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To hire her or not to hire an accountant. I say that in my most Shakespearean voice. The reality is I'm not sure. Not sure if I'm ready. Not sure of my drama and doing my taxes every year and trying to get through the complications that exist in my drama work, the breakdown to go in and bring in this expertise. Actually, I think it is, but we're going to get into some of the different nuances when you're starting to think about hiring an accountant that you should consider.
In this episode, you'll learn...
The importance of knowing your finances in and out
Tool options for financial accounting in your biz and personal
The danger of not sticking your nose into your own business
Tax season is quickly approaching and quite honestly it's scary for me. So for the longest time I have, I've been the one that's done our taxes and thank goodness for turbo tax and several taxes online cause they do make it easy, but more and more we've had some complicated situations and especially having businesses and that type of thing. It gets kind of complex and literally I feel like over the last three years, every time we've done taxes, I have prayed both before and after the taxes were done that I did everything correctly. I even went as far as to make sure that I had the audit insurance just in case something went wrong. As I was feeling like, "I know some of these situations are kind of getting beyond my ability to control things." Right. Do you stay joint? Do you file separately? How you account for the businesses and all this other stuff?
And I'm thinking, "Lord, this is a wing and a prayer", but I'm following the instructions as they are in the turbo tax tool. And they really do a great job of helping you walk through everything. But as our situations get a little bit more complex with more pieces to it, I've been thinking maybe it's time for us to get an accountant.
And so I've been having some conversations with a few folks and just saying, "Hey, who do you know or who do you use and would you recommend anybody and all of that?" And one friend of mine said, "Well, I have somebody that you can use and I'll send you his name. You can check them out." One of the things that you might want to consider now is taking a look at Quicken.
I'm taking a look at some of the accounting software that is out there and really start to leverage that more. Because right now most of our stuff is based on spreadsheets and trying to keep things super organized and looking back into accounts for different platforms and receipts and all this other stuff. It says it's amazing that we continue to make it happen and survive. And so I had just been sort of going back and forth with that and I think there are probably different considerations that need to be made on the accountant front. And I haven't quite figured them all out yet.
But what I do know is it is one step in the right direction to get really solid with some of the financial accounting software. So I mentioned Quicken, but the one that I have settled on so far is something called Wave.
And so if you've not heard of it, Wave is actually a free tool. That was one of the things that attracted me to it. I didn't want to leap out into anything pricing without being just more familiar. You know, setting up your chart of accounts to doing all this great stuff. But Wave is a free one that's out there. So if you don't currently have your accounting software up and in use or maybe if you're using an accountant, you don't necessarily need to worry about this or maybe your accountant recommends that you do both.
Wave seems to be a pretty cool option and I'll give a little update maybe later some episodes down the road about how well wave is working. But I think just the understanding that even if you do go the route of hiring an accountant, you still should have some accountability and some organization to what's going on yourself as well.
My mind goes back to the movie Selena and hopes I don't have this screwed up, but I think it was her accountant that shot and killed her because Selena found out that she was stealing money or something like that. Someone correct me, drop me a DM on Instagram or shoot me an email if I've got the story completely wrong, but I'm pretty sure it was Selena and her accountant and that's what had resulted in her death.
Not that that is in any way connected to your future hiring of an accountant. But I think it just underscores, at least for me, I think it's important to still have a good grounding on what's happening in your business and your financials as they intertwine together as they live alongside each other, your personal finances and your business finances, even though they are separate, you should have some idea and foundation for yourself. And so that's where I think a tool like Wave or Quicken or whatever else you may have found to use will help in that grounding regardless if you decide to hire an accountant or not to. So take this, understand your money, understand your flow, understand your business at the financial level and take action.
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