For many London business owners, the relationship with an accountant is reduced to a rushed phone call before the tax deadline and a set of accounts nobody quite understands. It doesn't have to be this way. Good communication with a local accountant is a daily working relationship built on clarity, responsiveness and mutual respect, not a once-a-year exchange of documents. It shapes how confidently you make decisions, how quickly you spot problems before they become expensive, and how much value you actually get from the fees you pay every month or every quarter. Knowing what good communication looks like helps you recognise when you already have it, and when it might be time to have an honest conversation with your current firm, or look elsewhere entirely.
Plain English, Not Jargon
The first sign of a good working relationship is language you can actually understand without needing a dictionary of accountancy terms to hand. A strong local accountant explains a VAT liability, a directors' loan account, or a dividend threshold in terms that connect directly to your business, not in technical shorthand that leaves you nodding along politely without really following what's been said. If every conversation ends with you feeling slightly confused about what it means for you practically, that's not a reflection of your grasp of finance, it's a communication failure on the part of the adviser. Good practice means checking understanding as they go, using examples drawn from your own figures rather than generic textbook scenarios, and never making a client feel foolish for asking what might seem like a basic question about their own money.
Proactive Updates, Not Just Reactive Answers
Communication shouldn't only happen when you're the one chasing it up. A well-run accountancy relationship includes updates that arrive before you have to ask for them: a heads-up that a payment on account is coming due, a note flagging that your turnover is approaching the VAT registration threshold, or a short message after a tax law change explaining exactly what it means for a business like yours. This proactive style shows the firm is actually looking at your numbers throughout the year, not just when a statutory deadline forces their hand into action. It's the difference between an accountant who simply processes your figures once a year and one who genuinely manages your finances alongside you, spotting things worth raising long before they turn into a problem you have to fix under pressure.
Clear Expectations About Response Times
Good communication also means knowing exactly what to expect from the outset. Will an email be answered within a day, or realistically within a week during busy periods? Is there a direct phone line to a named person, or does everything route through a general enquiries inbox shared across dozens of unrelated clients? A firm that sets out these expectations early, and then consistently meets them month after month, builds trust far more quickly than one that simply hopes for the best. Ambiguity here is one of the most common sources of frustration between London small businesses and their accountants, because unspoken assumptions on both sides quietly lead to disappointment. Ask directly at the outset how quickly you can expect a reply, and treat any hesitation in answering that simple question as useful information in itself about how the relationship will actually run.
Regular, Structured Check-Ins
Beyond ad hoc emails whenever something urgent crops up, the best relationships include a genuine rhythm of scheduled contact, whether that's a quarterly review call, a mid-year tax planning conversation, or a short catch-up after each VAT return has been filed and submitted. These check-ins don't need to be lengthy affairs, but they create a consistent, predictable space to raise concerns, review performance against expectations, and plan ahead rather than always reacting to the last thing that went wrong. Businesses that adopt something closer to a virtual finance director relationship often find this structured cadence is exactly what finally makes their numbers feel manageable and useful rather than mysterious and slightly frightening.
Honesty About Bad News
It is easy to communicate well when everything is going smoothly and there's nothing difficult to report. The real test comes when there's a genuine problem: a return filed late, an error discovered in a previous year's figures, or a piece of advice that turns out, on reflection, to have been wrong for your particular circumstances. Good communication means the accountant tells you promptly, explains clearly what happened and why, and sets out precisely how it will be put right, rather than staying quiet and quietly hoping the issue passes unnoticed by everyone involved. London business owners who have experienced this kind of straightforwardness from a local firm tend to stay loyal for years afterwards, because it signals a relationship built on genuine accountability rather than careful image management.
A Two-Way Conversation About Your Business
The strongest client relationships aren't one-directional exchanges of paperwork for a fee. A good local accountant asks about your plans, not just your figures: are you hiring soon, opening a second site, or considering a change in trading structure that could affect your tax position? These questions allow advice to be genuinely tailored rather than generic, and they signal real interest in your business rather than a purely transactional relationship built solely around compliance deadlines. If your accountant never once asks what's coming next for your business, you're likely receiving compliance work rather than a real advisory relationship, and it's worth asking yourself honestly whether that's really what your growing business needs right now.
- Updates that anticipate deadlines rather than merely meeting them at the last minute
- A named contact who genuinely knows your business, not a rotating queue of strangers
- Explanations delivered in plain English, checked for understanding as they're given
- Honesty when something has gone wrong, delivered quickly and without evasion
Consistency Across the Whole Team
Finally, good communication has to be consistent throughout the firm, not just present in your interactions with one favourite team member you happen to get along with. If you get excellent, clear responses from your usual contact but confusing or contradictory answers whenever someone else covers for them during holiday or sickness, that inconsistency quietly undermines confidence in the wider firm as a whole. This is one reason many London small businesses now specifically value working with a firm that offers dedicated senior support as standard, so the quality of communication doesn't depend entirely on which member of staff happens to pick up the phone on any given day. It's a fair question to raise directly with any firm you're considering: how do you keep standards consistent when a client's usual contact is away, and what training ensures every team member explains figures with the same clarity and patience.
The Bottom Line
Good communication with a local accountant isn't a soft extra tacked onto the service, it's the foundation that determines whether financial advice actually gets understood and used in practice. Plain language, proactive updates, clear expectations around response times, honesty about problems when they occur, and a genuine interest in your business are all reliable signs you're in a relationship worth keeping for the long term. If those elements are consistently missing, it's worth having a direct, specific conversation about what better communication would actually look like, because the right accountant should make your business clearer to you, not more confusing than it already feels. Over time, the businesses that thrive tend to be the ones that treat this communication as a genuine two-way habit rather than something they only think about once a year.
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