What Your CPA Wants You to Know

97. Client Etiquette 101: How to Work Effectively with Your CPA

• Carson Sands, CPA & Teran Sands, MBA.

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Working with a CPA effectively requires understanding both what to do and what to avoid to create a productive professional relationship that benefits your business.

• Be organized when providing documents rather than dropping off unsorted boxes
• Avoid piece-mailing documents and instead provide complete packages when ready
• Consolidate questions and communications to respect your CPA's time
• Ask questions to understand your tax situation and learn from your CPA
• Plan ahead for taxes and save a portion of profits throughout the year
• Set clear expectations about which specific services you need from your CPA
• Respect their time as a professional service provider who bills for consultations
• Don't wait until the last minute to submit documents during busy season
• Never ignore tax deadlines or expect your CPA to care more about your business than you do
• Understand that CPAs cannot eliminate all taxes, only help minimize them legally
• Keep business and personal finances completely separate
• Budget for CPA fees as a regular business expense
• Don't assume your CPA handles everything without specific agreements
• Feel comfortable switching CPAs if the relationship isn't working well

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Speaker 1:

don't wait until the last minute Now. Sometimes this is out of your control. But just realize that the entire country is trying to file their taxes at the same time.

Speaker 2:

Welcome to what your CPA Wants you To Know.

Speaker 1:

Tax and accounting help can be expensive, so we've created this podcast to help guide you through it all and make you feel like you have a CPA in your back pocket.

Speaker 2:

I'm Carson Sands.

Speaker 1:

And I'm Taryn Sands.

Speaker 2:

I'm a CPA with over 10 years of experience helping people start and grow their businesses.

Speaker 1:

And I'm an MBA with a specialization in marketing and entrepreneurship. Taxes suck and we want to make sure you don't pay more than your fair share.

Speaker 2:

We're here to share everything your CPA wants you to know in a fun and easy to understand way. Let's get started.

Speaker 1:

Let's do it. Today's episode will be super helpful if you are a new business owner and you're new to working with a CPA, new to using a CPA firm, all of that or you just got started with a CPA and you're just not really sure how it's best to work with them. There's obviously a lot that you don't know, and this episode will help with that. We're going to go through the do's and don'ts when working with a CPA or a CPA firm. So I was in my dentist's office the other day and there's a little list about. Here is what we would love for you to do, like our ideal patient here. Well, this is kind of the same thing. Cpas also have things that they wish their clients would do, and to make an ideal client, this is what you would do. So if you work with a CPA, this episode may be super helpful for you too, because maybe you just didn't know and now you will. So the first thing that probably isn't surprising to anyone is to be organized, and that usually means when you're providing documents. So don't drop off a big box of documents and you haven't opened your mail and you don't even know what's in there. Be as organized as possible when doing this. Now we have people that take this to a whole new level and put tabs and things like that. You do not have to do that, but you definitely want to organize it a bit and make sure that it's easy to go through and understand. And then another thing we tell our clients is that you don't want to just keep dropping off things one at a time, and the reason you don't want to do that is because piece mailing just confuses everyone. So let's say, you drop off a whole big box of documents, I add you to the list and we think you're ready for your tax return, but you still have a lot of other things that you're dropping off and you are probably not getting all of those for a little bit longer. So then, whenever we go to work on the tax return, there's only half the stuff that we need. So we always ask our clients to not piece small things. Just make sure you have everything in there and then let us know, because that means you're truly ready to work on your tax return. And maybe there's something that you didn't know that isn't in there, and that's completely fine. We can be like, oh, you had this one item last year. You don't have it this year. But don't start sending things to your CPA just the minute that you get them, because it makes it very confusing and it makes your CPA less efficient.

Speaker 1:

Another thing with being organized is that if you have a lot of questions and you're emailing and you're calling a lot and you just have a lot that you're sorting through whether you're hiring someone for the first time or setting up your bookkeeping, whatever it is be organized with that also. So what I mean by that is, if you have a lot of questions and you're just sending a lot of emails, try to consolidate those and just have one or set up a phone call so that you can just knock them out all at once, because I think sometimes people forget the number of people that a CPA is working with, so it's really hard to get back to people very quickly, and you have a lot of clients who like to send a handful of emails every single week, so just being mindful of your communication is so nice. Another thing you should do is to ask questions. Please always ask questions. We know that not everyone knows the tax code and they know everything about what we say, but if you don't know what we say please ask questions, because our goal is to teach you, and we want you to learn Every year. We want you to know why your tax return looks the way it does If you owe a lot of money. We want you to know why. We don't want you to think that it's our fault that you owe a ton of money. We want you to understand where the numbers are coming from, and that's just simply learning. So please ask questions.

Speaker 1:

Also, another thing to do when working with the CPA is plan ahead for taxes. You know that taxes are coming. If you're a business owner, you know you have to save a portion of profits for your taxes. You can't be expecting to get to the end of the year and have not paid anything, so don't be surprised. Plan ahead, and to do that you're going to have to listen to what your CPA says. If they tell you to make estimated tax payments, do it. If they tell you to set aside a certain amount of your profits for taxes, you gotta do it. Another thing you should do when working with a CPA is Set very clear expectations, and what this means is that if you're hiring a CPA specifically, let them know what you would like them to do.

Speaker 1:

Some people mistakenly think that if they are having their tax return prepared, then that means that the CPA will do anything for them all year long, and that's just simply not the case. Everything done is a job by job basis for CPA. So the tax return is one fee. If you need bookkeeping, that's another fee. If you need retirement consultations, that's another fee. So if you are wanting them to do your sales tax and your bookkeeping and your tax return, just let them know up front what exact jobs you would like them to do. So, one, that you can get an accurate price. And two, you're not assuming that they're doing something that they're actually not.

