What’s missing from your relationship with your accountant?

I recently held a workshop with a range of different business owners and I asked them what their relationship with their accountant was like and what they thought was missing. None of the answers given surprised me. Perhaps you feel like this as well.

One participant said : “I would like more feedback. As it stands, the only feedback I receive is once a year and effectively its purely tax related. Generally, because I am paying for his time…..all he tells me, and all I want to hear is

Did I make a profit and how much?
How much tax am I going to have to pay (and by when)?
How much are you going to charge me?”

Maybe in some ways we get what we ask for. Those are the questions we ask, and thats all we get!

Instead, we need to ask the right questions to get the feedback we actually need. The feedback that is actually useful to help us grow and improve.

Because we are going to have to pay for that meeting (anyway), wouldn’t it be better to rather spend it asking the right questions?

Don’t let your Accountant dominate the conversation in terms of what’s happening in your tax return and where you are getting deductions.

Ask them to tell you how much tax you have to pay, and that’s it – who cares about the details….more than likely you dont! You don’t have to learn about the tax law, that is your accountants job. Rather spend the time with him asking him the more pertinent questions like:

How is my business performance like this year compared to last year?
What can you see that could improve my cash flow?
If you had to give me 3 areas of my business I should look at to help improve profit or cash flow, what would you suggest ?

And remember, it’s really important to wrap up your year end as soon as possible after June.

If you are seeing your accountant too far after year end – for example six months after year end, the first months’ worth of information is already 18 months old – it doesn’t apply anymore. You should actually be having these conversations more regularly during the year and looking at current figures more regularly.

Reviewing your business performance is not something that should be done once a year with your accountant, if you want your business to grow NOW – it’s something you should be doing NOW.