If you come to the time when the accountant becomes an integral part of your business, you can be congratulated because your work grows and develops. However, there a lot of situations when the accountant starts to do some strange thighs. For example, a company hired a part-time accountant. He or she asks for the documentation and promises to fix everything.
After 10 months, the accountant stops answering calls, cuts off all contacts, and after that comes a fine of tax. The company is left without documentation, without accounting, paid a fine, and hire a full-time accountant. In order to prevent such a situation, we gathered these four useful tips on how to check your accountant.
1. Be careful with freelance accountants
At the start of a business, it often turns out that it’s more profitable for you to work with a freelance accountant. He or she comes from time to time to pick up documents, takes them away, and brings you reports. It is important to understand that you should sign a contract with such an accountant.
Take all possible contacts from the accountant (even close relatives) and don’t hesitate to call them. If your accountant suddenly disappeared and ended up in the hospital, you will know the reason for the skipped work. If there is no contract, then it will be useful to take admissions in obtaining documents. It would also be beneficial to reserve the right to sign payment and tax documents.
2. Check bank statement
If there are a possibility and a need, ask the accountant to decrypt you each record by the statement. If you see something strange, you can always ask for supporting documents. The salary amounts or household needs can arouse great interest.
It would be nice for yourself to have a spreadsheet that contains the balance at the beginning of the day, the arrival per day, the expense per day, and the balance at the end of the day. The balance at the end of the day should coincide tomorrow with the balance in the statement at the beginning of the day.
3. Always check the cash
Accountants often omit the execution of cash documents. That’s why it would be useful to ask the accountant to show you the cash book, the journal of receipts and expenditures of cash documents, and all consumables for the month. If the accountant can’t do this, then something is wrong.
Pay attention to the dates in the documents. They should match the period you are checking. After this, check who was given the money, for what purpose, and how the amounts are written. Check the balance at the beginning and end of the day as well as income and expenses for the day on the journal of cash receipts and cash documents.
4. Thoroughly check stock balances
If you have a small business, you can check the balances only on the warehouse documents. It will be useful to request a report on stock balances a statement of movement of goods. You should also need to decide on the inspection period and what exactly you will check. Check that the units of measurement and the quantity of the goods in the receipts are equal to those in the consumables. This may sound a little harsh, but you need to understand that such an operation should be performed at least once a month.
The bottom line
What to do if the accountant disappears? If you have stolen documents and/or money, contact the police. Reconcile your documents with tax and funds. When you will hire a new accountant orCPA firm, recheck all the periods for which the runaway accountant was responsible.
You should also understand that these tips are more useful at the beginning of your work with a new accountant. If the accountant turns out to be a decent and competent specialist, then you will not have the desire to check each payment on an extract.
