“I’m just running a small company with a few people, I don’t need an accountant!” How many times have you said that to yourself? How about the other common mantra, “We’re just a small company, we can’t afford fancy accountants!” Have you said this one? Small business owners often assume that accounting services are out of their reach. What they don’t realise is that there are accountants that specialise in small business, and to not engage with good accounting services is actually to put one’s business at risk.
Here are the best reasons to get an accountant for your small business as soon as you can:
Accountants Keep You On the Right Side of Government Policy
Whatever the government says about supporting small business, its policies and bureaucracy are generally a net burden for them. Compliance costs money, and that’s why small businesses struggle in environments characterised by heavy regulation. An accountant can be your first line of defence against such burdens, ensuring that you are at least by the letter of the law doing everything legitimately, correctly and without any risk of facing any kinds of charges, fines or penalties.
There’s actually a positive side to government policy, too, especially in Australia where there are a growing number of small business tax concessions which can help small businesses along, but they are quite complex for an average person to understand. Having an accountant, therefore, will help you navigate these rules and take advantage of their offerings.
An Accountant Will Reduce Your Workload
Next, who wants to finish a hard and long day of work just to have to sit at the table or at the computer all evening going over the day’s financial records. There are certainly software solutions that are designed to make things somewhat easier for small business owners, but none of them take away from the fact that entrepreneurs need to take away time and energy that could otherwise be spent with family, or working on new and creative ideas for their business to grow and thrive.
Leave the number crunching to those who have made it their livelihood. For the vast majority of small business owners, the accounting part is a small and separate task to complete within their business, and one that is alien to them and therefore time-consuming.
Accountants Are Valuable Advisors
They may be called accountants, but their suit jackets button up tight over a number of areas of expertise, too. They can become incredibly valuable to your business as advisors and consultants, giving you insight into the implications of your current company structuring, as well as ideas for how to cut expenses and increase revenue. They also know the local laws and regulations inside and out and so can help you find ways to make the system work better for you.
An Accountant Offers Insight into Your Business Performance
As the leader of your business, you will have to keep on top of how your team members are performing individually, but an accountant can offer you some big-picture insight into how your company is performing overall. You can get these kinds of insights week to week, month to month or year to year, the accountant knows it all. Using the feedback and advice from your accountant, you can make sensible and well-informed decisions on new policies, new directions, areas to invest more capital in and areas to cut back on.
Numbers from the accountant may even indicate where foul play is happening right under your nose. If there are people in the company behaving in a morally questionable way, then the numbers often point to their department or even to the individual, and the accountant is the one that can find those discrepancies in the numbers.
