Most people choose an accountant on a referral and a vague sense that they seem competent. Which is reasonable, but it means a lot of trustees and business owners have no idea what they are paying for or how the relationship actually works.
Here are seven questions that produce useful answers, and what to listen for.
1. What is the total annual fee, and what is not included?
The second half matters more than the first. Any fixed fee has boundaries, and a provider who is comfortable telling you where they are before you engage is a provider who will be comfortable telling you later.
If the answer to "what is not included" is a pause, that is information.
2. Who audits my fund, and are they independent of your firm?
For SMSF work this is the important one. Under APES 110, a firm generally cannot audit accounts it prepared. You want a name and a registration number, and you want to be told plainly whether they sit inside or outside the firm.
3. Do you receive any commission, referral fee or benefit from anyone connected with my affairs?
Valuers, depreciation providers, platforms, brokers, insurers, software vendors. There is nothing wrong with a referral relationship, and there is a great deal wrong with an undisclosed one.
The answer you want is either "no, from anybody" or a specific and complete list. What you do not want is "we always act in your interests", which is an answer to a different question.
4. Are you licensed to give financial advice?
Most accountants are not, and the distinction is often blurred in conversation. A registered tax agent can advise on tax consequences and handle administration and compliance. Advice about whether to establish a fund, what it should invest in, or whether a strategy suits you is financial product advice and requires a licence.
An accountant who is clear about that boundary is more useful than one who is not, because you will know when you need someone else.
5. Who will actually do the work, and where are they?
Not who signs the return. Who does the work. Offshoring is common, legal, and disclosed by good firms. It is a legitimate model. But you should know, and you should know what happens to your data.
6. What is your process when something goes wrong?
Every practice makes mistakes. What varies enormously is what happens next. Ask how they handle an ATO query, a late lodgement, an audit qualification. The answer tells you whether there is a process or whether it depends who is in the office.
7. What do you need from me, and when?
A good answer is specific and early. A vague one means you will get a panicked email in April asking for eleven months of records, and the quality of the work will suffer for it.
The one that is not on the list
"How much do you charge per hour" is a less useful question than it looks. What you want to know is what the year costs and what it covers. An hourly rate tells you neither, and it creates an incentive not to call with a question, which is exactly backwards.