Advisor Alliance
Insightful Accountant strives to provide you, our QuickBooks ProAdvisor, Accountant and Business Consultant readers with information about opportunities to serve your clients, build your practice, and bolster your compensation through this series we call ‘Advisor Alliance’. The focus of this series will always be product developers and vendors who offer some form of alliance, partnership, or referral program that might be of interest to you and your practice.
Recently we give you a First Look at Botkeeper which provides automated bookkeeping support to businesses using a combination of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) alongside skilled accountants. In that review we not only told you that this was a tool that your clients could use, but that you could use to bolster your firm's ability to provide services to your clients. We also mentioned partnering with Botkeeper but we didn't mention the specifics of any of those partner relationships. In this edition of Advisor Alliance we want to introduce you to some of those partner opportunities and point you in the right direction to get started if you are interested in some of the opportunities such partnerships offer.
For ProAdvisors, Accountants, Bookkeepers and Business Consultants, Botkeeper really offers two different levels of partnership opportunities. The first is their Botkeeper Ambassador Program designed for the individual who wants to transform the way their clients run their back office — and get paid for it! This program is an easy way for you to create new income for your business while helping your clients. You will earn a commission for every Botkeeper client you help to get signed up.
Botkeeper Ambassadors have a primary point of contact with whom they work in the reporting of leads and making for referrals, they also work with this contact in regard to resources for sales and promotional materials, demonstration scheduling and other pre-sales activities. While Insightful Accountant never discusses specific monetary arrangements, we will tell you that there is a significant one-time commission for every successful referral made by an Ambassador.
As of the date of this publication, there are no formal training, certification or buy-in requirements for the Ambassador partnership program.
The second partner offering is the actual Botkeeper Accounting Partner Program specifically designed for CPAs, accountants, or bookkeeping firms that want to grow their businesses by providing bookkeeping services to their clients with Botkeeper performing the day-to-day bookkeeping and data entry. Instead of struggling with the hiring and retention of bookkeeping talent, Botkeeper can handle the labor intensive bookkeeping work. You will more than likely be able to take on more clients because Botkeeper is doing more of the work, and at the same time you can focus on the higher value financial consulting work, all while consolidating the client's software tech stack.
You continue to support your own clients, but as I mentioned in my 'First Look' Bookkeeper acts like a toolbox for you and your firm, and under this program it provides an improved accounting methodology, all-in-one, flexible software, and exclusive white-labeled partner tools and support. You will also work with a Botkeeper Accounting Partner Specialist Team Member to determine the level of support both you and your clients need in implementing and supporting the solution.
Botkeeper works hand-n-hand with their Accounting Partners, they deploy and train them on their Botkeeper Partner Financial Hub, getting them familiar with the platform, while they get familiar with their firm. This further builds the partner relationship and also more closely associates Botkeeper with not only the accounting partner but each of the clients with whom Botkeeper will be working.
So, if either of these partnership opportunities sound like something you might be interested in to serve your clients, build your practice, and bolster your compensation we encourage you to contact Botkeeper.