As you know, the theme of our 2012 conference was collaboration. Following on from this, a few people have been discussing how their firm is moving forward with their online accounting offering to clients, writes Paul Winder.

While all member firms are now dabbling in this particular area, feedback from these discussions shows that there is definitely room for improvement.

With this in mind, the question I would like to ask is whether there is an opportunity here for those who have responsibility for online accounting at each member firm to come together to see if we can improve our approach in this area?

Ideally, we need to find a way to standardise the online accounting work each member firm does, on a technical front, as well as the marketing and staffing sides, rather than each member firm reinventing the wheel. As the business world in general looks to move more operations online, there is a real need to ensure that any service we are offering in this area is the very best that it can be.

Thinking about our approach to online services and using the Cloud, are members interested in making this the subject of one of our seminars this year? If so, please let me know the most appropriate person from your firm to attend so that I can arrange a date