Most small business owners only meet with an accountant annually, so you may think that meeting a couple more times for tax planning will make all the difference.
However, when you partner with a monthly accounting service, even more meetings are offered. How important is it to meet with an accountant every month? It depends on your needs and goals!
At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we’ve worked with small businesses for over 50 years. After all this time, we’ve gotten plenty of questions about meeting with an accountant, including:
- Should I meet with an accountant each month?
- Will it matter if I miss a monthly meeting?
- In theory, how much money can I save by going to every meeting?
Meeting with an Accountant Monthly
Monthly accounting is a year-round service that offers tax strategy beyond what an annual tax accountant can provide – plus advice that always considers your current financials.
We believe that you should attend every meeting with a monthly accountant. It’s how you get the most value out of the service. That’s because:
- Small businesses don’t have a lot of financial wiggle room and need to pivot quickly to absorb market changes.
- Your accountant knows what tax law changes may be coming down the legislative pipeline so you can make tax-saving adjustments ahead of time.
- You can build a relationship with your accountant, resulting in advice that’s even more tailored to your business and goals.
A monthly accounting service is like a gym membership, and some people treat them the same way. They pay for services that they don’t use to their full extent, and that’s still a valid choice if you feel like you’re getting a good value.
Missing Monthly Meetings
Even though attending every meeting helps clients get the best value, we don’t require attendance for standard monthly meetings – just tax-related ones. Why?
Small business owners are busy, so we want to be flexible and in tune with their needs. Not everybody wants or needs year-round advice that’s based on their current financials, which is the main point of standard monthly meetings.
The type of advice that we focus on depends on the type of meeting. Some of our clients find that the three tax meetings we have per year are enough for their goals. Those tax-related meetings include:
- Tax season reflection. When your tax return is done, you’ll meet with your accountant to go over what you owe in taxes or what your tax refund is. This is the type of meeting that you would expect from an annual tax accountant.
- Spring tax planning. Around April or May, we reflect on how you did from a tax perspective and where you’re starting the next tax year. If you owed a lot in taxes, we can make a plan to prevent that for the next tax year; the same goes for if you received a large refund and would prefer to have that money to use throughout the year instead.
- Fall tax planning. Around October or November, we prepare for the upcoming tax season. We’ll talk about business strategies to help you lower your tax bill, such as making purchases for your business, taking a look at your withholdings, and paying or holding off on expenses.
Potential Savings From Meetings
When we say that attending every meeting gets you the best value out of a monthly accounting service, can we back that up with an example? Of course!
Tax Meeting
Your net profit determines which tax bracket you’re in. That’s what an annual tax accountant would base your estimated payments on. There are typically no tax savings with an annual tax accountant.
What happens if you make more than predicted? Your estimated payments wouldn’t cover the full balance, leaving you with extra money owed after your tax return is completed.
You have a month to scrape up the funds before the bill is late, subjecting you to extra stress, plus potential penalties and interest if your payment is late.
Tax Planning Meetings
If you work with a monthly accountant instead, they’ll notice if your income is trending above what was estimated and adjust payments immediately. This alone doesn’t provide tax savings, but it saves you the stress of having a large unexpected tax bill beyond what your payments covered – and likely saves the potential penalties and interest, too.
If you participate in the other tax-related meetings outlined above, you can also prepare year-round to buy, save, or change things that can save you in taxes. Year-round tax planning can save you an average of 5-25 percent in taxes, and the most that CSI has ever saved a client on year-end taxes is $66,000.
Tax Planning & Monthly Meetings
If you work with a monthly accountant and attend all tax-related meetings, you may receive the savings mentioned above. However, also attending standard monthly meetings can mean more savings on top of that.
Beyond tax savings, a monthly accountant can help you find areas in your operations to cut unnecessary costs, grow profits, increase efficiency, and more. Since there are so many areas of potential savings, we can’t even put a number to it!
Meet as Much as You Like!
The more you talk with a monthly accountant, the more potential there is for you to save in a variety of areas – but the choice is entirely up to you!
Now that you know more about meeting monthly versus meeting just for taxes (as well as how much money you can save), are you ready to check out monthly accounting services?
If so, please consider CSI Accounting & Payroll! To see if we can be a good fit for your business, click the button below for a free consultation:
Not ready to talk? That’s okay! First, learn more about what it’s like to work with CSI by clicking the image below:
