How to produce your own financial statements to avoid paying your CPA to generate them

For financial statements to be useful, they must be accurate, easy to produce, and shouldn’t cost you a million dollars to get from your CPA.

Useful being the keyword. Which, many aren’t unless you spend time and money to have your CPA review them with you.

This begs the question: Why have your CPA produce them in the first place?

We don’t know what your CPA costs you, but it’s likely $150 plus per hour. Given that cost, does it really make sense to pay your CPA for monthly financial statements that don’t contain enough details to help you make day-to-day business decisions.

We’re not saying you shouldn’t use a CPA, just that you don’t need them to produce the financial reports that an automated software can do for you.

We don’t think you should and here’s why

The problems with non-automated financial reports

Here’s a few fundamental problems with non-automated financial reports: They’re produced by humans who need information and make mistakes. Here’s what I mean.

When you ASK your CPA for financial statements, they usually pass the task to a junior accountant. From there, they produce a templated report that doesn’t provide enough information for the best decision making.

And why isn’t your CPA being proactive with you and why are you having to ask for them?

The other problem with relying ONLY on your CPA for financial reports is that you typically have to provide THEM with information. That means if humans are compiling the data, it becomes subject to errors, resulting in inaccurate financial statements from your CPA.

CPAs struggle with timeliness.

Ever been annoyed while waiting in the doctor’s office? I think we’ve all experienced the same mildly frustrating feeling but with dollar signs. Not good.

The rub is that INSTEAD of being able to get your financial reports on-demand, you feel like you are being held hostage by something totally out of your control.

You should have visibility and access to your financial reports on-demand. That is the beauty of COMPAS Commander.

The impact of NOT having on-demand reports

What IS the impact of NOT having on-demand reports?

• You won’t know your profit margins because the reports are not readily available.
• Your fuel margins will be a mystery because your CPA doesn’t have access to this information. With COMPAS Commander you CAN easily manage your margins and profitability.
• You’ll struggle to make the best business decisions possible because the reporting from your CPA is based on limited data.
• You’ll need to wait on your CPA instead of having the freedom to generate financial statements as needed.
• And, changes that affect your financial reports must be sent to your CPA. THEN revised financial statements are sent back to you. This ping-pong back and forth doesn’t help for efficiency OR accuracy.

While we’re big fans of CPAs, your dollars might be better spent on automating some of your financial tasks.

Petroleum distributors need to have advanced management and accounting tools for accurate gallon and cost tracking, and overall financial management.

Ideally, you’ll want accounting software that’s automated to pull your financial statements geared for today’s fuel jobber.