CATS Accountants

In this episode Tim Garth and Dan Osborne share how they run CATS. What processes they streamlined. What works well. And what they struggle with.

Here is what we learned but please listen in as Dan & Tim explains all this much better than we ever could.

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CATS Accountants

In some ways CATS Accountants is just a normal practice with a turnover of $1m. But in other ways they are quite unique and unusual. Here is how.

# 1

It is unusual that a son and his friend take over a practice. Most accounting practices in Australia are sold to a third-party when the founder retires, be it a third party outside the firm or somebody already working within the firm.

# 2

CATS has no clear split of responsibilities between the two partners. There is no big line in the sand. You would think that this wouldn’t work, but it obviously does.

# 3

In most ‘partnerships’ you have the big honcho and some junior partners with separate profit centres, separate cost centres and staff allocated to particular partners, where the partners share the branding, marketing and office administration but apart from that each really runs their own practice.

But at CATS there is no hard-core split of clients, staff or resources. Their business analytics don’t look at who is bringing in what. Instead it is all for all. So it is run as a true partnership, which is rare among Australian accounting practices.

# 4

There is a saying that you shouldn’t do business with friends. But Dan and Tim managed to do just that. Maybe the secret is that they manage to paint in big strokes and not sweat the small stuff.

# 5

CATS has a team of eight, but only two of those work full-time. The rest including Tim and Dan work four days a week. That is the equivalent of 6.8 full time ‘people’.

With a turnover of $1m that is pretty close to the team structure Ed Chan proposed in episodes 199 and 200.

# 6

CATS doesn’t niche by industry but by personality and state of mind.

# 7

CATS streamlined the process of individual tax returns really well using online forms and then an e-callendar appointment booking and then just a short phone call before e-signing and lodgement.

So these are seven things that caught my attention. But in other ways of course CATS is a typical practice with a turnover of $1m. No accounting practice can be unique in every way.

So for example their move from MYOB to Xero is quite typical. The largest chunk of Xero users in Australia probably came from MYOB.

CATS is probably also quite typical in that after Xero they went onto Practice Ignition.

But please listen to Ryan Lazanis in the Future Firm Accounting Podcast where he will tell you that you first need to get a reliable source of regular leads and enough volume before worrying about automation.

It seems to be quite common to match the corporate compliance software with your SMSF software and that also applies to CATS. So if you are on Class, you probably use NowInfinity, since also a Class product. And if you are on BGL Simple Fund 360, then you probably use CAS 360 since both are BGL products.

And then the last thing – just like all of us CATS tried Google and Facebook ads and is still working this out. Social media and Google advertising is really hard to get right.

So these were some thoughts about this interview with Dan and Tim. A big thank you to them for sharing the inner workings of their practice so openly.

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Disclaimer: Tax Talks does not provide financial or tax advice. All information on Tax Talks is of a general nature only and might no longer be up to date or correct. You should seek professional accredited tax and financial advice when considering whether the information is suitable to your or your client’s circumstances.

Last Updated on 15 March 2021

Tax Talks spoke to Tim Garth and Dan Osborne - Directors at CATS Accountants - for more details.