Sound familiar

My accountant only calls me in January

The accounts arrive nine months after the year they describe, there is a tax bill attached, and nobody has spoken to you in between. It is a common complaint and it is usually a symptom of how the firm is set up rather than what they think of you.

The diagnosis

What this usually means.

Most accountancy practices are built around an annual cycle. Records come in after the year end, someone prepares the accounts, a tax figure appears, and the file closes until next year. On that model there is no natural moment for a conversation, because nobody is looking at your numbers between January and the following January.

It is not laziness and it is rarely a judgement about you. It is what a fixed annual fee for annual work buys. The trouble is that every decision worth advising on happens during the year, and by the time the accounts are prepared the decisions have all been made.

The cost is invisible, which is why it goes unaddressed for years. Nobody sends you a bill for the pension contribution you did not make before the year end, or the capital purchase you made in the wrong month, or the fact that your margin slipped four points in the spring.

The answer

What we would actually do.

Two things change it. The first is having the numbers current rather than annual — bookkeeping kept up to date, so at any point in the year someone can look at where the business actually is. The second is a fee arrangement that does not make picking up the phone feel expensive. Ours includes questions through the year, because charging by the hour for a conversation is the fastest way to stop clients having it.

In practice that means we come to you before the year end rather than after it, with the things that are still fixable while there is time to fix them.

Half an hour, no charge, no obligation.

Tell us what is going on and we will tell you what we would do about it. If the answer is that you should stay where you are, we will say that too.