is to rely on common referral sources, like Intuit’s ProAdvisor program. But there are 55,000 ProAdvisors (!), so even that doesn’t whittle down the list that much. The problem is compounded if you’re in an industry that requires certain expertise on the bookkeeper’s side for the accounting to be done properly - media production and manufacturing come to mind immediately, but other industries like construction also benefit hugely from bookkeeper domain expertise. Yes, the Find-A-ProAdvisor portal lets the ProAdvisor claim expertise in certain areas, but will consumers really trust that? (Especially since so many claim to be experts in everything!) Certification badges offer a promising solution to this problem. Bookkeepers and accountants who have put in the effort to earn certifications are able to demonstrate to prospective customers not only that they know the software at hand, but also that they have the likely expertise in the accounting area or industry to learn such a piece of software. So someone with a manufacturing businesses would probably be thrilled to see your SOS Inventory or Fishbowl badge; in construction, a Knowify badge would help set you apart. Provided you have the requisite experience in the industry so that you don’t have to learn all the terminology from scratch, it’s really quite easy to learn a lot of these modern software packages and collect their expert badges. And if you’re in ‘grow my practice’ mode, it’s likely to be well worth your investment!
Vendor Perspective
From the vendor side, we are constantly on the lookout for highly-engaged accountants and bookkeepers that we can work with. Many times a month we get requests for implementation or even ongoing accounting help from our users, and having a deep bench of accountant/bookkeeper relationships helps us help them in these circumstances. But we’re a software business: we don’t have the time to carefully screen each and every person who comes to us looking to provide implementation or accounting services to our clients. What do we do? We give strong preference to those who have shown that they know Knowify already. In most cases that means that they have Knowify running successfully with their clients. We also target those who have been through our certification program, since our certification does a pretty good job (we think!) of ensuring that you are both Knowify- and construction-literate. We have referred 10+ clients to our top advisors, representing thousands of dollars in monthly revenues for their practices. As above, if you’re in ‘grow-my-practice’ mode, maybe trying to saddle up to vendors – with certifications as your ticket to the party – could be a great way to go! Showing that you'll invest your time in learning our software enough to get certified will go a long way towards making us willing to invest in you with our clients!
Author Bio: Dan de Roulet is co-founder of Knowify. de Roulet, who has a long history as an entrepreneur and business developer, strongly believes in the potential of the Knowify software to significantly streamline construction company operations.