Christopher V. Flett

Accountants are a rare breed. Few are entrepreneurs, although they service entrepreneurs. I wonder if what we do, makes them wake up screaming with night terrors in the middle of the night. Having a relationship with your accountant is important to the success of your business. They need to get to know you, tailor their services around how you do business, and they should make you money, not cost you money. If your accountant isn’t minimizing your tax bill enough to cover her or his costs, there is a problem. They need to be your Ghost CFO. Someone who calls you on your shit, congratulates you on your wins, and makes sure that you are stocking money away for the tax man. My accountant, Ken, has had the challenge of working with me for a decade. I’m not good with receipts so he just has me stick everything in a big envelope and he has one of his bookkeepers straighten things out. When I call him to apologize, there isn’t any judgement. He says, “you do what you do, and I’ll take care of the rest.” He empowers me to go make it and he, in turn, will account for it. I never complain about his bills because he is delivering value to me and my businesses (he accounts for 12 of them).

Find yourself a good accountant. When finding the right fit, consider the following questions:

• Do you have experience with a professional like myself?
• If I have questions, what’s the best way to ask them? Phone, meeting, in person?
• I want to learn about the process and how numbers relate to one another. Can you explain this to me?
• What indicators will we use to examine the health of my business and cash flow?
• Will you warn me if I’m making a mistake? I need someone who will stop a mistake before I make it.
• What will I be paying for your services each year? What can I expect for that? What will I do to make this price go up?
• What are the common mistakes your clients make?
• Will you provide me with monthly statements?
• What type of continuing education do you do?
• What is your comfort level with tax planning (remember lots of accountant are just bean counters. In Canada, I prefer a CMA)
• Will you be able to offer me advice on where I can cut costs and where I should be spending money?

Remember that this is an intimate relationship. Ken and my wife are the only people that know my exact net worth. The accountant is a consiglieri, confident, adviser, and practitioner of tough love. The story I love to tell is when I first hired Ken and I was forming Think Tank, I was doing my own books. I was horrible at it. After about 30 days, he said to me, “you are spending 10 hours a week on something that takes a bookkeeper 2 hours a month. Do you think you are investing your time wisely?” I told him that I was trying to keep my overhead down and not pay the $35/hour for a bookkeeper. He smiled at me and said, “You bill $50/hr. You don’t think you can make more at $50/hour times 40 hours then you would pay in bookkeeping ($70/month)?” I thought about it, told him to piss off, and sent him my bookkeeping to do. I went out and billed an extra $2,000 a month from this little piece of advice. He got my head out of my ass by doing a simple financial comparison. Now he does that, but with royalties, cross border tax issues, and expansion financing. He grows as I grow and vice versa. A good, mutually beneficial relationship. The nicest thing is, whenever I feel a bit in over my head, I call Ken and he sorts me out. That’s what you want in an accountant.