A Perfect Match: Choosing Referral Partners That Add Value
Today’s CPAs serve as true partners and trusted advisors to clients, becoming intimately familiar with each client’s growth, plans, and struggles. This means that when the need may arise to augment in-house services, most CPAs won’t partner with just anyone. Many CPAs are wary of recommending consulting firms, concerned that an unsuccessful engagement might damage the client relationship. No matter what type of referral partner is being considered – financial services firm, insurance firm, 1031 exchange firm, cost segregation provider, or any other – the CPA firm must do their research and carefully select someone they trust to take care of their clients.
I’m not really comfortable with the idea of a referral partner. Why can’t we keep things in-house?
Depending on the nature of your firm, maybe you can. However, as the tax code gets deeper and more complex, it’s becoming difficult for all but the largest firms to have every necessary expert just down the hall. For example, cost segregation is a specialty service requiring knowledge of construction methods, engineering, and the Internal Revenue Code for fixed assets including applicable Tax Court cases and Revenue Rulings. The concept of accelerated depreciation may seem simple, but depreciation law and building technologies are anything but. A detailed, defensible cost segregation study can only be performed by an experienced engineer, and most CPA firms don’t have the volume to justify keeping those niche resources in-house. Partnering with a qualified cost-segregation firm like Capstan allows a CPA firm to provide a value-added service without keeping engineers on staff.
What will the right referral partner (RP) do for my firm?
Recent Comments