august2021 - 9

FEATURE
core accounting services needed
by most small business customers
and processing payroll is something
most bookkeepers are familiar
enough with. However, we received
many requests related to payroll
that fell more on the " HR " side of a
business problem, and we did not
have a defined service at Reconciled
to meet our customer's HR needs.
Step 2 is finding a champion to
launch your service offering. We
did not have anyone within our firm
with an HR background or skillset to
do this, so I began inquiring for the
right person within my own network.
I got introduced to an HR expert
through a customer of ours, and we
aligned well on wanting to launch a
new service offering.
We decided to launch the HR
service as a separate company
called Humnly (this was mainly to
make it easy for the HR expert to
have part ownership in this specific
business line), but we could have
also launched the service within
Reconciled itself. We worked with
the HR expert to define some of
the service offerings while allowing
some room in the future for
feedback from customers that may
influence the direction we take this
new service.
Your Practice
would solve a problem many of
my customers currently have and
would be willing to pay for? "
Step 1 when trying to launch a
new service in your practice is
to come up with a list of several
problems your customers are
facing. Then try to come up with
possible solutions for each individual
problem. One of these problems and
solutions will likely be a natural fit
By Michael Ly
for your firm to solve and launch as a
service.
Reconciled went through this
process in 2019. HR issues is one
of the top issues brought to us by
our customers on a regular basis
and we found ourselves referring
work away regularly. Like Reconciled,
many firms currently offer
payroll services as a part of their
overall Client Accounting Services
practice as it closely ties with the
Step 3 is letting your customers
know about your new service
offering. This is where marketing
and sales kicks in. We leveraged
Reconci led's customer l ist and
referred work to Humnly. Reconciled
would be handling the bookkeeping
and payroll aspects of the small
business while Humnly would be
handling the HR side, such as creating
an employee handbook, employee
onboarding, benefits strategy, etc.
As Humnly grew and we worked
on more customers together, the
cross over between " more than
payroll " and HR services continued
to grow. We found ourselves seeing
even more opportunities to grow
and begin standardizing our service
offering around a standard set of
tools.
Step 4 is standardizing tools and
service offering. Reconciled already
had a relationship with Gusto, as
many of customers are on it, and
Gusto made it to easy to facilitate
more than just payroll services. Fortunately,
Gusto had recently launched
its People Advisory certification
within its platform, which provided
standardizing training for Reconciled
and Humnly.
Gusto began to help us standardize
the way we approached
our customers and gave us language
to describe that crossover between
more than payroll, but not full HR.
People Advisory gave us tools to talk
with confidence about helping our
customers with the most important
resource at their company - their
people. More recently, Reconciled
and Humnly have participated in
the Gusto Accelerator program, a
new program Gusto has launched to
help firms accelerate the introduction
of People Advisory into their
practice.
The final step - Always Be
Learning. This step never really ends.
Just like any service offering at your
firm, you are going to learn more as
your serve more customers, refine the
way you deliver your service, and find
new tools to help you standardize. If
learning from your experience is not
already a practice at your firm with
all of your service offerings, then I
recommend you start evaluating all
of the services your firm provides and
make the changes that will make
them better and your customers
happier. ■
Michael Ly is CEO of Reconciled, an online
bookkeeping firm for entrepreneurs with
team members in multiple states serving
small businesses nationally.
AUGUST 2021 ■ www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com
9
http://www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com
august2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of august2021
