When a business is growing, there can be so many moving parts that it can be hard to keep track of the bottom line, and when you finally do figure out how much money you’re actually making it can be too late. Accountants provide a great service at various stages in the growth of your business, and can do so much more than just looking after your payroll and tax returns.
We’re going to take you through the reasons you should consider hiring a professional accountant to help out your business.
What can an accountant do for your business?
These days it’s useful to think of an accountant as a business consultant who specialises in areas concerning finance, like taxes, budgets, business operations, business equity, business management and money management. As anyone who’s ever tried to go into business would agree, crunching the numbers yourself in these different fields is something that can be difficult, particularly when you have business development concerns and other matters that urgently require your attention.
Accountants generally specialise in areas in which they are experts, but even general accountants can give you good advice regarding estate planning, business asset depreciation and amortisation, budgets, bookkeeping and tax issues.
Better finances and savings
Think you know how you could better position your business or organisation to make savings? Well, if you did you probably would’ve done it already. Accountants are experts at getting your business in the perfect position to maximise finances and savings, and with their help you can ensure your operation is on the right track.
Accountants are also generally in a position to inform you of areas where you are paying beyond industry averages for particular services. This is critical information, particularly for small business owners who are trying to get their operation moving. Better finances and savings is reason enough to hire an accountant.
Provide insight into the future
Unless you’re giving a fresh CPA their first big break, odds are that the accountant you employ will have experience working in the industry. They’ve been in business situations like yours before, and they know what works and what doesn’t. Having someone around the office with this experience can be quite useful, and provides a useful sounding point to bounce ideas off when you’re making financial decisions.
Make sure you take the recommendations of the accountant into account when you’re planning the direction of your business. While you may sometimes get lost in the nitty gritty of day to day operation (as all business owners generally would) accountants can provide a valuable separate perspective that can give you quite a bit of useful insight into the state of your business and where it is going from here.
Help with investment decisions
When it’s time to grow your business, you’re going to have to invest in people, time or infrastructure. Having an accountant around to help you navigate these figures is essential, and can help you get your head around some of the options and whether they represent decent investments or wastes of time and money.
Even if it’s just having someone there as a sounding board, it can be quite useful to have somebody there who’s good with numbers and can present them in a legible way whenever you need it. You don’t want to waste you business time crunching figures.
Help audit your business and figure out efficiencies
At some point in the lifecycle of every business there comes a time where you’re going to have to start making your operation a little more streamlined. Whether this comes about as a result of redundancies, changing roles or making new hires, this is an essential part of the evolution of a business. But sometimes what seems good in theory can be hard to determine whether or not it’s a good idea in practice.
That’s why it’s important to have a qualified accountant on hand to look after the financial side of things. A good accountant can really get to the important numbers you should be paying attention to, so you can make correct and informed decisions. Some of these choices may be hard to make, but having figures that confirm it’s the right thing to do will make it considerably easier than if you’re just going by your gut instinct, and it simplifies the whole process entirely.
If you’re starting up a small business you really need to consider employing the services of a professional accountant. Pretty soon what first seemed like an unnecessary extravagance will become a vital part of your day to day business operation, and you’ll be wondering how you got by without it.