Your accountant’s responsibility is to tie your figures together for the year, to make sure that you’re complying with all legal requirements in terms of the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC) and also to ensure you’re deducting the correct amounts and paying the right tax. So, your accountant’s core focus in terms of what they call ‘financial accounting’ is to make sure that third parties are happy – those third parties being the tax man and organizations like ASIC. Accountants generally do not provide specific feedback on how your business is performing.
Unless you ask your accountant for the specific information you are looking for, in terms of how your business is performing, they are not going to give it to you. The best tip I can give you in this situation is to ASK for the information you require. It will likely cost you a little more in accountant’s fees, but you need to have correct and up-to-date information regarding your business’ current performance, how it performed this year compared to last year, how your balance sheet is looking in terms of your assets and liabilities, how your business has grown during the year etc. These are questions you need to be asking your accountant in order to get the answers that you, the business owner, need in order to fill the missing links.
You needn’t wait till the end of the year to ask these questions. In some cases, a business will only provide information to their accountant six months following year end. If you’re asking for information at that time, theoretically the information is already up to 18 months old. By that time any damage that has been done cannot be undone.
So, if you are not getting this information from your bookkeeper or accountant or if you are not able to interpret the information on your own, you need to find someone to help. This may be your bookkeeper, your accountant or a consultant such as Confident Cashflows.
