G'day it's Justin Hogg here from Right Source, today we're talking about finding
an accountant for your business so what is it that you need to look for
or things that you need to be thinking about when you're looking to select an
accountant to work with or for your business, now, i know a
lot of people out there will go well accountants are basically all the same
so what do we need to know well there's a few things i think can
help you select someone that will fit your business better and provide you
more value like any service, the better the fit,
the better the ultimate value that will get delivered to your business
so the first thing, number one, first thing is technical skills which
obviously that's what they do so people doing their job now
I like to think of accountants set into two broad categories in terms of
technical skills and i think of them as sages or seers
so basically people who look in the past or look into the future
now the ones that look into the past are the ones that probably most people are
familiar with, that's your tax accountants
because they're compiling your tax which has all happened, it's all done
they're creating a record of the past similar
bookkeepers who tend to look at compiling all the transactions
and making sure they sit in the right place for your accounts, they again are
dealing with the past so that's that's sort of one type of skill you're
looking at is that record keeping and bookkeeping and making sure that
everything for the business is properly recorded for history the other
group of or the other technical skill that accountants have
or practice is those that look into the future now these are generally called
the management accounts and they're the ones that deal with
things like budgeting, forecasting, planning
and overall looking into the future and working out
where your business is going to go, what pathways it can follow and the risks
associated with that and helping you plan
for that future so they're two broad technical skills and they're
very different, one, so a tax accountant isn't necessarily good at being a
management accountant and vice versa so that's one thing you
need to consider is what skill set are you looking for when you're going
looking for an accountant, are you looking for someone to do your tax
or are you looking for someone to help plan your business
two very different skill sets and be aware that when you're
assessing any accountant you're looking to start working with
the second thing is soft skills so this is how that person that you're
getting into your business how they can deal with your business and interact
with you so obviously communication is a big part of that and
if you're looking for someone with good technical skills, if they can't
tell you what's going on, if they can't communicate back to you
what needs to happen what these numbers mean
what you need to do, if they can't communicate that
you don't get the full value of their technical skills so communication is
very important especially if you're looking at planning
because then it's it's a lot more of a creative process
so you want to make sure you can talk and understand each other
secondly is consider whether you want to find an accountant that cares
now that sounds a bit odd because isn't this someone who just
deals with the numbers? Well yes there are accountants out there
who just deal with the numbers and they're very good at it
if however your business is as much about purpose
as it is about profit you're going to need someone who
actually cares about what you're doing because to drive your purpose, to support
your purpose that isn't a numbers game, that is a
personal interaction that needs someone to actually understand your purpose and
cares about you achieving your purpose and
that way they can deliver a service that supports not only
the business and the profitability of your business but also supports the
purpose and the direction that's going and can
make those decisions or provide that information
where you sometimes need to trade off between
profit and purpose so that you can make a judgment call
on where you want your business to go to ensure that it achieves its purpose
and the last of the soft skills is trust
so you need to have someone you can trust, this is implicit
in every good relationship between
and with an accountant has trust as a basis because
an accountant will quite often have to tell you stuff that you don't want to
hear if things aren't going well or things
are going pear-shaped there's going to be conversations that
aren't nice that are bad news so you want someone that
you can trust will tell you that as soon as they know
because as soon as they know, the sooner you can act on it is better
also when things do go wrong you want that person
you know will be there that if you have a problem they will be there so that
that trust as an accountant is really important and that's something
when you're looking for an accountant if you're dealing with someone and you're
thinking well maybe i'll engage them, if you don't feel you're gonna be able
to trust them pick someone else, have another look
the third thing when looking for an accountant is the
experience they've got now different accountants have different
experience and depending on what your needs are
that experience can have a very big impact on the
value or the quality of service they deliver now if you're looking for
someone who has technical skills it's just about
the numbers and perhaps it's just doing your tax for
example someone who's got experience in doing
just like tax and they're good at that will be perfect and will fit your needs
very well, if you're looking for someone who has
experience in implementing processes in business
you'll want someone who hasn't worked just in an accounting firm you'll
probably want someone who's worked in business so the experience that
they've had in their career actually helps them understand your
situation better and then be able to provide a service which fits your
situation so look at where people have had their
experience and is it something that that will
complement what you're looking for similarly
some people prefer there to have been industry experience so say
you work in hospitality and you want an
accountant who's had experience with hospitality because
you feel that will help the communication help go better and
basically their service will be more aligned, well absolutely, find out if
they've had experience in that area, others will go well I don't want someone
who has preconceived ideas of what I'm doing because I'm doing something a
little different with my business so I don't need
industry experience but maybe I need experience in dealing with a certain
aspect like food handling or something like that so
feel free I mean it's completely this is if you're looking to engage an
accountant it's absolutely your right and your prerogative to ask them
to sell to you, to tell them what services and what experience
that they've got that can help your business, so there's three tips and
probably the last one I suppose a supplementary if you like in
to the end is that if you're not happy with your accountant
find a new one, don't settle, an accountant is such an important part of any
business it holds the lifeblood of the business
that cash flow, how you're performing, if you don't trust this person, if this
person isn't someone that you think delivers value to your business go
and find another one because there are many accountants out there who are very
good at what they do and can deliver real value to your
business so that's it for today for talking about
accountants and how you go selecting one for your business
please feel free to check out some of the other videos on
the youtube channel and if you like what you see subscribe
if you've got any questions feel free to chuck it in the link below
feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn, shoot me a private message
until next time thanks for watching it's Justin Hogg from Right Source