4 Strategies to Use Technology for Accounting Firm Goal Setting

You can set goals any time of year, but the beginning of a new calendar feels like an especially great window. For accounting firms pursuing new goals, technology can be a huge ally.

The best technology for accounting firm goal setting will minimize the manual, mundane elements of the process, allowing you to spend more time thinking creatively about achieving your firm’s goals.

Whether you’re brand new to the goal-setting process or you’ve been doing it almost every year, it’s worth looking at tips for how you can use the latest technology to set goals that push you to high performance without causing burnout.  

Review accounting firm data and analytics from every possible platform 

One of technology’s double-edged swords is the prevalence of data in almost every segment of accounting firm operations. Internal data can be harder to quantify because so much of it depends on the specific nature of the firm, its services, size and number of clients.  

External data—related to clients and prospects—is more standardized. These data can often provide a better picture into accounting firm performance because they are more comparable across the broader industry. 

Consider things like: 

• Marketing metrics: email open and clickthrough rates, social media metrics, subscriber list trends 

• Sales metrics: number of opportunities, lead conversion rate, number of prospect contacts 

• Client satisfaction: net promoter score, informal surveys, online reviews 

Reviewing the data is only one part of the process—you’ll also need to use it to draw conclusions that can then be used to set concrete goals. This process isn’t always as straightforward as it sounds.  

For example, if you’re dealing with an abnormally low email open rate, it might be caused by the content you’re including in emails, but it also could be from their subject lines. It could even be a technical issue with the way your email service provider delivers the messages.

This is why it’s so important to spend time analyzing the data and reflecting on it before jumping into converting data into goals for the year. 

Simplify your accounting firm billing and payments 

In our years of talking to accounting firms, one area we see many of them struggle with is invoicing—managing the different tasks required for billing clients, collecting payments and sending out official invoices.

Make 2025 the year you finally solve your invoicing and cash flow challenges by streamlining the way you handle billing and payments.  

Fortunately, this is another area where technology provides great answers to some of the most common questions. Using visual tools to standardize the format of invoices and similar documents is an important first step.

You can continue to make progress in this area by using automation to streamline a billing schedule, or integrating your payment collection process with the invoices to reduce the time it takes to settle them. Goals of this variety will not only make your invoicing process more efficient, they’ll frequently improve cash flow as well, since clients will find it easier to provide payment.  

Align accounting firm workflow goals with technology tools 

The rise in popularity of project management disciplines like scrum and agile has created a corresponding rise in the availability of software tools meant to help users adhere to these styles.

Most of them have a certain set of native features like notification, tagging, organization, etc. These features tend to work similarly across tools made to follow a specific project management philosophy or style. 

As you set goals for this year, it makes sense to plan operational workflows based on the way your technology is designed.

For example, if you’re building a new system of organizing proprietary project information across different client accounts, you might think about matching the protocol you develop with the functions that your software provides, like creating a folder for each team or individual. 

Set goals for accounting firm technology security 

There’s so much going on in the day-to-day of a typical accounting firm that it can be easy for seemingly minor logistical items to get left behind. But security is much more than a logistical to-do—it can literally mean life or death for your firm.

Data published by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) showed that for an organization with 500 employees or fewer, the average cost of a data breach was $2.98 million. 

Make sure you set specific goals for security, not just something vague like “Keep our client data safe.” Consider specific incidents like security breaches, unauthorized access, and files or equipment getting lost. Try to create quantitative goals with numbers for each of these, even if it’s zero.

You’re not a security consulting business—you don’t need to have a metric and goal number in mind for every single security statistic—but you should be taking security seriously as an accounting firm that deals with sensitive, critical data each day. 

Final thoughts on goal setting for accounting firms in 2025 

The ultimate point of technology is to make things easier and more efficient, allowing your firm to achieve more goals in less time. With this in mind, it’s helpful to approach your selection of technology with the goal of using as few different software tools as possible.

A comprehensive accounting practice management platform will allow you to set and reach goals in a variety of areas, from hiring to invoicing to project management. 

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