How to Choose an Accountant for Your Small
Business?
Running a small business seems all hunky-dory until one day when you have to make the
important decision of hiring an accountant for your small business. Once you’ve realized it’s time
to hire an accountant, you must know how to go about it.
Make sure you are clear about:
The accountant’s location (and whether remote work is a possibility)
The division of workload (if you need more than one accountant)
The accounting software
The budget for hiring
Most employers hiring an accountant for their small business are also hiring accountants for the
first time. Here are some important tips for those looking to hire an accountant for the first time
or for their small business.
Select a relevant expertise
If you are hiring an accountant with prior work experience, you should ideally choose someone
with experience in a similar business. That’ll cut short the preparation time and make sure the
new recruit hits the ground running.
Out of all the advice that we have for hiring an account for small businesses, this one is the
most relevant. This will not just save you time on both ends, but also educate you about things
that your new accountant might already know ahead of you.
Additionally, it will help if you choose someone with relevant software experience as well.
Be flexible with the budget
A set budget for the position of an accountant might put you on the wrong foot right at the start.
Depending on who you are interviewing and what is their present salary, some flexibility might
be in order.
Remember, your first and foremost priority is to find someone who can do the job for you and do
it on time. You do not want to hire someone who meets your budget but not your expectations. A
little flexibility can go a long way if you are flexible with your budget.Arrange an expert interview
Being a business owner can be demanding in many different ways. One of those demands is to
be an expert in every field of business. However, it doesn’t have to be that way. Moreover, it will
be unwise to believe that a small group of owners (or worse, a single owner) will be in the know
about anything and everything.
If you do not have core accounting knowledge, do not pressure yourself into interviewing the
new candidate. There are two specific reasons you should avoid such misadventures:
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You will not know which are the best questions to ask (particularly the follow-up
questions)
The candidate will find out about it equally soon
How do you navigate such tricky situations? The right answer is to request an expert accountant
for their time to conduct the interview. They could be a peer, a business acquaintance or just a
professional who you need to pay for their time.
The expert interview is a one-time investment that is well worth its weight. You need to invest
just once and the talent you hire stays for a long time. Win-win.
Declare a lifetime value
Say you are savvy enough to hire the right candidate for the budget you had set. What happens
then? For how many months or years are you going to milk this talent? This question arises only
and only when you consider the lifetime value of the candidate you are about to hire.
If this is the first time you are looking at the Lifetime Value or LTV of a resource, your business
needs some more introspection. Most Indian businesses suffer very high attrition rates. The high
demand of digital skills and accounting software fans the flames further.
Businesses that do not treat their employees well find themselves getting rid of talented
employees sooner than they acquire them.
Even before you start the process of hiring an accountant for your small business, declare the
lifetime value for them. Besides the budget for hiring, decide:
How many minimum years do you want the right accountant to work for you?
How much value do you see them add to your business?
If you are clear about the above points, you will make a great hiring decision nine times out of
ten.Think like a candidate
The job market is flooded with opportunities. It is only natural that the right candidate will bag
multiple opportunities at the same time. There’s a good chance that your offer to this candidate
will only be one of these many opportunities.
As a small business owner, you might have no idea whether or not the right candidate will say
yes to your offer. The only way to know is to think like the candidate. Here are some pointers for
the start:
How big is the company?
How clean is the reputation of the company?
How has the company treated its employees in the past?
Is there any scam with which the company has been associated?
What is the singular most convincing reason to choose this company over others?
How qualified are the business owners to judge the quality of my work?
The answers to these questions will collectively shape the decision the candidate makes. Your
job is to answer these questions on behalf of the right candidate. If the answers seem
satisfactory, there’s a good chance the candidate will join you.
If there is a bit of a hiccup with any of the answers to the above questions, you should start
working on it right about now.
Conclusion
On the whole, you should be well on your way to hiring an accountant for your small business
as long as you follow the points mentioned above. Many of these might seem like a first and you
may even feel they are not as important. However, these little things add up to make the most
important nuggets to your accountant hiring plan.
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