Speaker 1:

And lastly, you should respect their time. So CPAs bill out in time and I know it's silly that maybe you pick up the phone and you talk to your CPA for 30 minutes or an hour and you get a bill, but that is how they make their living. They make their living giving advice and directing people on financial decisions. So that means their day can look like being on the phone for five or six hours and if clients don't respect that, then they wouldn't get paid for their job. So that is their job in a nutshell, and they are dealing with a lot of people, so be respectful of their time and if you have a lot of questions, just simply call or email and say where do I book a meeting Because I know I need some consulting. If you're one of those clients that continues to ask for free advice over and over again, firms will deal with that differently, but they could either charge you after the fact or they will put a stop to it because you're asking a lot of questions all the time, which just takes time. I mean, emails take a lot of time out of our day. Right now, I'm responding to sometimes a hundred emails a day, and that is a lot of work, so just be mindful of their time.

Speaker 1:

Now, moving on to the things that you shouldn't do when working with the CPA, the don'ts would be don't wait until the last minute Now sometimes this is out of your control but just realize that the entire country is trying to file their taxes at the same time, so we don't always know when exactly it is that you have to turn everything in, and we don't always know what the date is that we need everyone to turn everything in so that they don't file an extension, because sometimes in February we're like OK, like people haven't really been bringing stuff in yet, like things are a bit delayed, and then sometimes in February, we are so swamped we don't even know where to begin. So, that being said, we never know. Just think of it when you're filing a tax return as a very long line and you might get at the back of the line. If you turn your stuff in very late and if you're okay with filing an extension, that's totally fine. But if you're one of those people who want to file by the deadline, just make sure that you get in line early, that way that your tax return can be done by the deadline.

Speaker 1:

Also, don't ignore tax deadlines. We always tell our clients that we cannot care more about your business than you do. So we do a really good job of updating our clients on deadlines and what they should be doing. But if they don't do it, then it's kind of out of our control. And, just to be completely honest, we don't like working with clients that don't take their business seriously, like if they miss a deadline here and there and we help them fix it, that's fine. That happens all the time. Something pops up and you miss a deadline, we can help you, but it's those same clients that you don't hear from all year. And then they've just created this big mess that they want you to fix for them, which means a lot of time with the IRS, and that's just not someone that a CPA likes to work with. They like to work with business owners that take their business seriously and stay on top of things so that things run smoothly. Nobody likes to deal with messes, right?

Speaker 1:

Another don't which I think is a biggie is don't expect miracles from your CPA. And what do I mean by that? I mean that a CPA cannot eliminate all of your taxes. We've had some people come in. They were not clients, but they have said that, oh, another CPA you use guaranteed that I would pay none in taxes. Well, that could be highly illegal, but that is not a CPA's job. A CPA is to help you maximize your tax savings, minimize the amount that you're paying. But we can eliminate taxes. That's just part of life. We will all pay taxes, and the higher your income is, the more you're going to pay in taxes, and we hate it. We do too, but you can't expect a CPA to work miracles. We can't make expenses that aren't there, make them up and we can't avoid taxes altogether.

Speaker 1:

Another big don't is don't mix your business and your personal expenses. If you listened to a previous episode, we talked about bookkeeping and all about that, but that creates huge nightmares and we preach this to our clients all the time. Please do not mix your business and personal finances. Just get a separate business account and a separate personal account so that you can keep those separate. Up next is don't forget to budget for CPA fees. So all businesses should budget for CPA fees and it just depends on the business how much that's going to be. Is it just going to be your annual tax return or is it going to be every single month? Help, you need to budget what you need. If you're using QuickBooks, you probably need to budget some time for QuickBooks. So just make sure that's part of your budget and a lot of business owners have to realize this later on. But it's so important to make sure that's just part of your budget. It's not like an unexpected expense. It's happening every year. You're going to need help and put that in your business budget.

Speaker 1:

I mentioned this a little bit earlier, but don't assume that your CPA handles everything. We've had a few people do that they assumed that because we filed the tax return, that we also did their sales tax, and that is not the case. Everything is done job by job. So sometimes the CPA only files a tax return and sometimes they are helping clients monthly for sales tax and things like that. But never assume that they're doing everything. You need to make sure that they're doing the jobs that you need them to do and you're getting a price for that.

Speaker 1:

And the last one I have for you today is don't hesitate to switch CPAs if you need to. If you're not clicking with the CPA or they're not teaching you things as you go, they don't have a teaching heart, or they don't explain things in the right way or they don't respond to you quickly or lately, what we've been getting is that CPAs are taking on like way too many clients, which just creates a big mess for the work they do and the responses they provide. So if any of that, definitely do not hesitate to switch, because if you don't feel like they're doing a good job or that you're working well together, it's just not a good fit and that's not personal. That's just something that needs to be dealt with and find somebody that works well for your business and that's not personal, that's just something that needs to be dealt with and find somebody that works well for your business and that's okay. And that's all I have for you today, short and sweet.

Speaker 1:

I hope that you found something in here helpful. Maybe there was an eye-opening moment where you're like, oh, I've never really thought of that before, or you're just completely new to working with the CPA and this would be super helpful as you get started. If you haven't done so already, we would really really appreciate if you would leave us a review on our podcast, as that's the way that we grow and people see our podcast, and we haven't had very many lately, so we would love a new one. Until next time. Thank you so much for listening to what your CPA Wants you To Know podcast.

Speaker 2:

This podcast is intended to provide accounting and tax information for educational purposes only. All tax situations are unique and should be handled with the assistance of a tax professional Bye.