Insights / Choosing a firm
You're not qualified to evaluate an accountant's technical work. That's the whole reason you're hiring one. So the usual advice — "make sure they're experienced!" — is useless, because you have no way to check.
What you can evaluate is how they behave. And behavior is a surprisingly good proxy.
We're a firm writing this, which makes it self-serving by construction. So we've included the questions that are awkward for us too.
Watch what happens. A firm that's thought carefully about scope answers instantly and specifically. A firm that hasn't gets vague, or reassuring — "oh, we take care of everything." Nobody takes care of everything. That answer means either they haven't defined the work or they're planning to bill you for the parts they left out.
If the answer involves a meter, understand what you're buying: a relationship where asking costs money, so you'll ask less, so problems will be found later. That's not a moral failing on their part — it's a structural consequence of hourly billing that plenty of good firms haven't thought through.
At many firms the person selling you is not the person doing it. That's not inherently bad — but you should know, and you should know whether the doer changes every busy season. Ask specifically: will I be reassigned?
This one's diagnostic. A firm that has never turned down work either isn't being asked for things it shouldn't do, or it's saying yes to everything. Ask for a specific example of when they told a client no.
Everyone has one. A firm that can describe a real failure — and what they changed — is being straight with you. "Nothing comes to mind" is not a track record, it's a sales posture.
A firm that's quoting before they've looked at your file is guessing. If they want to see the books before pricing, that's not stalling — it's the only way to quote honestly.
On the first call, ideally. It's the cheapest possible demonstration that they'll do it later when it matters.
If the first thing a firm sells is how much tax they'll save you, ask how. Legitimate planning is timing, structure, and elections. If the answer requires nobody looking closely, you're the one who signs the return.
Accounting is labor. If a price seems impossible, someone is either doing less than you think or planning to make it up in surprises. This is not an argument that expensive means good — plenty of firms charge a lot for very little. It's an argument that the cheapest number in the room is usually explained by something.
Ask them to explain something you know is complicated. If you can't follow it, that's data. Either they don't understand it well enough to simplify it, or they prefer you dependent. Neither is what you're paying for.
The most common way this goes wrong isn't hiring a bad firm. It's hiring a fine firm for the wrong job.
A tax preparer who files an accurate return is not failing when your books are a mess in July — that was never the engagement. A bookkeeping service that closes on time is not failing when nobody tells you your margins are slipping. You bought the thing you bought.
So before you evaluate anyone, be clear about which job you're hiring for: compliance (get it filed correctly), bookkeeping (keep it accurate and current), or advisory (tell me what it means and what to do). They're different products. Plenty of firms sell all three. Plenty sell one and let you assume it's all three.
Apply this to Summit CPA too. Ask us what's not included. Ask us who does the work. Ask us when we'd tell you no. If we get vague, you've learned something, and you should use it.
We're not the cheapest option and we're not going to pretend otherwise. If price is the deciding factor, there are firms that will beat us, and for some businesses that's the right call. We'd rather say that here than waste your first call on it.