In today’s current climate it is essential to choose every aspect of your freelance business dealings carefully. This applies not just to your clients and suppliers but also to your professional advisors – especially a good accountant.
The right accountant will meet all your business accountancy needs, from the preparation of accounts and dealing with tax matters, but also helping your company or business grow in the future.
Accountants are no longer and should no longer be seen simply as number crunchers. They are now business advisors, tax planners and auditors as well as their more traditionally perceived role of accounts production.
Bear in mind that it’s best to start looking for an accountant well before you need to use one. If possible, don’t leave such an important decision to the last minute.
So where to start…..?
A shortlist of practices to consider can be gathered from a phone directory or the internet but word of mouth referrals can be even more powerful, especially if you talk to other contractors and freelancers and hear their recommendation or concerns.
It can be helpful to ask for recommendations from:
- friends, family, business associates and contacts
- your bank or lawyer
- professional or trade associations – this can be a particularly useful route if you’re looking for an accountant that specialises in your industry
Now you have a shortlist how do you differentiating between all the different options and practices? In order to meet with the right firms you need to answer five key points.
Speak directly to everyone you phone and make a shortlist, discuss their experience and services and outline your business needs. Ideally the relationship you have with your accountant will be long-term, so these are important considerations.
What to ask on this phone call:
Five key questions to ask each accountant on your shortlist about their practices:
- Experience – do they have clients in your sector and experience of businesses of a similar size? Can they deal with your business’ unique needs?
- Fees and costs - what do they typically charge for a business of your size, how are they scaled and do they offer all-in fees? We all want a bit more for a bit less – but in order to gain good service a certain fee is to be expected. A small fee doesn’t necessarily mean good service nor does a large fee guarantee the level of service. You need to meet with your prospective accountants and make a judgment call, often instinct will dictate if what is stated as a fee will be delivered to you
- Director, Partner, manager and staff – who will be looking after your business most of the time – a director/partner, a manager or someone more junior? What is the size of the firm in terms of staff and directors/partners? Sometimes smaller practices suit smaller businesses but this does not rule smaller practices out if your business is larger than most
- Time scales and turn around of work – what response times do they work to? You need to ensure that there will not be a last minute rush to finish the accounts or to file them if you are a company.
- Added value – what additional services can they offer? Do they have a specialty like tax planning or management accounts services, forecast, budgets and cash-flow analysis.
After discussing the above questions with your shortlist narrow this down to about three or four to visit. Check whether you will be charged for this meeting, most firms will not charge but again this meeting is about how they can help your business, not answering questions specifically on tax, vat or other pertinent areas relating to you. If they feel this has been the case you will most likely be charged for their time and information.
Meet your prospective accountant
When you visit a practice, you should discuss:
- How the practice can help you develop your freelance business
- Whether it will be able to offer you advice
- What services you will be charged for and how and when you will pay for them
- The level of access you will be given to the data held about your business. This is important as you might need data to update your business plan or for a tender document. You will also want easy access if you ever decide to change accountants.
Take as much information about your freelance business and other useful information along with you to this meeting. A good accountant should want to know as much about you as you do about them.
Image by Tracy O
