How to Find a CPA You Love

If you’re wondering how to find a CPA you love, the vetting process can be overwhelming.

You want to ensure you’re getting the best possible tax advice and guidance for your business. As someone who’s been a CPA for over 12 years and in business for over a decade, I’m passionate about serving CEO Moms (like you!) in online or service-based business who want a powerful but caring tax strategy team behind them. Let’s look at a few key considerations to look at to find a CPA who will help you keep more money in your pocket every year.

Already have a CPA? Use these considerations to evaluate the one you already have and make sure they’re the perfect fit for you!

How to Find a CPA You Love: 4 Considerations

1. Avoid one-stop-shops

If a CPA firm is a one-stop-shop – meaning, they offer to do your bookkeeping, CFO services, tax prep, tax planning, and more – this is usually a red flag. Typically, when a firm offers to doeverythingtax-related, then everything they do isn’t necessarily done well.

If they’re a small firm, it’s likely that one or two people are doing all of these things. If they’re a large firm, it’s unlikely you’re going to be treated with the service you want a deserve, because you’re just a number to them.

I find that it’s best to separate these things out. For example, we don’t include bookkeeping and we encourage our clients to find outside bookkeepers, because we excel at tax strategy. This is how we’re able to save our clients an average of 3x more in taxes than one-stop-shops.

2. Look at experience

Always look at how much experience a potential CPA has. For example, you wouldn’t want to sign on to receive tax strategy from a CPA who has only been in business for a year – because they can’t have a strong grasp of tax code after that short of a time!

Additionally, you want to make sure you’re looking at the experience level in the specific area you need support. Maybe a CPA has been in business offering tax preparation for 15 years, but they’ve only been offering tax planning for one year. It’s likely you could get great tax preparation from this firm, but you’d want to look elsewhere for tax planning and strategy.

3. Remember that you get what you pay for

I get it: It feels scary to invest in on-going, month-to-month tax strategy, tax planning, and tax preparation. It’s really tempting to save your money and only invest in one-time, once-a-year tax preparation or in a one-stop-shop.

However, when you pick someone based on price, you’re probably going with the cheapest option. When you do this, you typically don’t get someone with the breadth and depth of education that a specialist has to be able to serve you well.

So many times, our clients went with the cheapest options with their first CPAs. When they had questions, their CPAs ghosted them or gave them bad information. We’ve even had to fix bad tax returns and errors who had bad CPAs in the past.

Even though it’s the cheapest up-front option, going with the cheap option ends up costing you in the long run.

4. Look for a good relationship

On-going tax services with a CPA means you’re going to be checking in with that person many times a year. You want this person to be friendly, responsive, and interested in building a true relationship with you. They shouldn’t just be focused on checking the boxes to make sure your forms are completed (although that’s important, too). There needs to be a good personality match and effort to reach out to you regularly.

You want to make sure that you and your CPA have equal and commensurate expectations of how often communications will happen. For example, we have a 48-hour response time guarantee with our clients and frequent scheduled calls throughout the year. We’ve heard horror stories of other CPAs who take weeks to respond to clients (or worse, ghost them entirely).

Disclaimer: This article is not meant to be tax advice. This is not an all-inclusive list of business advice. Different rules may apply to each individual taxpayer’s specific situation. Please consult with your accountant. May contain affiliate links.