What’s it like working with the sargent CPA’s team?
Thanks for reaching out! New clients have a lot of the same questions about how we work, so we’ve put together this little FAQ addressing the most common ones!
I have no idea what I’m doing when it comes to taxes, can you help? - YES! We’ve found over the years that the reason many people feel such anxiety around taxes is because they don’t understand them, and as a result, they’re not prepared for them, so we’ve made education a big part of how we work with our clients. Starting with simple strategies to stay organized, we help all our clients build a strong foundation for financial and tax success by providing resources, explaining our advice carefully, and keep you up to date with tax changes spelled out in plain english. If we ever catch you saying “I don’t know, my accountant said to do this” then we need to talk!
My situation is complicated, do you work with clients like me? - Odds are if you’re friends of our existing clients, we work with situations just like yours all the time. We handle a wide variety of unique situations when it comes to tax and accounting, and in the event we come across something truly weird that we’re not comfortable with, we’ve got a great extended network to make the intro when it’s needed.
What services do you offer? - Most clients reach out to us with a few questions in mind, but since we support the full cycle from freelancers to mature businesses here’s a range of our services:
Individual and business taxes - From sole proprietors and LLC’s to S-corps and C-corps, we work with businesses of all sizes to keep them compliant.
Multi year tax cleanups - missed filing a year or two (or 5)? There’s no judgement here. Every year we help a few clients in exactly this situation, and help keep them on the straight and narrow.
Tax planning & strategy - We don’t want clients that don’t want to be proactive and save money. New clients will typically start with a comprehensive tax plan, then an annual revisit of that at a minimum.
Bookkeeping - A little behind on the books? Whether you need a one-time catch up to get your taxes done, or ongoing support, we are happy to help!
Management reporting - For growing and established business, we offer support in maintaining budgets & forecasts and along with the bookkeeping, having a monthly or quarterly review/strategy meeting to discuss the financial health of the business.
Fractional CFO services - If you need help developing a financial operating model, analyzing your growing business financial operations or just someone to be the voice of financial reason in your company, but aren’t ready to bring in a full time role to support it, we offer fractional CFO services to help set up and maintain your finance department.
Cash, AR and AP Management - Need someone to manage your cash flow, stay on top of your AR and plan your AP? We offer comprehensive cash management packages for mature businesses with adequate cash flow.
How do you charge for your services? - We believe that charging by the hour for advice discourages people from seeking it, so no matter the level of service, there is never a charge for reaching out with questions, and consultations are always free. For tax returns and recurring projects, we’ll quote a fixed fee and scope for the year, and if something steps outside of that we’ll discuss a budget before we get started so there’s never a surprise.
What else should we know about working together? We believe in being transparent about what we do, so in addition to clearly explaining things to our clients, we also don’t try to pretend that we have special tax “magic tricks” that other accountants don’t. Sometimes we have recommendations that will lower your taxes, and that feels great, but other times we might uncover that some strategies you’ve used in the past were riskier than you realized. Our job isn’t to make those decisions for you, it’s to help guide you through them with the right information to make an informed decision.
Thanks again for reaching out. I hope we get the chance to work together.
Ben & Team