Take advantage of financial opportunities
The reason so many accountants prefer to be so involved is because the more information they know about you and your company, the more areas they will be able to explore in order to save dollars and cents. And saving dollars makes sense.
“The more the accountant knows about the company, the more value they can add on important business issues,” Hall says.
But the burden of trimming the budget lies not only with your accountant — you need to do your part, too. So be organized, be prepared, be proactive and be accessible.
Just consider the average audit. If your files are scattered around your office, stacked in piles that are toppling over, an audit performed by your accountant might last far longer than it should. In order to avoid a heftier bill, keep your internal financial team on a schedule to update your books regularly, perhaps even every day. Exorbitant costs for an audit — or even just a review or a compilation financial statement — are normally only incurred when you are not organized and prepared.
“Preparation is very important, but planning is just as important,” Schnabl says. “Plan a series of discussions between client and auditor to have a full understanding as to how to build a plan that is efficient and taps into the client’s knowledge of the business and the auditor’s knowledge of auditing. Those conversations drive down the cost of auditing.”
If you are particularly strapped, you might even consider consulting with your accountant and other business advisers to consider altering the end of your fiscal year from the end of the calendar year to the end of another quarter. That would allow your accountant to work with you less during the peak months of January through April and more during the off months, when rates are far less expensive. And though such a shift is filled with internal and federal paperwork, the potential savings of such proactive measures can reach more than 20 to 30 percent.
There are even extreme situations where you might be able to save hundreds of thousands of dollars because you and your accountant are both accessible and open to conversation.
Several years ago, one industry expert was working with a client who had installed defective materials in a sewer and storm drain system, and the client lost thousands of dollars. Though the client was able to file a claim against the manufacturer, the expert was also able to find a case law that allowed for the property loss to carry back 10 years, a far longer retroactive period than the standard two or three years. The result? The client received $500,000, in large part because the expert had been involved in the situation from the start and because the two sides were accessible to each other.
“Accountants have a wonderful perch from which they can observe different experiences in different environments,” Schnabl says. “From that rich experience, they can provide their clients with a lot of interesting views from a general business nature, rather than just accounting.”