Making Numbers Mean Something

Nov 2, 2014
2 min read

During a conversation with a colleague regarding some financial reporting for a client, the following phrase was coined… ‘Every number must mean something otherwise what is the point?’

I have been thinking about that phrase ever since and it has made me reflect on how we do things here at Straight Line Accounting Solutions, and not only here, but as an industry too.

On too many occasions we hear that Accountants and Bookkeepers are just ‘Tax & BAS Return Factories’, whereby they are only interested in client’s at lodgement times, and for the rest of the time, they don’t really give much thought to the client’s needs. To be fair, over the years, we have definitely seen this in practice and it certainly does not paint the profession in a glowing light.

While we cannot control what happens in the industry or the perceptions thereof, we can control how Straight Line Accounting Solutions goes about its business! In the context of making numbers mean something, we really do make the time to listen to our clients to learn a few things, such as, an in-depth understanding of how our client’s business operates, what is important to the business owner/management from an accounting perspective and lastly, how we can add some serious value to the business and the decision making process itself.

This approach, we believe, assists us in gaining a deep familiarity of our client’s numbers, so that when we come to reporting or discussing the numbers, we fully understand the numbers and are able to make the numbers mean something!

All of us at Straight Line Accounting Solutions liked the phrase so much, we decided to add it to our vision statement, because we believe that it really does sum up our point of difference!