How to Evaluate Your Accountant or Bookkeeper
Written by Nirmala Murugesan
Curated by Rubric Financial
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Red Flags in Your Current Provider
- Books are consistently more than 30 days behind month-end. This means you are making decisions based on stale data and are not fundraise-ready.
- Financials are prepared on cash-basis only with no accrual adjustments. This is inadequate for any startup planning to raise institutional capital.
- Bank accounts and credit cards are not reconciled monthly. Unreconciled accounts accumulate errors that become exponentially harder to fix over time.
- Your accountant is unfamiliar with startup-specific items like deferred revenue, stock-based compensation, convertible notes, or SAFEs.
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About the author
Nirmala MurugesanCA, CPAPartner, Accounting
CA and CPA with 20+ years across U.S. GAAP, IFRS, and cross-border entity accounting. Leads accounting and controllership at StartupCFO: clean close, audit-ready books, and multi-entity structures for venture-backed startups.
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