The Power of Translation in Accounting
When I was interviewing for my second job, I adopted my own tagline of “accounting is the language of business and I and the translator.” I said this because I understood the importance of taking the financial information of a business and translating it into terms that were understandable and actionable to my clients. In the more recent years of my professional career, this approach has proved to be invaluable in my approach to client service. So today, I'm going to share with you some ways that you can translate your knowledge for someone who may not know as much accounting as you do.
#1 - Excel - Summary Tabs
If your audience is not as much as an Excel wizard as you are, they will likely benefit from you summarizing the information for them on a separate tab. While you might enjoy the fact that you have 20 different interlink tabs that are being driven by various assumptions neatly lined up in dedicated input cells and trend analysis, it might be overwhelming to some people. Taking the time to create that summary tab that has only the most critical inputs and outputs laid out on a single page can do wonders for your ability to communicate the value of the workbook. If you're in a line of business where every tab of that workbook is important, then maybe it's a good idea to have a tab that outlines each tab's purpose and contents at a high level. So, someone who hasn't been working in it for dozens of hours can come in and understand the work easily. In any scenario, taking the extra time to make your workbooks to be understood more quickly by others is time well spent.
#2 - Word & PowerPoint - Executive Summaries
While a lot of accountants spend most of their day in Excel, Word documents and PowerPoints cannot be neglected. Whether it's a technical accounting memo or a financial due diligence presentation, there's always a lot of information that gets contained within these files that can be dozens or even hundreds of pages long. These documents get so long because the devil is in the details and it's necessary for accountants to explore the details to come to the right conclusion. However, that doesn't mean that every client wants to read every letter on every page. Taking the time to create an executive summary section that can summarize the key points into one to three pages will do wonders for your ability to communicate value in those documents.
#3 - Financial and Non-financial Metrics
Especially when talking to business owners, there is a huge benefit in linking financial and non-financial metrics and speaking in terms other than dollars. As accountants, we are trained to understand finances, but not all business owners are trained in the same way. In most cases, it's easier to ask:
A doctor: how many patients they see in a day or week
A salesperson: How many units they sold
A production manager: how much they can produce in a week
It is a simple concept, but taking the time to translate the financial metrics into non-financial ones that are more familiar to your client will make a huge difference in your ability to communicate with them. In fact, speaking their language and translating it back into accounting will help drive conversations that truly add value to their business.