For a small business or freelancer, finding the right accountant is absolutely essential. You've put tremendous effort into building a sustainable, successful business, now you need to find an accounting firm that cares about the financial health of your small business almost as much as you do.
Getting a good accountant will reduce some of the worry you have about the long-term future of your ventures. In addition to ensuring all the appropriate documents are filed and that you make your tax returns on time, an expert accounting firm will give you practical advice to reduce your costs. They can make recommendations on the monetary decisions impacting your cashflow, your bottom line and how much you owe the revenue service.
So, how do you go about finding a good accountant? You can break it down into several steps:
- Find out how a good accountancy firm can help you
- Ask trusted business colleagues, friends and networks for recommendations
- Gather information about your business to guide your conversations with accounting firms
- Think about the main questions you want answered by an accountant
- Arrange to meet several accountants to discuss your questions and understand their services
- Make an informed decision on the right accountant for you
We’ll go into each of these areas in more detail.
1. What can a good accountancy firm help you with?
Accountants will vary in their expertise and the types of accounting services they offer, but they may include:
- Filing your tax return information (personal and business / corporate)
- Filing necessary legal and compliance information
- Advice on the financial management and health of your business
- Advice on which accounting software and book-keeping systems to use
- Advice on how to grow / sustain your business and manage financial risks
- Advice on how to save you money
- Specialist advice, depending on your needs (e.g. operating overseas, dealing with cashflow issues, writing off areas against tax)
Your small business needs will vary, and your accountant should be flexible enough to accomodate that.
2. Ask trusted business colleagues, friends and networks for recommendations
- The best place to find an accountant is by asking the people you trust. If you have a small business network that you meet up with regularly, that’s a great place to start
- You can also ask online in forums or message boards and if you have a healthy social media presence then Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ can also be very helpful
- Although not ideal, you could also ask on review and recommendation sites, although be aware that the responses could be biased
- Wherever you ask, try to get specifics about why a particular accountant or CPA is very good, rather than just ‘they’re great’
At the end of this step, you should hopefully have a list of a few accountants that you can interview.
3. Gather information about your business to help you in conversations with potential accountants
As a next step, put together some key financial information about your business to help you in your conversation with an accountant. The information you provide might include:
General company information
- Trading information and company details (registration numbers, type of business / legal entity, important dates etc.)
- The services / products your business provides; the sector(s) it operates in
- How long your business has been operating
Financial records
- Details of your cashflow, turnover, costs, profits and balance sheets since you started trading (or over the past three years)
- The assets (what your business owns) and liabilities (what your business owes)
- The main sources of income and expenditure that you make on a monthly basis
- Projections and forecasts on likely future trading
Other information
- Who the key people in the business are and their positions
- How many employees you have
- The software that you use to do your book-keeping and accounting (if any)
- The general state of your existing accounting and book-keeping records
- Any key risks or issues for your business
- If you already have an accountant and why you are considering changing
If you haven’t started trading yet, don’t worry. Instead, you should take along a copy of your business plan.
You should put all of this information into a document so it’s easy for you to refer to.
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