We often find that when people ask us what we do and we say we’re an accountant, you can see eyes glaze over and yawns appear. Apparently, Keith Richards started studying accountancy before the Rolling Stones, so perhaps it’s more rock and roll than we imagine!!
Talking to business owners recently, many don’t really know what their accountant does.
They say that their accountant doesn’t know what they do either!
They don’t even feel that they are getting a particularly good service.
So why stay with that accountant?
A sense of loyalty? When you choose an accountant you’re choosing a personal service. Your accountant will know your financial and to some extent your personal affairs, so do you feel vulnerable?
Is it too much hassle and complicated to find a new accountant and then transfer all your details? Or is it something you have never even given a second thought too?
If you’re just starting your business, how do you choose the right accountant for you?
In our opinion, an accountant should
#understand and value your business
#be your finance team
#streamline your systems and processes to free up your time
#know your goals
As accountants, we want to fully support you and your business. We want our clients to feel that they are getting a great service and know we are on their team.
# Does your accountant understand and value your business?
Working with someone who understands your sector can make things easier, especially if your sector has particular accounting requirements. It’s also useful to work with someone who knows the software in your industry, like staff scheduling software.
We find that working with home care business owners, we understand how having good financial support will help create a positive culture to encourage staff retention and save time. By knowing the financial situation of the business, you will know how much you can afford to pay your employees. By having structured payroll systems in place, employees are paid on time too. Win, win.
# Is your accountant your finance team?
We provide a full and complete service not just a bit of this and that. We complete all your bookkeeping, accounts, payroll and HMRC compliance. If you already have in house support raising invoices and gathering the data we need, we will work closely with them.
Having a total understanding of your business, we can spot if anything doesn’t add up. For example, by completing your bookkeeping and providing month-end data, we can see if there are any payroll discrepancies.
By understanding your business and the sector you are in, we are able to track trends and be aware of information that can affect your business. For example, if there is mandatory training all staff have to do, can you afford to pay them for the additional time this might take?
# Would your accountant streamline your systems and processes to free up your time?
We will show you how to make small but effective changes to your back office processes which will save you time. These are probably already included as part of the software you already have. Exporting data to be checked rather than manually creating new reports all the time saves the chances of errors that can arise when copying and pasting or overwriting previous data.
# Does your accountant know your goals?
Why do you do what you do? How do you see the business growing? At what point do you plan to step back from the business?
We will ask you these questions and more to find out how you see your business and how it supports your hopes and dreams. By thinking about the long term outcomes, we can look at what needs to be achieved here and now to get you there.
When an accountant prepares your accounts the year has gone, what’s happened has happened. Whilst it’s useful to understand how the business has performed, this is only one piece of the puzzle. Your accountant should also be discussing the future, helping you identify ways to increase profits, forecasting scenarios to help you reach those business goals. Knowing your turnover, your profitability, how much money you’re taking out of your business each month, will help you clearly match your needs.
Still think it’s too much hassle to switch to a new accountant? Moving to Fresh Clarity is easy, we will contact your accountant for you and sort out the transfer of your details at your request. It is a quicker process if you let your accountant know, we can even give you the words to email to them.
Fresh Clarity specialise in helping small business owners like you to free up your time, improve your finances, get that all-important peace of mind and work-life balance, and above all, to manage and grow your business successfully and sustainably.