Top tip presented by Gary King of Tendo.
Do you have the right accountant… making you accountable for delivering your numbers.
I was with my accountant this morning signing off our previous year’s accounts and a fantastic set of results on all levels. But I could only do that with her and her team giving me the support and more importantly, the accountability that I need.
Now, I sit down with my accountant every single month for a one to one, so she can explain with me where I’m going wrong, what I need to do differently, where I may have overspent, where I may have underspent, and what I need to do to get my revenue hitting the targets that I’m setting.
We compare this month’s results with the previous month. We look at this month’s results with how we said we were going to perform, we look at this month’s results compared with the same period last year. All the time we’re looking at making adjustments to the forecast.
When I meet with small business owners, most of them don’t really understand the value that an accountant can deliver.
Now, I don’t know whether that’s the problem of the business owner who doesn’t know what they don’t know and therefore don’t know what to ask for, or the accountant that doesn’t know how to articulate the value that they offer with that level of support, and therefore finishes up having a price discussion with a client, rather than a value discussion with a client.
I’m about to meet somebody for coffee later this afternoon who rang me in a state of distress. His accountant had rung him to say his VAT bill is due next week. And this particular gentleman doesn’t have the funds available to pay the VAT bill.
Now, I could sit here and argue that it’s the business owner’s fault for not really understanding the basics of how much money to squirrel away into your account each month. Maybe not looking at the reports is a little bit of naivety or lack of understanding, or maybe even he’s in the well known habit of putting your head in a bucket of sand.
But the fact of the matter is that an accountant in that position has an ability to offer more value and what they need to be able to do is articulate even more value. If you’re buying your accountancy services on price, not value, it’s potentially going to bite you on the ass!
Now, I probably pay a little bit more than a lot of people I know for my accounting services, but it’s worth every single penny.
The first person on my team sheet every month is my accountant. She holds me to account, she kicks my ass. She explains things in language that I really, really understand.
And she helps me deliver the results.
So, make sure you are paying the going rate and getting the value that you deserve from your accountant. And if you’re not, change accountants!
I hope that’s been good advice. Take care for now.