10 Questions to Ask Your Accountant This Week

Most business owners ask their accountant "how are we doing?" The answer is always "fine." These 10 questions get past that — they surface the specific numbers that matter for commercial decisions.

Cash & Receivables

1. What is the actual collection timeline by client — not the average, the range?
   The average hides extremes. One client paying in 120 days and another in 15 looks like "67.5 days" on average. The 120-day client is your cash problem.
2. Which of our receivables are more than 30 days past due?
   Past-due receivables have a decay function. The older they get, the less likely you are to collect. Above 90 days, you are writing them off.
3. What is our cash conversion cycle, and how has it changed over the last 6 months?
   If it is growing, your working capital is expanding faster than your revenue. That is a funding problem disguised as an operations problem.

Margin & Profitability

4. Which cost lines are committed vs. flexible?
   If revenue drops 20% tomorrow, which costs can you cut immediately? The answer tells you your true downside risk.
5. Which clients or projects are actually profitable — and which are not?
   Blended margins hide the truth. You need client-level or project-level profitability, not just business-level numbers.
6. Is our gross margin compression structural or project-specific?
   A temporary project ramp-up is different from a pricing problem. The fix is completely different for each one.

Growth & Risk

7. What percentage of our revenue comes from our top 3 clients?
   If it is above 50%, you have concentration risk. If above 70%, you have a single-client dependency disguised as a diversified business.
8. What is our headcount efficiency — revenue per employee?
   In agencies, below $90K means you are overstaffed or underpricing. In manufacturing, below $80K means production efficiency is too low.
9. Are we spending enough on marketing to grow, or too much to sustain?
   Marketing above 12% in an agency, above 30% in MarTech — the threshold where you start buying revenue that does not retain.
10. What does our 13-week cash forecast look like?
    If your accountant cannot produce this, you are flying blind. If it exists but shows a problem, you have time to fix it. If it does not exist, you have a bigger problem.