Well, this topic is a little close to home. . . . .

As in most things, the type of accountant you need is dependent on what you need the accountant to do.

In the world of accounting, there are several types of accountants (I am using the US).

A Certified Public Accountant is required to (now) have 150 hours of college work with a serious amount of time spent on accounting subjects (accounting , taxes, theory and so on) and related things like Business Law, Marketing, Finance, Economics and so on. They have to take a serious test to get their license (more than 90 - 95% fail it the first time) and have to take a lot of continuing education classes to stay licensed every year. Each state has an association and licensing board and you can check to see if the person you are thinking about has any issues there.

An Auditor is a CPA who can express opinions on the fairness of financial statements. (No, they do not go around and shoot the wounded, even though it can seem this way.)

A Registered Agent is someone who has passed a test with the IRS and can represent people in tax disputes (all CPA's can do this as well as attorneys by virtue of their licenses).

A Bookkeeper is just that: a person who can keep track of the day-to-day business activities. While CPA's can and do perform this function, a good non-CPA bookkeeping service may do the day-to-day stuff just fine, especially with the bookkeeping software around nowadays.

A tax preparer is what the name says - someone who prepares taxes. There is not requirement for any schooling to hold oneself out as such. A person can take a short course in the fall and go to work for H & R Block in the spring as a tax preparer. Some are very good, others, well. . .

How to pick one? I personally feel a CPA is more often than not the right choice, because their fees are not usually much more (if any) than the others and their training is typically better and, they should be willing to steer you to someone else if they simply do not have the requisite skills (I am a CPA, but I would not do tax work).

Pick them like you would any professional. Ask around. Look them up on the Internet (most have web pages) and see what they specialize in. Try to narrow the list down a bit and then call a few and ask for an appointment to discuss how they might be able to help you. Assuming you do not drag in twelve boxes of stuff and try to get something done in that meeting or take up too much of their time, they

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