The Value of a Good Accountant: Accurate Reporting and Timely Information

What is the value of a good accountant? Sometimes the importance of this is not addressed until something goes wrong or there is a time sensitive need. We saw a lot of this when the government announced the Payroll Protection Plan for businesses. Suddenly businesses who hadn’t been taking care of their financial reporting, needed financial reporting. It was a crazy stressful time for everyone! And it is not over.

Here’s a real life example from a client I helped, names omitted of course. The client has been operating many years, during which time they had amassed what they thought were a significant amount of financial reserves. Unfortunately, they were faced with the loss accounts which had been the backbone of their business for many years. They were very concerned about this of course, but felt some comfortable because they thought they had a surplus of cash. Unfortunately, this belief was based on a complete misunderstanding of how to read financial reports.

Things turned out okay with this client. We worked together to clean up their reports and made sure they understood them. They developed some strategies to deal with their cash get some reserves established. Most importantly, they learned how important it was to have a good accountant translate accounting concepts into actionable strategies.