9 Ways an Accountant Can Help Your Business Grow

Accountants play an essential role in the management and operation of businesses. That said, there is sometimes a perception that an accountant’s role is about procedure, administration, and compliance. In other words, hiring an accountant is a necessary but non-value-adding cost. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The right accountant will add value to your business in a range of different areas, including helping your business grow.

This could be helping you get onto a growth trajectory, minimising risks that could limit growth, or taking steps to sustainably accelerate the growth of your business.

Here are the nine main ways an accountant can help your business grow and achieve its objectives.

Guidance and Advice

Good accountants don’t just crunch numbers, keep records up-to-date, and make Revenue filings on time. The best accountants are proactive, so they provide guidance and advice to help you understand the growth potential of your business and the steps you should take to get there.

This type of advice is invaluable as your accountant will use extensive experience working with other businesses to make assessments and share knowledge. The advice will also be impartial.

Business Strategy Development

Achieving business growth and successfully hitting growth targets requires well-thought-through and implemented strategies. Your accountant can help develop a growth strategy for your business through analysis of your plans, financial forecasting, growth strategy stress-testing, and more.

Financial Health Monitoring

Even the best growth strategies can fail if the underlying fundamentals of the business are not secure. Therefore, one of the key areas where an accountant can help your growth strategy is by monitoring the financial health of your business. This includes identifying potential issues before they start impacting the business so mitigation measures can be put in place.

Risk Management

Your accountant can also help with risk identification, mitigation, and monitoring, especially in areas like finance, tax, and compliance. For example, assessing the likelihood and impact of potential scenarios (such as an increase in corporation tax or employer PRSI rates) that could become a reality in a future budget.

Contingency Planning

Contingency planning for different scenarios, including the risks identified in the previous point, is an important part of sustaining business growth. Your accountant can help with contingency planning through advice, budgeting, and forecasting.

Accessing Funding

Getting access to funding is often an essential step in achieving business growth. This could be to kick-start growth, accelerate growth, or maintain a healthy growth trajectory.

A good accountant will help you identify potential sources of funding and could even make introductions to the right people and organisations. Your accountant can also help prepare business plans, funding applications, and other documents required to access the finance your business needs.

Tax Optimisation

Paying more tax than you need to will result in you having less money to invest in the growth of your business. A good accountant will ensure you pay the right amount of tax.

Evaluate Investment Opportunities

Making investments, such as the acquisition of another business, could be crucial to your growth strategy. Your accountant can provide support and assistance every step of the way, from identifying investment opportunities to evaluating those opportunities to budgeting and financial planning.

Help You Focus on What Matters

This point can be harder to quantify than most of the others on this list, but it is no less important. A good accountant will take on a range of tasks that would otherwise be burdensome for your business. This enables you to sharpen your focus and spend more time on what matters – implementing your growth strategy, improving your business, and achieving your targets.

Adding Value to Your Business

Whether refining the relationship you have with your current accountant or changing to a new accountant, adding value to your business should be a top priority. Administration, paperwork, and compliance are all very important, but, with the right accountant, you can get all these essential elements in addition to guidance, support, and practical help to maximise the growth potential of your business.