How to Choose an Accountant for your Small Business?

An accountant is one of the most essential employees your small business will have. Their work could save you quite a lot of money and get you out of trouble with the tax authorities. They also have a bird’s eye view of your business and can thus provide useful concealing.

Choosing an accountant is therefore something you should take your time on and consider how your business will change and grow in the years to come so that you can hire an accountant for the business you plan to have.

Know what you need

It’s best to hire an accountant after your company has been operational for a while or at least after it has been planned out in details. That way you know what you need and what kind of the service you’re looking for from an accountant.

It’s fine for your business to grow and for new needs to emerge but when you first hire an accountant you should have a clear set of expectations from them ready since that way you know what to look for in an accountant both in terms of expertize and personality.

Experience

A lot of the accounting work rallies on fist hand experience. It also requires formal education but for the most part, accountants get better at their job by doing it for a while. That’s why you should look for someone who’s worked on the businesses such as yours before.

It’s best if the experience was on the business of the similar size and possibly working in the similar industry. Off course it’s possible to train the accountant on the job and that may be less costly, but it will also take more time.

Fees structure

It’s not enough to agree with your accountant as to how much they will get paid. It’s equally important to focus on how and what they are paid for. The fee structure varies very much from one company to another and you should take that into account as your needs change or expand over time.

For instance, some accountants have a fixed price for a particular service, others are paid based on how many hours they log in. Some are also paid based on the amount of money they are handling for your company. It’s worth getting into details of this and not just deciding on the number.

Software

An accounting software is a big part of the work that the accountants do and you should also agree on it with great attention to details. First you want to know what the software solution is and to make sure that it’s acceptable and safe for your needs.

Secondly, you want to be aware of who pays for the software and is a portion of your cost going towards it. In the end, you want to know how easily you could get your data that’s stored on the software when you change the accountant in the future.

Collaboration

The point of hiring an accountant is for you to delegate this part of the work to someone else and focus on other more important things. However, you can’t just let go of that portion of your finance altogether. Instead what you should do is set up a system for collaborating with the accountant.

The big part of it is deciding on how often the accountant should report to you and on what kind of topics they should report right away. This will give you a perfect balance between control and delegating.

Probation period

It’s sometimes necessary for your company to actually work with the accountant for a while before you decide on whether to hire them or not. This is the costliest, and the least convenient way to hire someone but it might prove to be the best for such an important role.

It’s important for the accountant to know that this is a probation period but also to allow them to do everything they would otherwise do on the job. That’s the only way to test their work in real circumstances that they will face when and if they are hired.

Conclusion

An accountant is one of the key players in any company since their work is so important and so impactful for the business. Choosing one should be your top priority as soon as you start hiring employees. You should start with making sure that your accountant has enough experience in the field.

The accountant should also cooperate with you on regular basis and that’s something you should agree on when you’re hiring them in the first place. You should also agree on the software they will use and have a short probation period before you hire them for real.