Ask Not What You Can Do For Your Accountant...

For many business owners, tax time represents the beginning and end of their contact with an accountant each year. Other owners have discovered that their accountant can offer much more. A good accountant is aware of the wider economic, legal and financial environment affecting their client’s business, as well as being acquainted with its key drivers of revenues and costs. These businesses make extensive use of their accountant as an advisor whose knowledge they can call on for counsel and recommendations to help them grow their business. Seeking specific business advice from an accountant can save you time and help to make their business more profitable.
A modern accounting practice is able to offer a range of assistance over and above recording transactions and generating financial statements and compliance documents. These days an accountant can be a primary resource for a wide range of advice.

Tax planning:
Preparing financials for tax purposes should be just the first stage of managing the tax obligations of a business. A number of other business decisions through the year will have tax implications, and advice on how to structure these issues can limit the tax liability involved. The key to minimizing overall tax liability is to seek advice on the tax implications of major day-to-day operational decisions as they arise.
Business Advisory:
The financial statements an accountant creates have more use than as just tax documents. Using a number of key performance ratios to analyze the figures in them can reveal a great deal of information about how different parts of the business are performing, or underperforming. They can point out pending problems in areas such as cash flow and inventory. Financial statements only tell where the business has been. Ratio analysis can convert financial data into actionable business intelligence to help the business go somewhere. An accountant can take that one step further and offer specific solutions to specific operational problems — fraud proofing the business, risk management, lease versus buy decisions, managing inventory, depreciating equipment, pricing, and even marketing.
Personal finance advice:
A business owner’s personal finances are integrally linked to their business finances. To manage them best they need to be managed together. An accountant can advise on how to structure business and tax commitments. They can investigate different methods of valuing the business as well as help you create a succession plan that will ensure trouble-free transfer of management when the time comes.

Using an accountant as a trusted business advisor provides the owner with an opportunity to lift their head from the grind of daily operations, look at the bigger picture and get an independent assessment of their situation. Consider the value of receiving real, balanced evidence and practical advice to point out the pros and cons of any proposed strategy — before implementation makes it an irreversible commitment. A business owner who is not using their accountant for more than just tax preparation is missing out on a great opportunity to access sound business advice.