To become a Certified Practising Accountant (CPA), you need to have completed a Bachelors Degree at University, and then complete the 2-year CPA Program. To be the Principal of your own Practice, further work is required: an additional post-graduate certificate in public practice. Think you’re done? Not nearly. Along the way (and to maintain your membership), you are required to continually update your skills through Continued Professional Development – that’s 20 hours a year attending business seminars, professional webinars, conferences and ‘keeping abreast’ of industry changes. And that’s just for the privilege of calling yourself a CPA.
Not all CPA’s are grey-haired and carry around calculators, and they weren’t all created equal. To ensure you appoint a CPA that’s suitable for you and your business, you need to look deeper than the CPA logo. Assess their commerciality, experience, industry knowledge and areas of specialisation. Ask probing questions to determine if they ‘get you.’ Importantly, there are CPA’s out there who will be reactive, distracted and uncommercial. We’d be lying if we told you otherwise. But on the whole, a CPA means good business. And good business means profit maximisation.
As a CPA Practice (yes, we did the whole hog of courses and credentials), we hold ourselves to a high professional standard. Our overall business processes and ethics are second-to-none, and by nature – we’re responsive, engaging and never, ever boring. Lastly, and yes, we’re going to blow our own trumpet here – we’re a registered tax agent – not all CPA’s have this qualification, and it means we can lodge BAS and company and individual tax returns, manage and represent you in tax audits and/or liaise with the ATO on your behalf. Nice. Let’s get started.