Five Ways to Get More From Your Accountant
1. Take on more of the routine work yourself. Use a simple online bookkeeping system like Xero to keep everything in order. Get your accountant to set this up for you.
2. Discuss your plans with your accountant before you undertake something new. It’s often far easy to sort things out in advance than to clear up a mess afterwards.
3. Get information to your accountant well in advance of any deadline. This allows discussion of your figures and time to review how things are going. If you leave things to the last minute then the priority becomes getting it done in time.
4. Make sure your accountant really knows what you want from them. There can be an ‘expectations gap’ between the service that the accountant believes you’re paying for and what you as the client expects.
5. The best run businesses always have a close eye on their key performance indicators (KPI’s). Doing this well requires up to date information, management accounts and budgets. Your accountant is ideally placed to help you set up these systems. Once a good management accounting system is in place you’ll find you can make better and much more commercial decisions.
