You would have thought that running a business is easy. I have something you want, I sell it to you and you pay me for it – that’s it, right?
Wrong – there are so many other things to deal with apart from the ‘business deal’! These are the sort of things that make your business fail. I will write a series of posts to highlight some of the pitfalls.
First up:
CPAs/Accountants
Believe it or not your CPA or accountant can make your business fail.
Firstly, you need to find the right accountant, one who will help you to do some planning, takes the time to go over your numbers with you, in other words someone who really gets involved in your business.
Secondly, your accounting system should be in the cloud, so that you and your accountant can access it simultaneously. Most importantly it needs to be an integrated system.
If your accountant or CPA recommends Quickbooks, Sage or even Xero and Co., you should leave as they are only thinking about their own convenience. These and other vendors are one trick ponies, they only do one or two things, they do not help you with all the other issues, sales, CRM, help-desk, website integration, social media integration, to name but a few.
Business Data Fragmentation = Business Fragmentation
When you business grows you will need access to ALL your data in one place, if you fragment your data you fragment you business. This in turn can lead to business failure.
Your accountant or CPA should help you to keep all your data together and not only consider their own needs. But to do that he/she needs to be engaged with your business and not just be a bean-counting historian.
This is actually good for the CPA and accountant too, as it keeps you in business and paying their bills. If they do not understand that, you really do not want to be involved with them.
