“I’m looking for an accountant [bookkeeper] who will actually help me with my business…” a phrase we hear regularly from small business owners?
As an owner of a bookkeeping services and part time CFO or advisory, I hear this a lot from perspective leads looking to ditch their old accountant “I only ever hear from him when my tax is due…” they say, or “he never provides any feedback about how my business is going”.
“No he doesn’t” I say back to them “…and you should not expect him too!”. The stereo -typical accountant to most small business owners is the ‘Tax Accountant’, someone who focuses on compliance. Someone who has spent years, a whole career, honing their knowledge and skills to know everything there is to know about tax legislation and to prepare your income tax return. The very Tax return you went to them about in the first place.
Likelihood is, you have asked them to do your Tax and have a entered into an agreement for them to provide tax advice and/or just complete your end of year Income Tax return; and negotiated a pretty competitive price in the process. So. they don’t suck at all…they are doing exactly the job you engaged with them to do and for which you agreed a scope and most likely a fixed fee!
Price is what you pay and value is what you get in return. Pay for a tax return and get a tax return. You would not expect your mechanic to change the gearbox oil if it was not on the service schedule, and most certainly not without charging a fee to do so.
Let’s look at this another way, you are a business owner and you want ‘help’ with your finances; first step is to decide exactly what you want your accountant to help you with; this does not need to be overly-specific, what does help look like to you? It goes beyond bookkeeping services, beyond BAS lodgment and income tax return preparation; maybe it looks like proactive feed-back on a monthly or quarterly basis?
Common statements we hear are:
“I’m looking for one that helps me with my business, not just compliance/tax”
or
“I need help setting budgets/goals and tracking cashflow to help me make decisions, maybe improve my profit”
Perhaps it’s not your accountants fault at all? And maybe you have just not engaged (paid) them to undertake these services or maybe you’re talking to the wrong sort of accountant. Accountants are like Doctors and Dentists you have general practitioners, and you have specialists, a Tax Specialist or a Mergers & Acquisition specialist or a Commercial/Management Accountant.
Most small business accountants specialise in Tax Services and compliance and compliance is all but backward facing. Perhaps what you want is not even in their portfolio of services. Maybe you need a different type of accountant altogether.
Find the right accountant to get the right accounting services
Throughout my career in larger companies, few had internal specialist taxation resources, preferring to outsource this to the larger firms. Corporations tended to focus their Finance Department around a ‘team’ of accountants whose skills contribute to running the business.
These ‘commercial’ accountants (financial accountants, finance managers, financial controllers, management accountants and Chief Financial Officers (CFO’s) are forward looking towards growth and improving the financial operations of a company. Accurate reporting, KPI and budget setting, cashflow and profit analysis to provide insights to the owners, to interpret what the numbers really mean. To provide the feedback loop so many small business owners are looking at their Tax Accountants for. Clear, accurate and almost most importantly, timely reporting, allows for better decision making and insights to improve the value of your business.
There is a big difference in skillset and focus areas when you compare bookkeeping services, and taxation to a commercially minded financial manager or CFO and a tax accountant. All have their own technical proficiency but it is focused in different ways!.
The Chief Financial Officer or finance manager is focused on driving financial performance.
The chart below breaks down the roles and responsibilities of a tax accountant vs a management accountant/CFO.
Where can I find a Commercial Accountant to help me with my business?
It’s not like looking for a four leaf clover…but these sort of commercial skills are expensive as they are developed with years of senior experience often in larger businesses demanding salaries of $300k upwards. So it is hard for a small business to afford or justify the cost on a full time basis.
In the Small Business space, these commercial accountants mask themselves under the guise of a Part-Time CFO or Virtual CFO’s.
At Your Finance Department we are a different type of firm, focused on packaging the skills of commercial accountants and giving you cost effective access to the various skill sets of a part time CFO, management accounting and bookkeeper, but just for the time or hours that you need.
Check out our services here.
But remember, next time you think your accountant is rubbish, consider your engagement, consider what you have paid them to do and also ask yourself if you need a different type of accountant, and not just a ‘another one’!
