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2.2 Preparing for your Accountant

Whether we are producing your accounts or carrying out your annual audit, being prepared for us will ensure our work is carried out smoothly and efficiently and with the minimum disruption to yourselves.
You may also be able to help by preparing some of the routine schedules for us. This will mean our time can be better spent advising you on the running of your business.
We highlight below many of the ways in which you can help.
It is however important for you to discuss these ideas with us since all of the suggestions may not be applicable.

Setting the Scene

Keeping us informed
We will be better prepared ourselves if we know of any changes within your business which could affect our work. These could include changes in your:

• product or market
• business strategy eg pricing policy
• bookkeeping system
• key personnel.

What we need
If you know what information we need to be able to complete our work you can make sure it is available.
We can decide together what you can prepare for us and what we will need to prepare for ourselves.
Better communication between us will help to minimise misunderstandings and avoid unnecessary work.

Timetable
We need to agree a suitable timetable in advance. This gives us both a chance to be properly prepared. However, if you find yourself behind schedule let us know as soon as possible so that the timetable can be rearranged if necessary.

How You Can Help

Books and records
Setting up and maintaining your books in an organised manner will help us to extract quickly and easily the information needed to prepare or audit your accounts. It will also enable you to see at a glance the state of your business.

• Consideration of the following points may improve the organisation of your records:
• Totalling and balancing your books at regular intervals will help you spot and correct any mistakes
• Analysing your payments and receipts so that information can be easily extracted
• Filing your invoices in a logical order (numerical, alphabetical or date) to make it easy to find any one of them.

Procedures
By establishing and maintaining certain procedures you will be able to keep a better control over your records and your business. It will also mean we can cut down on the work we need to do which may save you some money.
We can help you set up these procedures initially and once established you will be able to carry them out yourself. These procedures will include control accounts, reconciliations and stocktaking.

Control accounts

Control accounts record the movements of cash, debtors and creditors by using the monthly totals from your cash book and sales and purchases summaries.

The cash control account will show how much cash the business has at the end of each month.

The debtors or sales ledger control account will show how much your customers owe you at the end of each month.

The creditors or purchase ledger control account will show how much you owe your suppliers at the end of each month.

Reconciliations

Reconciliations help to ensure that the figures in your books are complete and accurate. Therefore if produced on a regular basis they will help you spot any errors which can then be corrected before we examine your records. Some of the records which will need reconciling are:

• bank accounts
• control accounts
• suppliers' ...

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