For most businesses, their CPA or Certified Public Accountant helps them in taxes and accounting. Needless to say, they have a major role to play in the tax season.
However, in reality, the expertise and industry knowledge of CPAs can be used for more than just taxes and finances. We are going to explore how CPAs can move ahead of finances and strategically get involved in decision-making and growth ideation.
But, before we move to that discussion, let’s see what a CPA is and what do they do:
CPAs are accountants, of course. But, they have given an examination to achieve a state license, which helps them operate legally. Ideally, a CPA can offer you multiple services, such as reporting related to finances, business audits, etc.
In addition to the bookkeeping and other accounting management tasks, CPAs also have the role of a business advisor. Therefore, while these individuals may be hired in an enterprise under varying job roles, their primary motive is to understand business goals and achieve financial targets for the future. Any CPA with considerably high experience can easily help you achieve these goals and also shape the path.
Here’s what all a CPA can bring to the table as a business advisor:
1. Subject-Matter Expertise
To offer strategic guidance and support to the enterprise, CPAs put on their expert hats and understand everything from target customers to specific industry requirements. It is not unlikely for business owners and managers to feel like a subject matter expert, which they may be.
But, CPAs bring a different perspective to the business. They breathe in the financial data day in and day out, enabling them to catch inconsistencies quite early. As a result, your CPA has the power to offer you a broader view of the insights of the business.
For example, you can take inventory management advice from your accountant or CPA. It helps you generate internal best practices and benchmarks. For instance, you understand how you are performing in relevance to competitors and what changes you can make in your functioning.
2. Improves Profitability
One of the amazing benefits of having a CPA in your enterprise is the ability to boost business profitability and ROI. Through regular audits and analysis, your CPA can easily get a bird’s eye view of the entire functioning.
If you have an experienced CPA, then he may have already gained advanced knowledge by working with various businesses. This CPA would be able to utilize their subject matter expertise to identify loopholes and point out areas where you need to make changes.
For instance, finding a department that is least profitable. These recommendations help in improvising the profitability structure and improving it.
3. Expands or Downsizes
Throughout the lifecycle of any organization, they downsize and upsize too often. Take startups, for instance. These organizations expand more quickly than any other organization. But, during expansion or downsizing, there are multiple legal requirements that you need to take care of.
Who can help you with this?
Of course, your CPA. You don’t have to do it all yourself.
Allow your CPA to assist you throughout the procedure. For example, taking care of legal needs and overlooking every document to reduce errors and eliminate scope for risks.
While expanding your business, CPAs can also help in the recruitment process. CPAs have the ability to judge the potential of a candidate when it comes to managing a business.
Most of the time, they work with the human resource department in order to find a suitable employee for the relevant field. This knowledge is gained by working in various fields and organizations.
Similarly, when you are in an urgent need to downsize or layoff, you can ask your CPA to quickly check those numbers and tell you which department is least profitable. You can get to the task more efficiently with this data without impacting the organization’s comprehensive profitability.
4. Manages Risk
Considering the advanced knowledge and expertise of your CPA, it is possible for them to identify looming business threats. Your CPA can analyze data and check multiple scenarios to find out if your company is at the risk of being sued or charged by a client.
When you have this information beforehand, you can actually mitigate the risk by actualizing a plan to eliminate the issue. It also makes your CPA a risk manager of the enterprise as far as the financial health of the business is concerned.
Moreover, a CPA also takes care of any deadlines for financial reports or tax filing. Your CPA will be responsible for all of the tax implications and reporting compliances.
5. Goes Beyond Spreadsheets
As a business, you need a lot more than Excel sheets. You can’t analyze the entire business through simple sheets containing losses, profits, and tax liability. Hence, avoid restricting the abilities of your CPA in that manner.
Allow your CPA to gather insights, create reports, and obtain results of predictive analysis. Use this data to hire more efficiently, create higher product margins, and expand to another location.
The use of modern-day technology can help reduce most of the tedious tasks. In the process, adopting artificial intelligence can automate labor-intensive jobs. It can also provide an accurate analysis.
Moreover, remote working and multi-user access solutions might also be required for a seamless workflow. You can utilize cloud accounting software such as cloud-based QuickBooks for this purpose. However, the expertise to gain hidden insights from these tools is only possessed by a CPA. So, extend the scope of your job role and allow your CPA to offer much more.
6. Manages Finance
A prominent job role that your CPA can assume as a part of the business advisory is finance management. Your CPA can actually advise you on taxes and finance management. They can track and analyze your books to understand your accounts and reduce financial malpractice.
For example, if you are planning to take a business loan, your CPA can streamline your finances and help you strategically move ahead with this decision. It means that they can help you create a repayment plan to avoid defaulting. Your CPA can also overlook your payroll and reports when the need arises.
Furthermore, they can also act as a tax planner. The rigorous training and examination they have to go through to become a certified accountant enhance their knowledge to handle taxes. CPAs can help to prepare returns and maximize your refunds in the process.
7. Keeps Record
Bookkeeping is a simple and traditional method to keep track of your transactions. But, this activity is highly flawed in various organizations. This mismanagement can be reduced with the advice offered by your CPA.
Your CPA can help you implement a healthy bookkeeping culture in the organization. They can help to create proper documentation of records for any reference involving business data.
You can easily monitor or analyze the progress of business using the information. This process can further go on and streamline your accounting, auditing, reporting, and finance management.
Conclusion
With time, the role of CPAs is evolving. Apart from managing your taxes, they can benefit your business a lot. They can improve communication lines and streamline workflows through intelligent implementations and smart decisions. There’s so much more than your CPA can help you to achieve using their knowledge.
An experienced CPA can help you create and accomplish realistic targets for the growth and success of your business. They are one of the most trusted sources of information that can guide you in the correct direction. Just remember to hire the right CPA to enhance the decision-making and profitability of your business.
Author Bio:
Bhavleen Kaur is a content writer at Ace Cloud Hosting- a leading QuickBooks Enterprise cloud hosting provider. She specializes in writing about accounting, cloud technology, tax software, and likes to know about upcoming technology and trends. In her free time, you can find her reading novels or watching movies.