Thomson Reuters Practice Forward

I just attended this conference and am considering moving forward with it. Has anyone else implemented this for their practice? Did it work out for you? The investment is quite large but if it works out it is a no brainer.

We implemented Practice Forward for a while, and the tools they provided were great. Like Paul Miller is fond of saying, you can create it yourself, or you can pay for the shortcut... you do get a TON of content and support for that large fee you mentioned. We worked through the program, evaluated our offerings, followed the model for a while, but discovered it wasn't quite the right fit for our firm - there is a lot there, a lot of complexity, a lot of push for high-level advisory that isn't quite me, and I strive for simplicity in my life (isn't tax law complex enough?)

We moved on to SmartPath last fall, which is a much better fit for us. We're in the midst of transitioning all of our clients (at least, the ones that stay) to a flat monthly fee model and year-round service. We were already doing that with our business clients, but it has given us the structure and tools to do it with our individuals as well. It's felt much more like a natural evolution of our firm.

I don't regret the time and money we invested in Practice Forward... I learned a lot in that process. You just have to know your firm and the clients that you're drawing and targeting.

Thanks for the feedback. I am not familiar with SmartPath. I will definitely check that out. I think that the monthly recurring fee is the way to go especially for business clients. It is a great way to monetize all that free advice we provide.

What does SmartPath cost? I'd be interested to hear more about how you go to monthly billing for all clients.

We moved on to SmartPath last fall, which is a much better fit for us. We're in the midst of transitioning all of our clients (at least, the ones that stay) to a flat monthly fee model and year-round service. We were already doing that with our business clients, but it has given us the structure and tools to do it with our individuals as well. It's felt much more like a natural evolution of our firm.

I don't regret the time and money we invested in Practice Forward... I learned a lot in that process. You just have to know your firm and the clients that you're drawing and targeting.

The biggest thing has been shifting the relationship with our individual clients from an annual transactional relationship to an ongoing relationship. We still want to provide tax planning if they're considering selling property, pulling out of retirement plans, starting a business.... those are things that we wanted to hear about from them before but now that expectation is more solid. We're also offering accountability and guidance on their bigger financial goals and setting ongoing check-ins. We aren't giving any investment or legal advice or selling any other products, but we can talk about tackling debt reduction, or building college funds, or structuring retirement distributions, etc, whatever their goals are. We can, for instance, hold them accountable if their goal is to have a will drafted in the next 6 months, and give them ideas of other things they may want to have in order. All things that are in our wheelhouse to give guidance on (and that no one else is offering them), which allows us to provide a higher level of service, to charge a higher fee, and to free us up from preparing so many one-off tax returns. It's more time spent per-client, but spread out through the year.

I've been surprised by how excited some of our existing clients have been to take this journey with us. Some are thrilled to work through budgeting with us, etc. Others are quietly finding other firms, which we're totally fine with. We only need to keep about a third to survive as a firm.

https://www.smartpath.co/ We paid about 6k in Nov/Dec - I don't know if their rates have changed. It included hours and hours and hours of pre-recorded trainings, templates, and one-on-one support.

I too attended a Practice Forward conference this summer and found the concept very interesting. I'm glad to see other vendors are packaging this same concept because I am not a fan of Thomson Reuters software. I will definitely look into Smart Path. Any other vendors out there for this type of thing?