So your accountant fired you..now what?
I have talked with numerous accountants/CPAs/EAs who have looked thrilled at the thought of “firing” a client. Usually, once business picks up, they will fire their problem clients. But the question you might have is–what if you’re the client who was fired?
The first thing to do is to determine why it is that your accountant wanted to get rid of you. For this, there are two options: Either it’s you or it’s not you.
Is it YOU?
Do you complain about your bill? Are you constantly asking for changes to your accounting or taxes once you have them? Do you give your accountant really short deadlines? Are you just rude? There was one client we had in particular that wold only give us half the information necessary to complete their return and once they had filed the tax return, they came back with additional info and asked to have the return amended. It happened three years in a row. Inevitably, they came back to us and asked why the bill was so high! We prepared two returns for them–the original and the amended–that’s why! That’s really being unreasonable.
No, it’s not you.
Sometimes, accountants just want to downsize–they don’t want as many clients as they currently have. If you’ve just started with an accountant and find yourself being fired within a year, they might not want to have such a big client base and cut out the newer clients in order to preserve the loyalty they have to the older clients. Another option is that you accountant is up-scaling. I saw this at each CPA firm I’ve been with–they instituted a minimum annual billing and anyone falling below the fee had to find somewhere else to go. With one firm, it was a minimum of $250, with another it was a minimum $1,000. Accounting practices do change, too, and alter their focus. Several practices I know have decided to drop a key service they provided in order to focus on more lucrative or less restrictive services. I have to say, being fired for not meeting the minimum is a lot nicer because it means that they didn’t want to hike your bill to meet the new fee floor.
If you’re on good terms with an accountant–ask them about clients they’ve fired. We all have a few stories to tell.