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E-Myth – “Why most small businesses don’t work & what to do about it”

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Edmonton Accountant | Large Accounting Firms Versus One Person Accounting Firms


When hiring an Edmonton accountant, entrepreneurs often make the assumption that they are going to be able to get better services from a one person accounting firm instead of a larger, multi person accounting firm. The reason why they think this, is because one accountant will be able to answer all their questions, and be the only one working on their file, which will give them their service. However, entrepreneurs should not pick their accountant based on this perception of better services. They need to interview each of the Edmonton accountant firms that they work with to ensure that they are going to be able to provide them with the services they want, at the quality that they are looking for.

In order to achieve the goal of hiring a great accountant that is going to be able to give them the services they want, Entrepreneurs need to keep several things in mind. The first thing is understanding how much administration work is involved in accounting. Entrepreneurs might be surprised to understand how much of an accountantís work is administrative duties. There is filing their returns, bookkeeping, organizing, correspondence and record-keeping. If an entrepreneur is going to go with and accounting company that is just a single person, they should understand that they are going to be working on that administrative work by themselves. This means, that the busier an accountant gets, the more admin work they are going to have to do. And because this administrative work is not just important, it is mandatory to complete for each of their clients. So it is not something that they can do later in their business. This highly amount of work that is required means that the duties that are more likely to get pushed off to the side are the higher level accounting duties such as business planning, and tax planning. If an entrepreneur wants to ensure that they get those services, they may want to go with an Edmonton accountant that has many accountants working with them.

One of the things that a multi-accountant firm can do, that is not possible with a single accountant firm is higher students. Accounting students have already obtained a four-year degree, but now needs to go through three years of apprenticing with a tenured accountant. They find work in multi person accounting firms, and to do the admin work such as filing, bookkeeping and correspondence. This allows them to earn their chartered professional accountant designation, while ensuring that the tenured accountants in the firm are able to work on the higher level activities like business planning and tax planning. By working with a larger Edmonton accountant, entrepreneurs can ensure that they are going to consistently get the higher level services that is going to help them grow their business and achieve success.

By working with a larger accounting firm that has many accountants at it, entrepreneurs can ensure that they are going to consistently get the high-level accounting services that is going to help them grow their business, and minimize the amount of taxes that they have to pay.

Edmonton Accountant | Large Accounting Firms Versus One Person Accounting Firms

When small businesses open their doors, they are often told that they need to focus on expense minimization, so they think that if they hire an Edmonton accountant for sheep, that they are going to be able to save a significant amount of money in their business. However, entrepreneurs need to keep in mind that cheap accountants are not going to be very effective in helping entrepreneurs with business planning or tax planning entrepreneurs often think that hiring a small, one person accounting firm, they will be able to get great service at a reduced fee. Entrepreneurs should not have a goal of saving money when it comes to hiring an accountant in their business. They should be hiring an accountant based on the level of services that the going to be able to provide, and helping entrepreneurs succeed when many other businesses fail.

When entrepreneurs are hiring a single person Edmonton accountant, they often believe that they are going to be saving money to do this. However, this does not necessarily work because single person accounting firms cannot save on the cost of labour. All of the accounting duties that need to happen even the lower level jobs such as filing, correspondence, and bookkeeping, will be charged out at the accountants full hourly rate. However, if an entrepreneur goes to a multi-accountant firm, they can end up paying a lower bill. The reason for this is because larger accounting firms are able to hire accounting students. By paying a lower rate for the students than they would a full tenured CPA, mean that the savings is passed down to the entrepreneur. If a business owner had to pay an Edmonton accountant a full rate to do every single aspect of their accounting tasks, it would be a very large bill. But by hiring a larger accounting firm, entrepreneurs can get the same level of service, the bill.

Another reason why one person accounting bills are not preferable over larger Edmonton accountant firms is that when it comes to problem-solving, larger accounting firms have a lot more experience with all of the accountants combined. A one person accounting firm will only have one accountant and their experience. Even if it is twenty years of experience, will have only seen a certain number of clients which translates into a certain number of types of businesses, and a certain number of probl that they have been able to problem solve. However, at a accounting firm where there is several accountants, they could have up to a hundred years combined experience, which means the types of businesses and types of problems that they have seen is a lot more varied. There are more able to help problem solve, troubleshoot and fix problems that business owners encounter which is an extremely large benefit to entrepreneurs. When entrepreneurs are looking for which Edmonton accountant they should work with, they should look for a full-service, multi person accountant firm that is going to be able to give an entrepreneur all of the products and services they need to grow a successful business.