What Qualities to Look for in a Small Business CPA

Hiring a certified public accountant (CPA) is an important step for any small business enterprise. A CPA is a trained and qualified professional who handles a company’s financial records. In particular, their tasks include daily bookkeeping, preparing bank reconciliations, creating budgets, filing company taxes, providing financial planning advice, and preparing final business accounts.

Benefits Of Hiring CPA For Small Businesses

A CPA for small businesses can help save time in bookkeeping. As a small business owner, you know how much time you could spend preparing and managing financial records. It’s a complex process such that if you aren’t proficient enough, you could wind up spending more time on it than necessary. If you aren’t careful, you could make mistakes. These risks could eat away at your time for other tasks. Designating that aspect of the business to a CPA, you will have a dedicated expert you know can do the job faster and better saving you time for other tasks.

A CPA will also help your business to grow in no time. When you expand your business, your financial needs also change. A CPA will assist you in planning for finances, making growing your small business as easy as possible.

Besides, a CPA can analyze and align your goals with your financial position. They can advise you on how best to plan for the future. Therefore, hiring a CPA would allow you to grow your small business quickly.

Hiring CPA Specialist For Your Small Business

Finding the right person for the job requires careful deliberation, which can be overwhelming. Remember, you’re looking for someone who can assist you in growing your company, so you need to hire someone with the right qualities. Here are some qualities to look for in a small business CPA when hiring one.

Effective Communication

Accountants spend most of their time creating financial records and managing company finances on computers. So you might think you don’t have to consider how well they can communicate. But you need to note that the role of a CPA isn’t just producing an organization’s financial records. They’re also responsible for presenting the financial data they generate to interested users, including the management, board of directors, other employees, and even shareholders.

Therefore, you should hire someone who can communicate financial information. The right CPA for your company should have strong written and oral communication skills. That way, they can pass information to the intended recipients concisely.

Technologically Savvy

Automating your processes can help scale your business. Accounting is one of the crucial areas that can benefit from automation. Investing in a suitable accounting software will help boost your operational efficiencies and save company resources.

A CPA should be technologically savvy. In other words, they should be able to use the accounting software in your business systems to complete their daily tasks. Therefore, find someone who can quickly pick up accounting technologies.

In connection with that, you should hire a CPA ready to update themselves with the correct trends in the sector. This quality is necessary for your success because accounting technologies and trends can change every second. Working with a CPA who is not well versed with the latest trends in accounting will likely hurt your daily operations and the long-term growth of your business.

Confidentiality

A CPA has primary access to all your company’s financial data. It’s important to ensure your data isn’t exposed to unauthorized users. When unauthorized people access your financial data, it can lead to financial losses. This is why you need to hire a CPA who can maintain company secrets. As such, you can protect your financial details from unauthorized access.

Highly Organized

The right CPA for your small business should be highly organized. Accounting is highly meticulous work because it involves dealing with monetary figures and other sensitive details. A CPA should be able to keep your daily financial transactions updated and reconciled. And after a certain duration, for instance, a month, the accountant should be able to clearly present to you how much sales you generated and the amount of money you spent. This will help you to know whether your business is making profits or losses. From there, you can take the right measures to position your company for growth.

Best Qualities of a Small Business CPA – Summary

Although you can complete some business accounting tasks without assistance, hiring a CPA can be more advantageous to your business. A CPA is a trained professional in financial management and can assist in keeping your records in order. By hiring a CPA, you can centralize your focus on other tasks, which helps you to save time.

They’ll also keep you on your toes to ensure you work toward achieving your company goals. However, you must carefully deliberate when looking for the right one. Effective communication, technological savvy, confidentiality, and being highly organized are important qualities to look for in a small business CPA.