An Accountant-Client relationship should be very transparent and straightforward. Even if you don’t hear about your investments and returns with your family members, you must still share each information very clearly with your accountant. A strong communication bridge is essential for maintaining an Accountant-Client relationship. You are responsible for ensuring that you have shared the details of each investment or job with the accountant.
In your daily routine, you must take some time and have a meeting with her account to make sure that you have shared all the day’s updates with him, and he has acknowledged it. People working with remote accountants in central London should ensure that their accountants have accepted each message sent to them.
If you want to hire an accountant who is going to work remotely, you must discuss the communication protocol before onboarding the remote accountant. This signifies that there would be no communication gap going ahead. Let’s discuss an Accountant-Client relationship more and see what its challenges are.
Table of contents
- 4 Common Challenges in Accountant-Client Relationships
- Clients are not quite interactive
- Issues because of unrealistic deadlines
- Different expectations from the service you provide
- Some issues related to payment
- Summing Up
4 Common Challenges in Accountant-Client Relationships
- Clients are not quite interactive
Sometimes Accountants may have to deal with clients who do not respond instantaneously and take a lot of time to respond. The accountant must send numerous reminders to get the necessary information. It completely disrupts the workflow of the accountant, as you can’t proceed further unless you get the data from a client.
The accounting firms of the client should be very clear about the consequences of responding late to the requests and somewhat mention it in the contract as well. If the client responds late, some deadlines might get missed and create more significant problems. In some scenarios, these problems are enormous and irreversible. The accountant doesn’t feel quite included if the client is not very interactive. It becomes even more tedious for remote accountants.
- Issues because of unrealistic deadlines
Accounting firms come across clients who wait for the 11th hour to deliver information. On top of this, back pick you to meet all the deadlines and complete the job as soon as possible. If you get such a narrow bandwidth to do their accounts, you get undue stress and have a higher chance of making mistakes. It is very important that you share the time required for you to perform each task and be very clear on the bandwidth.
Do not make over commitments or under-deliver. If you overcommit, the client will be unhappy with you, and if you underdeliver, it will be the same. Be very clear on the deadlines and do not accept unreasonable deadlines. Accounts are something that cannot be rushed with and has to be on point.
- Different expectations from the service you provide
It might be that you and your client are not on the same page. If you are an accountant, you might consider yourself a mere bookkeeper. On the contrary, your client might think you to be the Chief Financial Officer. This is when the client starts building enormous expectations from you and would expect financial advice and weekly reviews from you.
The accountant would definitely expect some extra allowances for these, as they are separate accounting services. But, the client feels that this is a friendly gesture from the accountant or the usual bookkeeping task of the accountant, and the bookkeeping fee includes all this.
To avoid such problems, one must make sure that the engagement letter is very straightforward. There should be a clear and concise service level agreement. Improper communication between the accountant and clients may lead to ambiguity. You can go through some sample SLAs online for your reference.
- Some issues related to payment
Clients do not have much idea about the tasks performed by an accountant. Therefore, they do not realise the value of money and tend to negotiate for a lower fee. Sometimes, the client may again go back to negotiation after the contract is made. You might even come across a client who is unwilling to pay you at all. To ensure that you don’t come across any such scenarios, you need to discuss the value of your services while discussing fees.
Do not offer any rebates or compromise your fees, and this will make you unhappy and depressed. You may strike off the irrelevant services that your client doesn’t require. Clients who genuinely need the assistance and realise your worth won’t allow you to reduce the services. These situations make the client-accountant relationship very ugly. You can be very straightforward from the beginning and learn about the job roles and responsibilities carefully before taking the job.
Summing Up
An Accountant-Client relationship should be fostered with immense trust and responsibility. A client trusts an accountant with all the crucial details of the business; on the other hand, the accountant must make sure that these details should not be shared with any third person, whomsoever it may be. This is how it works. There can be times when a client shares any information late, and an accountant should not lose patience and try to adjust that information in the business’s financial statement with the help of adjustments.
If you are looking to hire an accountant and need a helping hand, you can reach out to us at 123financials. We have the best team of recruiters and a deep-rooted network in the field of finance to recruit the best talent for you. Before sharing the details with you, a detailed background check and verification of the candidate are done. Drop your queries now and get the quote from us.
