Something interesting that’s come up lately is hearing business owners complain that they don’t feel like their accountant is providing the level of service they are expecting.
Consider in this situation whether or not you’ve let your accountant know that you are expecting different service. Often as businesses are starting out, they engage their accountant for the lowest level of service in order to keep their costs low. Usually this means they are expecting the accountant to take the year end information compiled by their bookkeeper (that would be me) and file their corporate and/or personal income taxes. This works fine starting out if you are building up your business and not really making much profit but as businesses get more profitable owners may get frustrated to find out at the end of the year that they have a large corporate tax bill to pay and wonder why their accountant didn’t advise them of ways to avoid this.
My question to you is this: How would the accountant know? Yes, the fees will be higher but did you know that you can engage your accountant to have a look at your financial statements more often than just once a year for tax purposes? You could ask them to do a quarterly review and take a look at the numbers and give you some tips on what you can do differently and let you know what you’re doing right. They may have some long term planning tips for you or ways to help you achieve your business goals quicker or with more stability.
As a bookkeeper, my job is track and record the day-to-day transactions of a business. I take care of payroll, government remittance filings, accounts payable, accounts receivable, bank and credit card reconciliations and all of the other transactions that come along with record the activities of your business. Your accountant, however, has the ability to look at what’s been compiled with these day-to-day transactions and look at the big picture. They have long-term strategies to help you succeed in your business over and above just being a corporate/income tax filing service. If you feel you aren’t getting the service you want – book an appointment and go over your options. It isn’t always necessary to look elsewhere when you’ve developed a relationship with your current accountant already. Maybe it’s just time to re-evaluate what service you’d like and what they can offer you and what that will cost.
Further to this, I feel the same way in my own business. Client needs change and evolve over days, months and years in business. The level of service you wanted from Banking On It Bookkeeping when you were starting out may not be what you need anymore. Maybe there’s more you’d like us to do to free up your time. Maybe there’s less. Let’s have that discussion when the need or want arises.