It is a common misconception that accountants only deal with accounts and finance. Most accountants work with a wide range of businesses and have a full overview of strategy and finances making them better placed than most advisors to provide growth advice. Below Paul Redmond explains how accountants can help your business to achieve growth.
- Understand the value of your business – even if you do not intend to sell your business, understanding the value of it can be important for succession planning, it can also help you with goal setting if you have a growth target to aim for.
- Identify tax savings – any savings made in taxes can be reinvested in growth activities giving an incredibly easy way to financially support growth.
- Cash flow forecasting – this is a vital strategic tool, not only can an accountant provide the forecast, but they can also identify opportunities and issues, allowing you to take action quickly.
- Help you get in good habits – by working with an accountant regularly you will develop good financial habits which will save you time and money when you submit accounts or have an audit.
- Free up your time – you can trust your accountant to deal with the financial side of your business and highlight any issues and opportunities to you at an early stage freeing up your time to work on achieving growth.
- Obtain funding – if you require additional finance to fund your growth it is worth speaking to your accountant before you speak to anyone else as they can give you the options available to you
- Identify financial issues – your accountant can identify bad debts, and unprofitable products and services helping you to address financial issues that may prohibit growth quickly.
- Restructuring and managing change – whether you are considering restructuring your company to be more efficient, competitive or to improve tax efficiency, your accountant can advise on the options available for a restructure and the benefits and pitfalls of the options.
- Strategic guidance – by setting goals and monitoring cash flow, an accountant can help you to test the financial impact of growth decisions.
- Support with expansions and mergers – accountants can help you to assess the viability of an expansion or merger financially and in terms of the structure. They an even help you manage the change process to help things go smoothly.
Many larger companies have a finance director, but smaller companies do not, you should see your accountant as an extension of your management team and it’s a great way to benefit from their wealth of knowledge and experience.