What accountants want their clients to know, and what SMMEs wish their accountants would understand
PETER CARRUTHERS
SOME TIME back I asked my online community about the relationship between small business owners and their accountants. I’m almost sorry I asked, because I promised them some feed-back.
Hell, but I struggled to write this. It exposed my own weaknesses. And all my biases. Offering feedback is easy when you get 10 responses of a few words each. It’s a lot harder when you get 60 heartfelt responses from business owners and 16 sincere responses from accountants about each other’s roles—some the size of small books.
In many ways it’s like that book detailing the differences between genders, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus—except that my version is more like Accountants are from Vulcan, and Business Owners are from Jabberwocky.
You may recall from Star Trek that Mr Spock, the Science Officer on the USS Enterprise, was the consummate logical person, a little light on social skills—much like your accountant. On the other hand, their clients—we business owners—encompass the lunacy of Lewis Carroll’s poem, Jabberwocky.
I’m still making sense of what we want from accountants. And what they want from us. And how we can help them to help us survive SARS and other government departments.
One thing is obvious. Your accountant would rather lick his dog’s bottom than touch your paperwork—especially when it is:
- Sent in a plastic bag—loose, stained, and unsorted;
- Two days before penalty date;
- Demanding a magical transformation into numbers to withstand bureaucratic scrutiny;
- Expecting to pay zero tax;
- And expecting to pay even less in accounting fees!
Okay, I exaggerate a little. But reading 16 accountants writing about their travails is traumatising. I, too, have breached everything they seek in pursuit of professional perfection.
The bottom line is that based on my initial assessment, business owners don’t know what accountants expect. And accountants are too shy to spell it out in words of one syllable. However, trusting that I’ve somehow been able translate the confusion into a love fest, what follows is written in the hope that it helps you:
- To better understand your relationship with each other;
- To agree on what services you expect from each other;
- What service levels to expect;
- What your respective deadlines are; and
- What the price of such services will be.
What accountants want business owners to know …
Tell us everything. Don’t lie. Don’t ask us to risk disbarment. Our career (and lifetime income) is worth more than your short-term cash flow challenge. And we know that you will sing like a canary when SARS offers you accommodation at Pollsmoor.
We know more about tax than you do. Much more than you remember from your mate at Friday’s braai after your 12th beer. If you want an opinion, pretend that we are like your doctor who charges each time you visit. No matter the reason.
Give us all your paperwork. Every VAT claim and every tax deduction needs proof. If you can’t prove it with paper, we can’t prove it to SARS.
You are not our only client. Don’t bring us your work at the last minute and expect instant service. We have clients ahead of you in the queue. Many of whom pay us without complaint. And some of whom actually pay us on time.
We do history, not fortune-telling. Our job is to match your 12-month-old pile of paper to SARS’ needs. We don’t do financial planning, nor do we gaze into crystal balls.
Your job is to forecast cashflows. And to pay your suppliers on time. And to get payment from your clients on time. And to have enough cash ready when the government sends its bill. That’s why you run you your own business. And make all that money. It’s your job to do enough bookkeeping to achieve this. Bookkeeping is what you do to keep your paperwork in order—like keeping track of invoices and cash flows (in and out).
Read every piece of paper before you throw it into a box. That way, you see issues before they’re looming crises. At the very least, open your bank statement and check it each month.
If you want advice, ask first. Before you act. And tell us everything. It takes time to consider all your facets. Expect to pay for such time. Don’t ask for free resuscitation services after you’ve screwed the pooch.
We do numbers better than we do people. If you want a warm relationship, get a dog. Please treat said dog better than you treat us. We also don’t do imagination. SARS does not like creative, and you don’t pay us enough to risk you getting an audit.
Your bank statement is not a cash flow statement. Your business won’t survive if more cash goes out than comes in. Nobody cares if you’re unprofitable. But miss one payment, and the world notices. Survival means getting the cash in faster than paying the cash out.
We don’t work for the government. We don’t make the rules. We spend years at learning to adjust to each new government foible. And swathes of time afterwards. Our job is to keep them off your back. We know how violent your complaint is when you get audited.
Do not pay personal bills from your business bank account. Or vice versa. That complicates our work. That demands more resources. That means a bigger bill. Stop complaining, or start doing it right.
Ignorance is not bliss. If you want to own your own business, you should know which rules define this game. The government defines those rules. Lots of rules, which keep changing. Most of those rules have nothing to do with accounting—stuff like B-BBEE, PAIA, POPI, NCA, BCEA, CIPC … (see Jargon Buster)
Don’t yell at us each time you trip over a new rule. We invest time and money staying current with our profession and its rules. You should read a newspaper at least once a month to stay current with yours.
What business owners want accountants to know…
Nobody taught us how to file paper. Tell us exactly what you want so we can help you to help us. (And so we can save some money.)
We don’t know the difference between balance sheets, income statements, and toilet paper. As far as assets go, your secretary has a great current asset, while my missus has a somewhat more fixed asset.
You’re our interface to the government. You’re our business advisor. You’re the only person who sees what we’re doing. Why don’t you tell us WTF we’re up to before it bites us? And get creative, won’t you?
Yes, we mix our personal and business accounts. Sometimes it’s urgent. Like pending divorce or starvation. And we pay from the only account that holds some cash. Often that’s the business account.
We can’t tell you everything because we’re often embarrassed about what we did. Sometimes we even forget what we did, when we did it, and why.
We’re too busy trying to survive to learn bookkeeping. Or practise it. Let alone keep track of CIPC, SARS, POPI, the Companies Act, and a slew of other acronyms we can’t remember. Why can’t you give us the Reader’s Digest version?
In closing
90% of us small players close down within 10 years. 99% of us, after a lifetime in small-business, do not have enough to retire. These numbers should give us reason to relook at how we’re doing what we trying to do. And to start to treat this small-business game as if we controlled IBM. If we do that, we soon will.
Peter Carruthers is the author of the best-selling book CrashProof your Business, an invaluable guide for entrepreneurs trying to survive the trench warfare of small business. For more of Peter’s irreverent yet brutally honest wisdom gleaned from both failure and success, as well as his course details, visit https://petercarruthers.com.
JARGON BUSTER
- B-BBEE: Broad-based Black Economic Empowerment
- PAIA: Promotion of Access to Information Act 2 of 2000
- POPI: Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013
- NCA: National Credit Act 34 of 2005
- BCEA: Basic Conditions of Employment Act 75 of 1997
- CIPC: Companies and Intellectual Property Commission
- SARS: South African Revenue Service
