Creating Your Business Plan: How Can Your Accountant Help You?

Creating your business plan is crucial. It sets out where you want to go, what you want to achieve, and how you’re going to achieve it.

However, it’s not something you need to complete by yourself. In fact, running things over with your accountant comes with several advantages.

Refine your cost projections

The most obvious, not to mention important, reason to consult your accountant while you’re creating your business plan is that they’ll be able to help you work out your financial projections.

It might seem easy to work out how much you’d like to bring in by the end of the year, but you’ll also need to know how much tax you’ll pay and whether you’ll be able to offset any costs with tax deductions.

When it comes to these matters, accountants are in their element. They can tell you how to track your daily expenses and recommend ways to keep personal and business expenses separate.

The projections you end up with will be more realistic – and realistic plans have a good chance of coming to fruition.

Recommend upcoming changes

If you’re creating your business plan, you’ll probably be projecting growth. If this is the case, you might need to make structural changes to your business along the way.

You may need to bring in new staff members, contract out to freelancers, or even change the legal structure of your business.

Accountants can help you predict the need for changes like this, and recommend how and when to implement them.

For example, it will pay to switch from sole trader to limited company once you pass a certain income threshold. That’s something an accountant will be able to help you work out.

Bring experience to the table

Accountants can help with more than just matters related to financial projections and structural shifts.

A professional accountant is likely to have worked with a business similar to yours in the past, especially if you’ve taken the time to select the right accountant for the job. This means they’ll be able to predict upcoming changes.

You might, for example, not appreciate the fact that certain costs will be better handled as bulk rather than individual payments when you reach a certain stage of growth.

An accountant who has worked with a similar business might be able to let you factor such shifts into your business plan.

Help create a professional document

It could be that you’re simply drawing up a business plan to make sure you stay on track as things take off. If this is the case, you’re making the right move.

However, other professionals will need to put together a business plan in order to secure a loan from a bank or funds from an investor.

If this is the case, you need to make sure the final document follows the proper format and appears as professional as possible.

An accountant will have experience of this, and can help you make your business plan appear professional.