Accountants and their services play an important role in any business, so hiring an experienced accountant is a good decision. Whether you have a startup business, a family-owned business, or a local company, employing an accountant would mean better payroll, finance management, and tax assistance.
In this article, you’ll learn the key questions to ask when hiring an experienced accountant in London.
What Is Your Accounting Specialty?
Accountants in London have their specialization. For instance, an experienced accountant may have a background working with major corporations as an in-house accountant for more than a decade. Hiring a corporate accountant can help you when you’re expanding your business. It also applies if you’re planning to shift from one branch to several branches or from a local company to a corporation.
Check out the different sub-specialties of accounting:
- Forensic Accounting: Accountants who specialized in forensic accounting are considered detectives in the financial world, who usually testify in court trials. Their key responsibilities include following paper trails, tracing the money, and checking all checks, invoices, financial statements, and other important documents. These things can be evidence for securities fraud, credit card fraud, embezzlement, and money-laundering.
- Environmental Accounting: Environmental accountants focus on determining the costs of business decisions from an environmental perspective. For instance, an environmental accountant evaluates the costs of waste disposal or cleaning oil spills.
- Personal Financial Planning: A financial planner can help people manage their wealth wisely, setting appropriate allocations for college education, retirement, investments, and estate planning.
- Auditing Information Technology: Accountants who specialize in auditing information technology detect any unauthorized entry and risks associated with business systems, especially accounting and finance software programs.
How Long Have You Worked as a Corporate Accountant?
It is imperative to ask the years of experience of an accountant in a particular business. By doing so, you are able to assess the expertise and reputation of an accountant in a particular field, like the corporate world. An experienced accountant can give you an edge and extra help in business planning involving budgeting and finance management. There’s no need for advanced training or worrying about a learning curve if you hire an account who has years of experience under their belt as opposed to a new graduate or beginner.
What Are Inclusive Of Your Services?
Accounting Services vary from one accounting firm to another. A good accounting firm offers a wide array of accounting services to help clients remain compliant with the regulations of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs or HMRC (responsible for tax collection in the UK). From tax compliance, bookkeeping, tax, accounting, to accounting software implementation, an experienced accountant can deliver the best results.
Check out the following accounting services you need to look for in an accounting firm:
- Accounting And Bookkeeping Services: Online accounting software subscription, bookkeeping file quarterly review, and monthly payroll reports processing.
- Tax Compliance Services: Prepare and submit quarterly VAT returns, corporation tax return, annual statutory financial statement, directors’ self-Assessment tax return, and company’s house annual return.
- Additional Add-on Accounting Services: Other accounting services include PAYE registration, VAT registration, company formation, company secretarial service, IR35 Guidance, P11D, contract review for IR35 status, dealing with IR35 disputes, anti IR35 draft contract provisioning, company compliance, and contractor services, and efficient extraction strategies.
What Are Financial Planning Tips You Provide?
Financial planning involves ensuring proper budgeting or allocation of resources, tracking books, paying off your debt over time, locking down funding plans, and not skimping on a retirement plan. An experienced accountant can provide you expert financial planning tips, which allow you to make sounder business decisions.
Here’s how an accountant can help you with financial planning:
- An accountant provides the best options when applying for a loan to finance a startup, small business.
- You’ll be helped with the best ways to raise capital or fund for your business.
- An experienced accountant keeps your books well organized, so you can go back to them as needed and for compliance purposes, saving you so much time and effort.
- Make arrangements to pay off your debt to avoid bankruptcy or business closure.
What Can You Offer To Help Improve My Business?
Choose an experienced accountant who’s knowledgeable about your business niche and your target audience. As much as you like someone excellent in tax and finance, you also want an accountant who has a genuine drive when it comes to optimizing and organizing your business, maintaining financial health throughout the year.
What Are the Recent Laws And Changes Affecting My Business?
Changes are a constant aspect of tax laws in the United Kingdom. That’s why you should hire an experienced accountant who’s knowledgeable about recent tax laws and other accounting-related laws. For foreigners wanting to put up or expand their business in London, hiring an experienced lawyer will definitely help you comply with UK laws.
Conclusion
The above questions are important to determine the level of expertise and experience of an accountant. Choose an experienced accountant who’s not only an expert in bookkeeping, accounting, and finance management but also someone who has soft skills and shows genuine concern to your business.
