On The Road E04 - Accounting: Andrew Miller

Key takeaways: 

The new departments means we are now aligning accounting and tax services to provide CFO-level services, including customized strategic planning
We diversify what we offer to every single client—doing as much or as little accounting work as the client might need
Ideal client: a company with 5-50 employees run by an owner who appreciates how good financial information can help them run their business better
All of the Avitus Group accounting team are Quickbooks-certified

Eli Johnson:

Well, welcome, everyone, to another episode of On The Road. I am joined here with Andrew Miller, director of our accounting services at Avitus Group. We're going to be talking all things balance sheets, P&L's, and even a little bit of fall football...

Eli Johnson:

So you've nearly had a coast to coast journey over the past six years prior to coming to Avitus Group. Tell us about that journey. Tell us about how it prepared you for your part in our team and how that's gotten you ready for being the director of our accounting services.

Andrew Miller:

Yeah, so I've been blessed enough to start off my professional career here in Billings, Montana with a public accounting firm and spent a little over five years working as a auditor and just really gained a lot of knowledge and insight into a multitude of industries and business practices and best practices, and then spent about the last nine years traveling around. I've spent some time in Missoula, in North Carolina for a few years, working for some larger organizations in private accounting, a few different roles from controller to CFO and landed back here in Billings with Avitus Group about 10 months ago.

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. Well, welcome back to Montana. So glad to have you, and you've done nothing but awesome things in the accounting world. So the role you had prior to coming to Avitus Group was pretty heavy in the acquisition space if I remember correctly. So tell us a little bit about that because we can all relate to it in the venture world now, and that probably helps in your interfacing with a lot of our clients.

Andrew Miller:

Yeah, it's a very similar business model as to what we're working with on our partnership with Venture, where we were a very steady company that had retail store locations across the US and the business model was essentially to acquire our competitors and just grow that way. And so, one of my roles was to help ensure that those transactions were recorded appropriately, and the records and all the financial information was properly reported.

Andrew Miller:

And it was extreme growth mode, similar to what we're encountering now. And it's just really exciting and I love that type of thing.

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. So you cut your teeth in the tax space, right? KPMG and some other companies, I think that you had worked for. Cut your teeth in the tax world, moved into the acquisition space. Now you're all things accounting. And even we have an update on a new division within Avitus Group, a new department I should say by way of Avitus Financial Services. Very, very exciting. Tell us about that.

Andrew Miller:

Yeah, so we're really excited about this. This has been a longterm vision of leadership at Avitus to kind of align the accounting CFO-level services and the tax services that we to our clients. They just go hand in hand. It's something that if you talk to a business owner, those types of services just blend well, they work well together so we just wanted to ensure that we're streamlining those services for our clients. So we're really excited to offer that new financial services division. And as my new role in that will be to oversee that as the vice president of Avitus financial services. And I'm really excited to start that here effective August 1st.

Eli Johnson:

Well, that is huge. Congratulations. Much deserved. And what's exciting for me as I'm listening today is that we've got clients across the country that uses for a PEO services, have for a long time, we might do their payables and their account reconciliation, and all of a sudden now we can also turn on, hey, you want us to be your CFO on a monthly basis? You want us to act like we can almost be your board of directors, so to speak, for your hardware store or whatever it might be? We can now do that.

Andrew Miller:

Yeah, it's exciting. I think what we can do is really get into the weeds with a business, understand their financial information, put together some strategic planning sessions, some budgeting projections, and really try to help a business grow in the way that they want to and reach their goals and hopefully exceed them.

Eli Johnson:

Yeah, love it. Well done on that vision. Thank you. So Avitus Group and Vensure Services, we know are all designed to help small business owners, period, right? That's our audience, that's the heart of our company in all divisions. Why is accounting so dang important to helping a company achieve their goal, helping them achieve where they want to get from A to B to Z? Why is accounting a significant thing for our point of consultants and our business development team to understand?

Andrew Miller:

Yeah. So that's a great question. From my perspective, accounting, it's the language of business. And I really feel that in order to propel a business forward, they need to be able to speak that language, or at least have somebody there that can help them interpret their financials. And so we want to be there to provide accurate, complete financial information that shows a business where they're at and hopefully where they're going and help them achieve those goals.

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. Yeah. It makes sense. And so you don't have to tell me necessarily an actual client name that we have or even a company that you worked with, but to the best of your ability, share a story where you've seen that come to life. It could have been in your previous career, which would have delved well into what we're doing now, or even an existing client we have, or you got to get in there and clean up some of what would have been messy prior to them becoming an Avitus Group accounting client.

Andrew Miller:

Yeah. So, a pretty specific example I've had without naming names is when I left public accounting and went into private accounting, it was with a large organization that was in growth mode as we discussed earlier. When we got there, they just weren't really taking care of their financial records, their accounts weren't being reconciled, they were not getting financial information timely. So myself and another former public accountant that I worked with, we really went in there and cleaned house, made sure that all the financial information was accurate so that leaders of the organization had a clear picture of what was going on with the business. And then we could help them drive success going forward. And we really went from in the matter of seven years, we went from a $100-million company to almost a billion dollars in sales a year.

