Being an entrepreneur is a role that requires you to be versatile while maintaining a defined vision for your organization that is constantly evolving. Managing a business is a complex task that requires outside help from time to time. Quebec's chartered professional accountants (CPAs) are there to take on some burden of entrepreneurship by supporting the financial management of businesses.

Before choosing a Chartered Professional Accountant for your company, you should consider the primary function you want your accountant to undertake. Are you considering an accountant for a start-up project or for the future sale of your business and retirement planning? Your situation and the type of legal entity you have should determine the accountant you deal with.

To ensure your Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) provides professional services and personalized advice, Stamped shares the questions a business owner should ask to find the right CPA.

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Practical tips to find a good CPA

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In order to find a good CPA, here are some considerations:

1. Are you looking for a CPA with corporate or professional practice experience
2. What remuneration do you expect to pay
3. Do you require specific expertise, such as audit, tax, or performance management
4. Is the professional you are considering registered under CPA Quebec
5. Does the candidate need to have experience managing a team, or is it preferable to be a good technician?

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These few points will help you make an informed choice when selecting an accountant. However, it is important to know why you want to do business with a CPA.

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1.  What expertise does the CPA have?

It's important to look at the training and experience of the CPA firms you're considering. Some of them include not only accountants, but also tax and other business management professionals. In the case of Stamped, we have experienced CPAs and tax professionals, as well as programmers working to optimize our algorithm for your finances.

When there is a whole team mobilized to meet your accounting, tax or financial needs in a systematic way, you can centralize the management of your finances. You benefit from knowing who does your bookkeeping because the more your accountant knows about the specifics of your numbers, the more his or her approach becomes tailored to your needs.

The computerized accounting services developed by Stamped's in-house programmers are joined into a platform that gets smarter and learns from your records to make next year’s year-end accounting a breeze.

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2.  Ensure clear compensation

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The price of your CPA's services should be agreed upon beforehand. This way, there are no surprises when you receive the bill. For transparent pricing to take place, it is important that you describe your financial situation as it is. The more complex and time-consuming your situation, the higher the hourly rates tend to be. To get a clear picture of the cost of a CPA’s services, simply ask when you first contact him or her.

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3.  Knowledge of a particular sector

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Depending on what industry you operate in, some accountants are better equipped to give you personalized advice. So, when finding your CPA, try to identify the specialization of the firms of accountants that interest you and choose one that corresponds to your business. You will benefit from their expertise specific to the issues and reality of your type of business.

Stamped offers its services to small and medium-sized businesses in Quebec, as well as to large companies. This versatility is due to the varied expertise of the professionals on our team. When you first meet with an accountant concerning your business, make sure that he or she is aware of the accounting standards that apply to your business.

A great tip to find out if a firm or accountant is able to offer you professional services is to find out about their client base. By doing a quick research, you can determine if this CPA can meet your expectations. If they do bookkeeping for companies similar in size to yours and/or in an adjacent field, you can tell that you are in good hands.

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4. Member of the CPA Quebec

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Your selection process to find the right CPA for your business should include confirmation that the CPA is a member of the CPA Quebec. This order ensures the competence and integrity of the accountant you wish to hire and provides professional liability insurance in case of error. It is possible to do this verification on the website of the order or to call them.

It may also be prudent to consult the Order's disciplinary hearing docket to investigate further and gain greater assurance of the integrity of the professional in question. The validity of a CPA's license is important to confirm before sharing your tax information with them, since there is a lot of sensitive information in these files. For example, the social insurance number of your employees is part of the confidential data shared with your accountant.

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5.  An experienced practitioner

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A CPA should be selected with a long-term relationship in mind. The expertise of an accountant can be useful if you are looking to grow, sell, restructure or merge your business to name a few. All of these actions require the guidance of a CPA who understands your vision and is available to execute it.

Make sure you know your CPA's time frame and file load to see if their modus operandi is right for you. If you want to avoid frequent visits and calls to the accountant's office. Stamped digitizes everything for you and our operations are 100% online for everyone's convenience.

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