Murchisons Makes AFR’s List of Top 100 Accounting Firms

By James Murchison - Principal Director at Murchisons

It’s Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas…
Murchisons Makes AFR’s List of Top 100 Accounting Firms

I think we can all agree, 2020 has been an extremely challenging year. With many companies in financial turmoil - particularly back in April – we had to step up for our partners and clients: decoding Government changes, providing sound advice, and offering support and guidance through those tumultuous times. Most of all, we had to practice the art of clear and concise communication. So, when companies we work with began to get better, grow stronger, develop resilience and come back to life, it gave us great satisfaction and proved that 2020 did have some fantastic positives too.

For Murchisons, and myself personally, it’s been a year of growth and development – and one that even saw us meet a major milestone: for 2020 is the year we have made it onto the list of Australian Financial Review (AFR)’s Top 100 Accounting Firms. One of the easiest ways to measure success is with a clear objective and making that Top 100 became a huge goal that we had set ourselves, so to achieve this tangible outcome now, is fantastic. It gave the team a great buzz; we laid out all of the newspaper articles in our office, and our Principle Director Luke gave a great speech, discussing what this means for us. We’d love to take a moment here to thank our clients and staff for the ongoing tremendous support and ongoing referrals.

Murchisons continues to grow sustainably, keeping us in synch with our wider business plan and self-set KPIs, but that’s not to say that we are losing sight of our smaller clients – we remain focused on small to medium sized businesses and our ongoing relationship with our clients. Our growth means we can continue to focus on our strategies, increasing team size and bringing in further, varied skillsets – to meet all manner of needs.

Our staff have become more resilient, robust, relationship-driving, and ready to take on anything (I’m naming that ‘The Four R’s!’). We have adopted a standard approach in how we market our business and how we service clients. This year has encouraged the staff to become closer than ever to our clients, connecting and cementing relationships as they assisted them through the troubled waters of COVID. Communication has been key. Our advisory offering was very interesting; the changing environment challenged staff to adopt a pattern where we still offered a high level of compliance advice, but we really guided clients through that fear factor and helped them understand the sheer amount of confusion that surrounded Government incentives and restrictions, for instance.

When we look towards the future, it’s bright. We take a collaborative approach with our clients, and really get a buzz out of this. Our aim is to continue to be reliable, and more advisory focused, working together with clients to achieve their goals. We will continue to develop and grow the team ensuring that the talented group of individuals who are our ‘communicators’ allow us to deliver sound advice in the right way and through the right channels, integrating seamlessly with those who are more technically-minded. Expertise plus communication ability is the key!

One thought to leave you with – Our mantra at Murchisons is that you should always aim to leave the organsisation where you work in a better position than when you started and we all approach our work in this way. We focus heavily on the development of our staff, and the incredible relationships we have with our clients. I am very proud of what we have achieved and continue to achieve.

While 2020 has been an unprecedented and shocking year, I can safely say it’s provided our biggest learnings yet, and I’m optimistic about what 2021 will bring.

We wish all our clients a restful Christmas, a time to recover and a prosperous New Year.