RightWay New Zealand - Blog

Does your accountant look beyond the numbers?

Written by RightWay | 20 May 2021

As a business owner, your relationship with your accountant might be pretty transactional. And while your accountant may only be focused on completing your annual accounts and sorting your tax obligations, there are huge benefits to choosing a team who look beyond the numbers.

Commonly, the conversations you’re likely to have with your accountant are about looking to the past, and probably revolve around columns of numbers. Your financial statements, the previous year’s performance, the tax you’ve paid… Have you ever wondered what would happen if you could turn those conversations around and talk to your accountant about the future?  

Having a good team of accountants and bookkeepers on your side adds real value to your business. They’ll help you manage your accounts correctly, enable you to legally minimise your tax bill, and free up your precious time. Time you could spend designing your business for better.

So far, so good. But you can expect even better results working with an accounting team that includes specialist business advice. A RightWay Business Partner can help you gain vital clarity, plan your next move (big or small) and even just bounce ideas off someone who’s been right where you are now, and learned from it.

How to use your accountant to look and plan ahead
A good accounting team won’t just crunch last year’s numbers. They’ll look beyond them, because they’ve taken the time to understand your unique situation. So you get answers and strategies that fit your needs and goals. Here are a few examples of our smart, hardworking RightWay clients who’ve benefited by working with a team who looked beyond the numbers.

Small retailer
One of our accountants put together a report that provided a clear picture of the store’s financial position. Our RightWay Business Partner then presented this information to the client, with an informed strategy to increase revenue by bringing on a new salesperson. This strategy took into account the specific circumstances of the business. As a result, the business owner felt confident to invest in this new team member, and could set the employee’s sales targets correctly to stay profitable.

Artisanal food producer
This client didn’t know the cost per product of some of the ingredients that went into their (delicious) products and was losing money on some products. Our accountant implemented a new inventory system which identified the raw material costs, enabling the clients dedicated RightWay Business Partner to give them some tactics for assessing their range. As a result, they stopped making the unprofitable products. And they turned the business around, from not making any profit, to being profitable in just a few months.

Hospitality business
One of our accounting team looked at the company’s gross profit margins, itemised everything, and identified some discrepancies that didn’t add up. The RightWay Business Partner for this client reviewed the numbers, and discovered that a staff member at one of their locations was stealing from the business. With the issue cleared up, the business owner is back on track, and no longer has the headache of dealing with mysterious losses.

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