Posted January 31, 2020

When do I need an accountant?

Whitesides Accountant & Tax Advisor Sarah Greenwood answers “When do I need an accountant?”

I would have said the earlier the better.

You obviously don’t need to see your accountant until something needs to be done, so that’s probably either at the stage you need to set up a payroll, probably one of the earlier things you need to do and when you need to start some help with bookkeeping if you’re not going to do that yourself. Otherwise, it’s a year later when you need your first account preparing.

Seeing an accountant as early as possible will allow you to look at whether you should be a sole trader or a limited company or whether there are any tax reliefs that you can benefit from.

An accountant is there to help you to perhaps introduce you to people who might be a benefit to your business and you might be able to help them, a marketing agency for example, or in Leeds, there’s grant agencies that are there to support businesses in the first couple of years of trading. It’s really important that you get to hear about these early on and that’s sort of where an accountant comes in.

Hopefully, this has helped clear up any questions you have, but if you’re starting a business and want to talk to someone in more detail, please give us a call