I asked you about the relationship between small business owners and accountants. That was a few weeks ago. I’m almost sorry I asked because I promised you some feedback.
Offering feedback is easy when you get 10 responses of a few words each. It’s a lot harder when you get 70 responses, some the size of small books.
I’d hoped to deliver an impressive solution this week. I’ve been working on it. But it’s like that book detailing the differences between genders, Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
Except that Accountants are from Vulcan, and Business Owners are from Jabberwocky.
You may recall Mr Spock was the consummate logical person, a little light on social skills. He was the Science Officer on the USS Enterprise.
But we business owners encompass the lunacy of Lewis Carroll’s poem, Jabberwocky.
I’m still making sense of what we want from accountants. And what they want from us. And how we can help them to help us survive SARS and other government departments.
One thing is obvious. Your accountant would rather lick his dogs bottom than touch our paperwork:
- Sent in a plastic bag, loose, stained and unsorted.
- Two days before penalty date.
- Demanding a magical transformation into numbers to withstand bureaucratic scrutiny.
- Expecting to pay zero tax.
- And expecting to pay even less in accounting fees.
Okay, I exaggerate a little. But reading 13 accountants writing about their travails is traumatising. I, too, have breached everything they seek in pursuit of professional perfection.
Bottom line:
Business owners don’t know what accountants expect. And accountants are too shy to spell it out in words of one syllable. (My initial assessment.)
This is to say that I haven’t forgotten it. It’s on my desk. I expect to translate the confusion into a love fest. It will be on your desk next week.