Accounting advisory services are strategic services that help clients reach their financial goals. Accounting advisory services go beyond reporting, and include services like financial analysis and forecasting, cash flow advice, and budget support, all with deep, data-backed insights.
New technology, industry trends, and global conditions are changing the nature of business for accounting firms and their clients. With compliance becoming more digitized, firm leaders are seeing growing demand for advisory services.
Offering advisory services can improve your firm’s ROI, open new revenue opportunities, provide the potential for higher profits, help clients with their strategic goals, and build stronger client relationships, leading to more referrals and sustainable growth.
This guide will explore the types of advisory services in accounting, the benefits, and how to offer advisory services at your firm.
Accounting advisory services offer insights and strategies to help businesses reach their financial or operational goals. This can involve budget assistance, mapping out long-term growth plans, and even app advisory services.
While it can come in many forms, advisory, at its core, is about future-focused decision-making that positions clients for lasting success.
Think of running a business like sailing a ship. Compliance keeps the ship seaworthy, consulting fixes the leaks, and advisory sets the course. All are important but serve three different purposes.
Here is a summary table of the differences between compliance, consulting, and advisory in accounting.
Aspect | Compliance | Advisory | Consulting |
Purpose | Stay compliant with laws | Improve financial decisions | Solve problems & transform |
Focus | Accuracy & obligations | Strategy & performance | Solutions & project delivery |
Time orientation | Past & present | Present & future | Variable (usually future) |
Client relationship | Ongoing, recurring | Ongoing, collaborative | Project-based, expert-driven |
Perceived value from client | Necessary cost | Strategic partner | Change agent/expert advisor |
Accounting compliance
Compliance is about a client’s regulatory obligations, such as ensuring tax returns are filed on time or financial records are accurately maintained. It’s a core component of Client Accounting Services (CAS) and critical to the success of small businesses.
Compliance services include tax return preparation and lodgment, financial reporting and statutory compliance, corporate services, audit and assurance, and bookkeeping tasks like payroll.
Clients often view compliance as a cost of doing business, not necessarily a value driver. Success is measured by completeness, accuracy, and penalty avoidance.
Accounting consulting
Consulting is about solving a problem by diagnosing the source and giving recommendations. It often involves deep problem-solving, specialist expertise, and project-based engagements. Consulting may include elements of advisory, but is more focused on transformation, improvement, and change management.
Examples of consulting services include M&A due diligence and support, business process and system improvement, and business valuations.
Clients view consulting as highly specialized and often project-based.
Accounting advisory
Advisory is forward-looking and strategic. These services help clients understand their numbers, make better decisions, and plan for the future. It’s beyond record-keeping. It’s about guidance, insight, and growth.
Example advisory services include cash flow forecasting and budgeting, wealth management, and business planning and profitability analysis.
Clients view advisory services as value-adding support that improves their decision-making, performance, and future outcomes.
Accounting advisory can come in a variety of forms, such as:
Cash flow services track and manage the movement of money within a business, such as loans, payments, expenses, and assets, to help ensure long-term financial security.
Financial forecasting draws on historical data to make predictions about the future performance of a client’s business, allowing them to make informed, strategic decisions. Some of the best advisors are able to marry data with a creative understanding of market trends, presenting dashboards that provide business owners with a personalized service.
Budgeting measures business spend, with the goal of optimizing it for the greatest return on investment. Advisors look at where and how money is and isn’t being spent, to formulate a budget that aligns with their clients’ goals.
The objective of tax planning is to decrease tax liability while staying compliant with the relevant rules and regulations. An accounting firm that can help their clients to legally improve their tax situation is well-positioned to attract and retain more clients.
Wealth management services help businesses and individuals increase their capital by suggesting strategies, such as investment portfolios, asset management, and risk avoidance, that build on existing wealth. It’s a highly sought-after skill, and a profitable service for everyone involved.
Advisors can help clients navigate the nuances of business ownership by offering strategic planning services that focus not just on the financial security but on the overall health of a business. This can involve running internal diagnostics, setting short and long-term goals, and supporting clients to make smart decisions for sustained success.
Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are high-risk. Navigating them with confidence takes careful planning, a learned attention to detail, and strong financial sense. All of which are qualities that accounting professionals possess, making them much-needed advisors for clients exploring M&A.
Fractional CFOs provide the same level of expertise as a full-time Chief Financial Officer, but for a fraction of the cost. As a part-time contractor, they advise on and execute the financial strategy of a business, informed by a wealth of knowledge and experience.
Clients are increasingly climate-aware, and they’re seeking out accounting firms that share these values. Offering advisory services in carbon neutrality is all about guiding businesses to make environmentally conscious decisions, which in turn boosts their efficiency and marketability to the next generation of customers. It’s future-forward, and right now, it’s an opportunity that’s still largely untapped in the industry.
Embracing the shift to advisory services has many benefits to your business, but especially these three:
At its core, accounting is about empowering clients to reach their goals on a professional, and sometimes personal, level. Advisory services help clients truly understand the business environment and their numbers so they make better decisions based on data and expert insight, plan for the future with confidence and excitement, and feel supported.
As a result, clients perceive your firm as a strategic partner rather than a reactive service provider. This elevates your role from a ‘necessary cost’ to a driver of growth.
Client relationships are founded on trust, and advisory services build trust faster than traditional compliance work because they are inherently more personal.
Advisory services require a deep understanding of the goals and inner workings of a business. That takes regular meetings, countless emails, and hands-on involvement, all of which strengthens client relationships. And healthy client retention, cross-selling opportunities, and referral rates are a natural consequence of that.
Advisory work challenges accountants to move beyond historical reporting and become data storytellers, business analysts, communicators and influencers, and industry experts.
As a result, firms develop sharper commercial acumen, keep their teams engaged with more meaningful work, and become more resilient and future-ready in a changing profession.
Advisory services are often less price-sensitive and more value-based than compliance work. They enable pricing based on outcomes (not hours) and reduce race-to-the-bottom pricing pressures. And when your firm offers repeatable advisory services, you can standardize your processes and set yourself up for scale.
With automation and AI steadily reducing the time and cost of compliance, firms that rely solely on traditional services risk becoming obsolete. Advisory work, on the other hand, is much harder to automate. As a result, it keeps your firm irreplaceable and positions you as a trusted business advisor.
Once you decide that advisory services are right for you and your firm, there are a few steps you can take to start offering them:
Gauge interest. Determine whether your clients are interested in these services by asking for feedback, organizing roundtables with your team, and researching industry trends.
Decide what services to offer. Consider the skillsets, specialties, and personalities of your team to help you define your advisory services. It’s better to focus on perfecting one or two more services, rather than risk overextending your team and losing client trust.
Plan ahead. What resources do you have, and what resources will you need before offering advisory services? Advisory requires a new level of expertise, so your team will likely need ongoing training and development. Create a roadmap so that your firm is prepared to make the change.
Set pricing. Deciding how to bill advisory services can feel more difficult, because they’re often more bespoke. Value-based pricing allows you to negotiate pricing based on the unique needs of each client.
Review your tech stack. Accounting technology that prioritizes visibility, transparency, and billing will allow you to keep track of client relationships and ongoing work, making advisory work easier. It’s worth researching and comparing software providers before taking the leap into advisory.
At the heart of advisory services is the client experience, and your tech stack should support this.
For example, Karbon’s client portal allows for real-time, seamless communication between you and your client, including secure file sharing, eSignatures, approval requests, visibility on urgent tasks, and automated client reminders.
For firms like mAccounting, their team has become “more comfortable and more efficient” since adopting Karbon, “and this significantly improves the client experience.” Having a single source of truth on work and client information makes delivering advisory services easier and more efficient.
Plus, Karbon’s deep workflow automation, and project management and collaboration features provide advisory practices with the visibility and control needed to provide seamless client advisory and accounting services without the chaos.
Book a demo of Karbon today, and learn more about how it can not only support your transition into advisory services, but improve the overall experience for both your clients and your firm.
