Australian Accounting Industry Awards

The Inaugural Australian Accounting Industry Awards were held last night at the gorgeous Hinchcliff House in Circular Quay. These awards looked to celebrate professionals currently working as accountants or bookkeepers in public practice and were judged blind by a select grouping of impressive industry luminaries. I was eager to attend the awards as I had been named as one of four finalists in the Bookkeeper of the year category and I am delighted to say that I was announced as the winner. The other finalists were an amazing group of accomplished bookkeepers, so I feel very honoured to have been selected.

I was also very shocked. My legs still start shaking whenever I think about the announcement. So, in true Tracey style, despite waking up in a cold sweat every night in the middle of the night for a whole week to rehearse, I completely forgot the speech that I, along with the other finalists, had been encouraged to prepare. All the sentiment and the messaging still hold true, so rather than waste all my hard work and lost sleep on word finessing and rehearsal, I thought I would share what I should have said last night rather than what I actually rambled.

Solo practitioners, especially bookkeepers, are a bit of a conundrum. We spend half of our time locked up in our lonely little office silos slogging away to create order from the chaos and madness that is small business finances. Then, we spend the rest of our time using our considerable charms and the force of our personalities to cajole and wrangle our naughty clients to get them to do what we need them to do. We keep them organised. We keep them compliant. And we keep them profitable. And boy, do we wield that special superpower! Some days more than others.

But that is not our only strength. We are also innovative, tech savvy and are always seeking better business process solutions. As solos, we have extra motivation to embrace automation apps if we want to grow our practice turnover to more than just the hours we can work in a week. But despite our drive for innovation and our desire to embrace change, our achievements are often missed by the wider industry. Solos are not a cohesive group. We are just a collection of many, many like-minded individuals with quiet voices in an ocean of bigger fish. I am hoping that this award is a little nod of recognition to the clever work of all solo practitioners and that the volume of our voices has been turned up, just a little bit.

Thank you to all the From the Trenches team for having the vision and the follow through to organise and host such a fabulous event. You sure know how to deliver. And to the sponsors for their support in making it happen.

Thank you to the judges for finding something special in my heartfelt, honest answers to the questions you asked.

And thanks to the amazing professionals in this wonderful collegiate industry. Your collective awesomeness lifts me and inspires me to always push to work smarter and do better.

Thanks so much to all the wonderful people who have reached out to congratulate me on my win today. You have no idea how much your kind words fill my cup. I am looking forward to doing the judging next year. Hopefully, there will be less knocking of the knees and more celebrating with ease.