“The best idea is to talk to your book keeper and accountant.”
Aunty, can I please disagree? I’ve found to my great cost that abrogating responsibility to professionals who you pay good money to is really dangerous. I’m guessing that over the last eight years the bad advice that I’ve had has cost me nearly seven figures. (I can’t say it!)
OK, by all means talk to them. Then grill them. Then cross-examine them. Don’t ever think that because they have some letters after their name and they charge lots of money that they are right.
See if what they suggest makes sense, for a start. The cross-check it with research on the net. Then create a back-up plan just in case the advice is wrong.
Do I sound paranoid? Well, almost all of the things where I’ve screwed up have been where I’ve gone against my gut feeling and taken the advice of highly paid alleged professionals.
Oh, and when they get shown how they screwed up they then say “OK, now when can my outstanding account get paid?”
James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
