Are Quarterly Prepared Dental Financial Statements Worth the Cost?

My
accountant recommends doing quarterly financial statements.  I agreed to
this for the first 2 quarters so far but what I have received from them is not
too much different than what Quickbooks will generate for me.  They do
calculate the assets and liabilities which I can’t do accurately with depreciation,
but actually expenses/income report are not that much different than what I can
generate with the push of a button.They said it would make doing my tax return take more time (and money
obviously) if I don’t do quarterly financials.

So, should I keep paying about $500 a quarter to do financials or not?

1. Do you “need” the balance sheets every
quarter? When they’re prepared how do you use them?
2. Can’t you record the depreciation quarterly in QuickBooks? (The answer is
yes.)
3. How much more would it cost to prep the tax return without the quarterly
financial statements? $2,000 more?  I
doubt it25 years ago before practices had access to software like QuickBooks
and Quicken we were doing monthly or quarterly financial statements because
this was the ONLY was the practices could see their Profit & Losses. Even
then, what we learned was many wouldn’t even read them. They would wait for our
mid-year and year-end meetings for us to review them with the client and
explain them.

Once practices had access to QuickBooks and the like, the “need” for
us to prepare CPA financial statements decreased drastically and we were the
ones that went to the clients & said “Do you really want to pay us for
these when you can generate the same information yourself?” Many agreed and
that’s why the majority of our clients don’t want or need us to prepare CPA financial
statements. Just about the only time we do it now is when a bank requires
it.

This first appeared on Dentaltown.