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. Well, I've heard Willie, our former majority owner, say many times in strategic plans, which is some of what you guys are going to be doing now in the financial services space, that numbers don't lie, liars lie, and that just always stuck with me. And so, it is so important for our clients to have clear black and white financials to make good, pragmatic business decisions off of. So thanks for that, that makes total sense and just excited for our team and the appointed consultants to get to have access to that now. So I hear you are a knife juggler. What is this?

Andrew Miller:

Okay. When I was a kid, I taught myself how to juggle. And I think I saw on TV one time, probably around the age of 11 or 12, somebody juggling knives and I thought, I think I need to try this. So the trick is to start off with something like butter knives and not actual steak knives or anything like that to protect the fingers. But yeah, with a little bit of practice, I can do it.

Eli Johnson:

Okay. So this is recently, or this has been an ongoing thing?

Andrew Miller:

This is when I was a kid, but I can still do it.

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. You've also burned sheds, I've understood. So another story, another On The Road, but he did burn a shed down and I've heard both sides of the story. I believe that you were the culprit. Okay. So I think it's pretty safe to say that not every client needs exactly the same level of accounting that the other client does, right? You actually have tiers of accounting services. This may be one of the most important things for our audience to hear because many of them do not currently engage with our accounting services, i.e., the appointed consultant audience. Share the details on that, the tiers, how we can support people, how we can get our foot in the door just to be an entry-level blessing, and then it can go into something greater.

Andrew Miller:

Yeah. I think that's a really key point is that we really do try to diversify what we can offer to every single client. And it's real simple. The way I like to describe it is we can do as much or as little of the accounting work that a client might need. That can be from just being available for an hour a month to be a sounding board and answer questions for them to the other end of the spectrum, where we're completing all their entire books, and we're posting all their journal entries, reconciling all of their accounts, paying all their bills, putting together their monthly financial statements, and analyzing those financials. So it's like I said, it's as much or as little as somebody might need.

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. So knowing that then, and what we're able to deliver for our clients, what is an ideal client? Is it a huge corporation? Is it a company with one employee? Is it everything in between? Give us a picture of who the ideal client is us to be able to bring into our service and lock arms with to say, "Hey, we want to do this for you."

Andrew Miller:

Yeah. So within the accounting services team, in particular, it's more of a focus on the smaller businesses, maybe somewhere between five and 50 employees. There's not really like a revenue target or anything, but it's mostly clients that have an appreciation for needing to see financial information and owners that understand that if they are getting good financial information, it can help them run their business. So if the owners appreciate that, they're willing to have a team like us come in and really get them financial information on a monthly basis that they use to run the business.

Eli Johnson:

All right. So very helpful on the ideal client. There's a lot that we can do there. But help us also understand to everybody listening, what we do in interfacing with accounting softwares. Is there a lane you want your team to run in? Is there certain softwares that we should stay away from? Because there's a lot out there. There's Master Builder, there's Sage products, there's Peachtree, and QuickBooks. What is it that we do best in, in understanding?

Andrew Miller:

Yeah. Currently, we are set up to stay in the lane of QuickBooks. And so that's QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, which is cloud-based, that's really where our entire team are QuickBooks Pro certified. We know that software in and out. We can work with clients to convert to that software program. Right now, we are also exploring working with some other softwares, including a product called Xero, which is actually spelled X-E-R-O. It's a lot of international clients that use that software. So we're currently working to provide that as an alternative to QuickBooks. And as we grow, looking at other softwares as well, but right now we're QuickBooks-focused.

Eli Johnson:

Yeah. Good. So maybe Emily Reynolds or David Berkow, if you're listening, that could be applicable to some of the clients that you guys interface with. But for us to know, QuickBooks, QuickBooks, QuickBooks, that's what lots of companies deal with anyways, especially the target that you were talking about, that five to 50 employees. So very helpful.

Eli Johnson:

Last question. What's going to happen with this football season? You're back in Montana. Are we going to have a fall football season? Are we going to get to go to some Cat and Griz games? Tell us about that in this environment. What is your hunch?

Andrew Miller:

Yeah, so my focus primarily has been on the business world and not so much the sports world, just recently moved, but I think that I'm very optimistic that we will have some sports, at least here in the great state of Montana.

Eli Johnson:

So am I.

Andrew Miller:

Yeah, we need it.

Eli Johnson:

A fall without football would just be-

Andrew Miller:

It'd be sad.

Eli Johnson:

That would be sad. Well, another episode On The Road. Andrew, thank you so much. Congratulations on a new promotion, vice president over financial services, CFO, accounting, tax. Very, very exciting. We look forward to bringing some great prospects, new clients to your team. And this is another episode of On The Road. Let's go.