Although hiring a qualified accounting firm such as susan s. lewis, ltd requires in-depth research, it is a measure that will guarantee significant benefits to the entrepreneur in the short, medium, and long term. Your accounting advice should be seen as a valuable tool for managing your business and an inseparable ally for your financial management and cost and expense controls. Here are two basic considerations
Infrastructure
With the entrepreneurial look that you certainly have, a visit to the evaluated accounting office, before closing a contract, will be enlightening. Firstly, because you will be able to attest at least if the number of employees in the office is consistent with the workload that you will demand, in addition to being able to know themselves (employees) and realize if the organizational climate in which they live and the organizational environment that the office offers it will make it possible to carry out quality work, in addition to being able to indicate whether a relationship of trust can be established.
You will also be able to assess whether it is organized, which can represent the same organization that the accounting office will dispense in handling your company’s documentation.
A relevant characteristic to be observed by you is the technological infrastructure of the office. This is because, with the SPED (public system of digital bookkeeping), the tax authorities of the three spheres of government are demanding increasingly complex electronic declarations from companies, requirements that only those offices that are very dedicated to the use of information technology and possess a robust information technology infrastructure can meet.
If your office such as an Estate & Trust Tax Preparation Services fails to meet these requirements, or if it meets them incompletely or incorrectly, your company will be subject to severe fines. Furthermore, e-SOCIAL will be part of the SPED environment this year, which will require companies and their accounting offices to carry out a thorough review of their administrative and systemic processes, changes that will only be possible for those who are well advised and structured.
A good technological infrastructure will also allow your company to integrate electronic data with your accounting office system, making your life easier and ensuring the consistency of your company’s accounting, tax, and personnel department information. Also, ask how the office backups are made – or if they are made – so that you can attest to the security with which your company’s electronic data is stored.
Cost/Benefit Ratio
To assess the representativeness of accounting fees within your budget, you must first be very aware of the quality of the services you are looking for, the level of demand that your company will require and the benefits that choosing a good accounting firm can bring you. If you are looking for an office that can advise you quickly on all your labor issues, periodically analyzes the best tax regime for your company, and guides you daily about accounting and tax issues, you may not find it all among the offices with the lowest fees.
On the other hand, if you want to know about paying your taxes on time and nothing else (a limitation we do not advise), the market will offer you several service options with sometimes lower fees. As stated above, the important thing is that you are aware of what you are looking for. Choosing on price alone can prove to be a big mistake.
An essential tip is to pay more attention to offices that use diversified, objective and transparent criteria to define their fees. In doing so, in addition to denoting a lot of professionalism and ethics, the office will give you the peace of mind that the budget presented to you was not built according to “the face of the client,” as is commonly said.
Firms that charge fees based on the analysis of several factors in their company tend to better measure their services’ value in return for the benefits they can offer you. Factors such as the number of current accounts, the number of incoming and outgoing invoices, the complexity of the activity carried out, the annual amount of your billing, and the number of employees and partners in your company, among others, should be the criteria taken into account when building a well-structured services budget.