Your accountant is not your accounting system
Handing receipts to ‘my guy’ in December is the traditional model. It keeps you blind for eleven months and makes January expensive.
- Your accountant advises and files — you keep the running records.
- Fifteen minutes of weekly matching beats three weeks in January.
- File payment receipts when you pay, not at year-end.
Kunle runs a distribution business in Ibadan. He has a solid external accountant — files CIT, argues with VAT assessments, knows the rules. What the accountant is not: a daily log of every transfer Kunle’s team made in March. That gap is where Nigerian SMEs bleed time and money.
The accountant’s job is easier when you bring records, not riddles.
The shoebox model
Traditional flow: operate all year on instinct and bank balance; collect receipts in a drawer; in January send “everything” and hope your accountant can reconstruct reality. You pay for reconstruction. You also pay in surprises — VAT you thought you could cover, PAYE backlog you forgot.
Split the roles clearly
- You (or finance lead): log, categorise, reconcile weekly
- Software: single source of truth — bank, invoices, payroll
- Accountant: review, adjust, file, advise on structure
- Not: accountant as forensic archaeologist every Q1
You watch cash weekly; your accountant watches compliance quarterly.
A habit that respects how Nigeria actually works
You will still have cash purchases, informal vendors, and transfers with ugly bank narratives. The upgrade is naming them within days — not inventing categories in March. Your accountant should be validating and optimising, not guessing what “TRF TO ADEOLA V” meant in August.
Run the business all year; hand your accountant a pack that makes sense.
Build the records as you go — Reconcile weekly · export when filing season hits