You may be wondering what the difference between “Advisory Services” and “Compliance Services” is when it comes to Taxes and Accounting. We’ll explain what financial advisory and financial compliance are, and what they are not. We’ll also help you choose which services you’ll benefit from the most.
Financial Compliance Services
Many of the “traditional” services that CPA firms offer are considered “compliance” in nature. These are services such as
- Business & Personal Tax Preparation
- Bookkeeping
- Financial Statements
- Payroll
- Sales Tax
In the traditional sense, these services are intended to make and keep your business compliant with tax and accounting regulations and requirements. Having a trusted financial partner that can assure that you are financially compliant is an important aspect to successfully running your business, from a financial perspective.
Having a CPA firm manage your taxes and accounting is important. It gives you peace of mind, and allows you to focus on running your business, and not have to navigate financial compliance on your own.
Financial Advisory Services
Financial Advisory Services include the important work of financial compliance. In addition, Financial Advisory will work with you on an ongoing basis. When you have a Financial Advisory partner, you will receive the benefit of financial compliance, but you will also have a partner that is able to work in partnership with you to better achieve your financial goals.
This means that when you take advantage of Tax Advisory Services, not only will your taxes be prepared, but you’ll meet with us on a quarterly basis to review your financial information. We’ll reconcile this with your tax goals, and we’ll work with you to ensure that your taxes are planned, reflect your best interests, and you have made financial decisions leading up to tax preparation that have have been advantageous for you. We call this getting your taxes more than done.
When you take advantage of Business Advisory Services, not only will your finances be within compliance, but you’ll meet with us on an ongoing basis to review your financials and discuss them. We’ll create goals together and go through your financial information and spot opportunities and threats. We’ll make adjustments, and see how they affect your financials. Business Advisory Services allow you to focus on the work that you do best- the reason you started your business in the first place! We act as a trusted financial partner to help your company grow, allow you get back to your best work, and trust that somebody is looking out for your business finances.
Financial Advisory Services, in this sense, does not include investment advise. In this case, we are focusing on helping you define financially literate goals. We’re helping your achieve them through our processes that we’ve designed that have helped other organizations achieve their financial goals. You can learn more about our Advisory Services and Processes.
Compliance or Financial Advisory – Which is best for you?
Some small businesses only require financial compliance. Your business may be more simple in nature, and you don’t manage the budget size or have many financial obligations that financial advisory would best help with. Instead, you may best benefit from a financial services approach that includes tax and accounting services.
You may be managing a more complex or large budget with many obligations. You may benefit from working together to find and act on opportunities for growth, and identifying spending that would be better allocated elsewhere in your budget. Or you may feel bogged down with having to navigate your finances successfully. Or you may have a sense that your finances could or should be better managed. In any of these cases, Tax or Business Advisory services would be a great option for you.
Consultation
If you have questions about which services you would receive the most benefit from, you can always contact us for a free consultation. We’ll review high-level financial information with you, and determine which services you would most benefit from.
You can fill out our form for a free consultation, and we’ll be in touch soon!
