Changing accountant without losing the audit trail

Most people who change accountant are not angry. They are tired of chasing. The reports arrive late or not at all, questions take a week, and at some point it becomes obvious that nobody is actually watching the file.

Switching is routine. Doing it without losing the audit trail takes a little care, and the care is all in the handover.

Ask for the file, not the reports

A set of PDF reports is an output, not a record. What you want is the underlying data: the ledger in a form that can be imported, the chart of accounts, the opening balances with the workings behind them, and the reconciliations that tie the ledger to the bank. If your records live in accounting software, the cleanest handover is access to that software rather than an export of it.

Get the opening position agreed in writing

This is the step that gets skipped and the one that matters most. The new firm's first month starts from the old firm's closing balances. If those have not been reconciled and agreed, every month afterwards is built on a number nobody has checked, and it surfaces at year end when the statements do not tie.

A good incoming firm will reconcile what it is given against the bank before it accepts the opening position, and will tell you in writing what state it found the records in. That document is worth more than it looks: it is the line between what the previous arrangement is answerable for and what the new one is.

Do not change in the last quarter if you can avoid it

Handovers are easiest at a period boundary. Mid year is entirely possible, but it means two firms have touched one financial year, and someone has to own the join.

What you are entitled to

Your records are yours. A firm may reasonably take time to prepare a handover, and may have unpaid invoices to settle first, but the underlying books are not leverage. If a provider is unwilling to release data in a usable form, that is worth knowing early, because it is also a fair description of the working relationship you are leaving.

The part nobody mentions

A switch is the best chance you will get to fix the things that were never right. Chart of accounts that grew by accretion, categories nobody uses, a VAT treatment that was set once and never revisited. The incoming firm is going to read all of it anyway. That is the moment to ask what should change, rather than replicating five years of habit into a new system.