We often encounter a problem with new startup clients: Those clients haven’t been given access to QuickBooks by their previous accountant. And we’d like to remind you that you should check with your accountant and make sure you have access to your QuickBooks account.

Lack of QuickBooks Access Is A Red Flag

Here at Kruze, we’ve seen a lot of clients who come to us after dealing with a mediocre accountant. Very often, the client doesn’t know exactly what’s wrong, but they have a feeling that something is off with their accountant or within their accounts.

And most of the time, that accountant has conveniently forgotten or simply refused to give their client access to QuickBooks. This means the client has almost no idea about what’s going on in QuickBooks, which is clearly not ideal. This is your company’s data, and you should absolutely have access to it.

Major alarm bells are then set off when we encourage these clients to ask for access and those mediocre accountants push back. This denial of access might happen for a couple of reasons:

  1. The accountant doesn’t want to be scrutinized. That person doesn’t want you to be able to check in and see what’s happening, which usually means they aren’t doing a very good job.

  2. Some accountants may use this tactic as a customer retention tool. They believe that if you don’t have access to your data then you can’t leave them. It’s a weird approach and definitely a red flag.

Get Access To Your QuickBooks!

Whatever the reason, if your accountant is not giving you access to QuickBooks, change that today. Good accountants should be proud of their work. They should welcome both your questions and the opportunity to interact with you. In fact, our biggest problem at Kruze Consulting is not getting enough interaction with our clients because they are so darn busy building their startups! We want as much of that interaction as we can possibly get. If your accountant is restricting that your QuickBooks access and avoiding interacting with you, that could be a warning that something is off. The bottom line is, ask for access to your QuickBooks account!

If you have any questions on startup investing, startup accounting, or taxes, please contact us. You can also follow our YouTube channel and our blog for information on accounting, finance, HR, and taxes for startups!