One of the most common questions small business owners ask when comparing accountants is surprisingly simple: how often should I actually hear from them? The honest answer is that it depends on the complexity of your business, but far too many owners accept near-total silence between an annual tax return and the next, and assume that is simply normal. It is not, and understanding what reasonable contact looks like can help you judge whether your current arrangement is actually serving you well or quietly letting you down.
The Bare Minimum Is Not Good Enough
At the very least, you should hear from your accountant around every statutory deadline that affects you: VAT returns if registered, PAYE and payroll obligations if you employ staff, corporation tax payments, and the annual accounts and self-assessment process. If your only contact happens when a deadline is imminent, or worse, after it has passed, that is a warning sign rather than a standard to accept as normal practice.
Deadline reminders are necessary but not sufficient. They keep you compliant, but they do nothing to help you plan ahead or understand how your business is actually performing between those fixed points in the calendar, leaving long stretches where you are effectively flying without instruments.
It helps to think of the bare minimum as a floor rather than a target. Meeting statutory obligations keeps you out of trouble with HMRC, but it says nothing about whether your pricing is sustainable, whether your overheads are creeping up, or whether a slow month is a blip or the start of a trend. Those questions need a different, more regular kind of contact entirely.
Quarterly Contact Should Be the Realistic Standard
For most small and growing businesses, quarterly contact strikes a sensible balance between staying informed and not overwhelming a busy owner with unnecessary meetings. A short quarterly review of management figures, even a twenty-minute call, gives you a chance to catch issues early, ask questions about upcoming decisions, and keep your accountant updated on changes in the business that might affect their advice going forward.
- Quarterly review of profit, cash flow and any unusual figures
- Reminders well ahead of every statutory deadline, not on the day
- A brief note when relevant tax or legislative changes occur
- Open access for quick questions in between scheduled reviews
More Frequent Contact for Growing or Complex Businesses
Businesses with employees, multiple revenue streams, investors, or ambitions to scale quickly typically need more than quarterly contact. Monthly management accounts, regular cash flow forecasting and closer oversight of payroll and VAT become important as complexity increases. This is where many businesses start to look toward more structured support, such as virtual finance director services, which provide senior-level oversight on a regular, scheduled basis rather than only when something has already gone wrong.
The right frequency is not about how much your accountant wants to talk to you; it is about how quickly your business situation changes. A stable, simple sole trader may genuinely be fine with two or three contacts a year. A fast-growing limited company juggling staff costs and client contracts needs far more regular eyes on the numbers to stay ahead of problems.
It is worth being honest with yourself, and with your accountant, about which category your business currently falls into. Many owners underestimate how quickly their situation has changed, still assuming the light-touch arrangement that suited them two years ago is still appropriate now, even though headcount, turnover and complexity have all grown considerably in the meantime without the level of support keeping pace.
Signs You Have Outgrown Your Current Frequency
Watch for practical warning signs: cash flow surprises that catch you off guard, VAT bills that feel larger than expected each quarter, or a general sense that you are making decisions without a clear picture of your current financial position. These are strong indicators that the contact frequency agreed at the start no longer matches the business you are actually running today.
Matching Contact Frequency to Business Milestones
Beyond a set schedule, good accountants also increase contact around specific milestones: hiring your first employee, taking on a lease, applying for finance, or preparing for a significant tax payment. These moments carry higher financial risk, and a burst of extra communication around them is a sign that your accountant is paying attention to your actual business rather than simply working through a generic annual checklist regardless of what is actually happening.
If you have recently been through one of these milestones without hearing much from your accountant beforehand, it is worth raising directly. A good adviser should welcome the conversation about how they can be more present during the moments that matter most to your business.
It is also reasonable to ask your accountant, in advance, which milestones they consider significant enough to warrant proactive contact. A short shared list, agreed once, removes the guesswork on both sides and ensures nothing important slips through simply because nobody flagged it as worth mentioning at the time.
A Practical List Worth Agreeing Together
Sit down once a year and agree, in plain terms, which events should trigger a call rather than waiting for the next scheduled review. This single habit prevents more surprises than almost any other change a small business can make to its accounting relationship.
Setting Clear Expectations From the Start
Much of the frustration around contact frequency comes down to mismatched expectations rather than genuinely poor service. If you never explicitly agreed how often you would hear from your accountant, it is entirely reasonable to raise the question now. A short conversation to agree a realistic schedule, whether monthly, quarterly, or milestone-based, prevents ongoing disappointment building up quietly on both sides of the relationship.
Put the agreement in writing where possible, even if it is just a follow-up email summarising what was discussed. This gives you something concrete to refer back to if contact starts to slip, and it signals to your accountant that you take the relationship, and the schedule, seriously.
Watching for Warning Signs
If months pass with no contact at all, if your calls and emails go unanswered for a week or more, or if every interaction feels rushed and reactive, these are signs the relationship has drifted into pure compliance mode. That might be acceptable for a very basic setup, but for most London businesses juggling growth, staff and cash flow pressure, it falls well short of what a genuinely supportive accountant should be providing.
If you recognise several of these warning signs in your own experience, treat it as useful information rather than something to simply tolerate indefinitely. Raising the issue directly, or exploring a provider with a clearer, more structured approach to contact, is a reasonable and proportionate response rather than an overreaction on your part.
The Bottom Line
There is no single correct answer to how often you should hear from your accountant, but silence for months at a time is rarely acceptable for an active, growing business. Quarterly contact is a sensible baseline, with more frequent touchpoints around deadlines and milestones. If your business has outgrown occasional check-ins, exploring more structured, senior-level support such as outsourced finance director services can bring the regular, proactive contact that growing London businesses genuinely need to thrive.
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