Excellent Business Accountants Are Team Players
A small business accountant told a group of financial reporters that businesses choose the business accounts that choose, because that’s who they originally chose. That’s true. Surprisingly, most business owners don’t thoroughly consider their needs when selecting a business accountant. For whatever reason, well considered or because he or she was a high school classmate, whatever, the business owner chooses an accountant and decades later they are still together.
While the business owner has matured, always striving to keep up with the changes in their industry in order to remain competitive – whether their business accountant has done the same or not is often more a case of luck than anything else. And the reality is that all small business accountants are not created equal. The end result is that many businesses that work with mediocre accountants don’t make the change to a better accountant simply because it’s too much trouble and they perceive that the cost of switching to a more qualified business accountant will be too high.
Perhaps the real reason is closer to the fact that the business accountant who has been there from the beginning, knows all the ins and outs of the company. Business owners are secretive by nature and since they have spent years confiding in the existing accountatnt, they are so unlikely to go throuh that again. Excellent business accountants also know that to do an effective job for their clients they have to look at the whole picture, personal and private, because the two are usually bound up together.
The increasing role of small business in the American business landscape and more powerful and accessible information technology has changed the role and importance of the small business accountant. And a good business accountant does much more than just record transactions and passively generate documents?they actively analyze, interpret and convert that data into actionable business intelligence.
If your accountant is just showing you the financial tracks of where you have been, not involved in planning for the future, you’ve made a bad choice in accountants and you’re missing out on a great opportunity to receive good business advice. Beyond simply preparing tax forms, an excellent business accountant should be involved in business planning throughout the year.
Talented small business accountants function as a trusted general business consultant, assessing business problems and offering specific solutions. A good small business accountant understands that your personal finances are integrally linked to your business finances, can deftly handle data and numbers but should also be able to demonstrate quick and creative business acumen.
You hire a business accountant based on the assumption that he understands the basics of your business. Accounting is the Achilles heal of many business owners, and advice on finding better ones is appreciated.
