What should I change first after buying an accounting practice?

A new owner often arrives with a list of improvements. Most of them can wait. In an accounting practice, clients are loyal to people and habits, and the calendar is unforgiving. Changing too much too soon risks late work and unhappy clients just when they are deciding whether to stay.

Leave the busy season alone

If you take over before or during a busy period, keep the existing workflow, the software and the staff roles as they are. Use those weeks to watch. Note where work stalls, which clients need extra care and what the staff do that no document describes. Your notes become the plan for later.

Talk first, then change

Staff should hear the plan before clients do, and clients should hear it from you and the seller together. Keep the message simple: who they deal with, what stays the same and when anything will change. The advice on telling clients a practice is changing hands are a good place to start before you change any tool.

Then fees, software and letters, one at a time

Once the season has passed, review your engagement letters with your lawyer or professional body, then look at fees client by client rather than across the board. Software changes come last, since they disrupt everyone. Space them out, and tell clients about anything that touches them.

A simple order of work

• Keep the workflow and software through the first busy season.
• Meet the largest clients and the key staff.
• Record how work actually moves through the office.
• Review engagement letters, then fees, then software.

For what often catches buyers out, see what buyers of an accounting practice underestimate.