#E-Commerce Business Owners? Are you getting the best from your accountant?
Are you getting the best from your accountant? A lot of e-commerce business owners I meet already have accountants. Which makes sense unless you are a start-up right?
But does your accountant really help you with meaningful and valuable support throughout the year and really focus on your objectives and goals?
Compliance v Advisory
All accountants provide what are known as compliance services. For example they prepare your year-end accounts and ensure they are accurate. They submit them to HMRC and Companies House on time and tell you how much corporation tax you will need to pay.
They may also do other compliant tasks like vat returns and payroll and possibly your bookkeeping. That is what every single accountant does as a bare minimum.
What does a Proactive Advisory Accountant do?
A pro-active accountant is one who does all the compliance work but doesn't spend much time talking about it. Instead, they focus on building a meaningful partnership with you to really get to understand your business. By understanding your goals and objectives on a deep and meaningful level they can really provide something that can change your life!
How can that happen? By being a virtual partner and spending time talking about what is keeping you awake at night and exploring your challenges with you. Most importantly, coming up with some fixes that suit you and your business and helping you implement them.
Common challenges
If your accountant is a specialist in your sector then they really understand how to help you because they see the same challenges time and time again. Everyone's goals and objectives are slightly different but they tend to boil down to three categories: the need to increase profits and cashflow, the desire to spend more time outside of work and having someone who really gets their challenges and helps them to solve them. Getting the 3rd objective right leads to solving the 1st and 2nd goals.
Ongoing Relationship
Do you only meet with your accountant on an annual basis and talk about your accounts that are up to 21 months old? Yes it's great to know how your business performed last year but what about right now? You need an ongoing relationship that is a partnership, helping plan and implement your objectives on a regular basis. You need an expert on your side who is there for you - and not charging you by the hour for every single inter-action you may have!
Sound expensive?
So you would really value that proactive ongoing relationship to help build your business, increase profits and give you back more time? But you are already paying your accountant a small fortune to do nothing much? I have great news for you a truly proactive service is the way the job SHOULD be done.
By working with the client and helping them implement solutions the business is more profitable and the e-commerce business owner is less stressed. In addition, they are able to pay themselves properly and spend more time away from the business. There shouldn't be a huge extra expense for doing the job properly.
By getting the financial foundations right in your business this also helps your accountant, as the numbers are always current and accurate. The proactive accountant can more easily use those numbers to help you meet your objectives. And spend more time discussing proactive planning for you and less time on crunching the boring numbers.
What next?
Why not book in a complimentary 15 minute call with us, where you can talk to us about where you are now, where you want to be within 12 months and what's stopping you getting there? This is where we always start with a client - it helps us both to work out quickly if we are a good fit for each other.
If we decide we are, then a complimentary strategy session of 60 minutes can follow going deep into the issues you have. We often start doing one piece of work to help a client and they love the way we work so much that they switch over to us for all their accounting needs.
Why not find out more? Book a 15 min call with us
