Being the only accountant in a company can be an amazing experience. It can be an incredible learning curve with the opportunity to really broaden your skill set. Anything finance related comes across your desk which means you get the opportunity to deal with such a wide range of things.

But, it can also be daunting. What if you don’t know the answer? What if you make a mistake? Does it mean you have to do everything?

In this article I will attempt to explain some of these questions and help you understand what it’s like to ride solo as an accountant in a tech company.

Setting the scene

Generally speaking, if you’re the only accountant in the company it probably means you’re at a relatively early stage startup. We’re talking about tens of employees, perhaps between seed and Series A/B and still feeling very ‘startup’ culturally.

Other business departments, such as legal, HR and compliance are probably in a similar boat as finance – one person running the show in each area. A very flat structure.

The job role

Being the only person in the finance team, you’ll get to see a wide range of things. From strategic decisions that impact the overall direction of the business to BAU (business as usual) tasks which help keep the cogs turning.

It’s an exciting space to be as you naturally build up a great understanding of the organisation simply by virtue of everything you see. You learn what moves the needle and what doesn’t, and that’s important because, as a finance person, you need to understand what’s going on across the whole business so you can help glue the business together financially.

Riding solo doesn’t mean you can’t delegate

Whilst you may be the only accountant, that doesn’t mean you’re on your own. I would highly recommend using an external accountant for the BAU activities (bookkeeping) whilst it’s economically viable. BAU tasks are the things that keep the cogs moving, so it’s not necessarily the most valuable use of your time.

Your company may also have someone who is happy to get stuck into anything and everything. You can leverage their availability by asking them to take care of the more mechanical tasks such as invoicing, loading bank payments and dealing with supplier/customer queries.

You’ll still need to have good control over this side of things though, so it’s often impossible to completely delegate the BAU activities. I like to watch out for errors or bottlenecks because they indicate a breakdown in a process somewhere, then fix it.

Moving the needle

The strategic tasks are where you’ll probably find that you spend more of your time. Strategic work covers a wide range of things which typically vary day to day, but in my opinion include (but are not limited to) the following:

• Build or review financial models that help map out the journey from here to there
• Projecting cash runway and putting in plans to raise finance
• Building relationships with key stakeholders
• Process improvements to make things effective and scalable
• Assessing the ROI / financial impact of strategic investments

For this type of thing, it’s helpful to know a few other CFO’s / Head of Finance’s to bounce ideas off. You’ll probably find that at least one of your founders has a good understanding of the financial strategy side so they can be useful to brainstorm with – and if not, I always find it’s useful to run ideas past non-accountants as they often have a different viewpoint. The key is to be open minded!

What if you don’t know the answer?

Surprisingly (or not!), lots of questions can be answered by a quick google search. It might not throw up the perfect answer, but could give you some ideas that send you in the right direction.

Think about pricing strategy for example – a quick google search will throw up lots of information on how other companies price their products, different structures and why things are priced in certain ways. It won’t tell you how to price your product, but it’ll give you ideas!

You can then refine those ideas by speaking with other people in the company. If you’re working at a startup, there’s a fair chance that many of your colleagues are incredibly smart, so use them well!

It’s also a good idea to build up your network to include other finance professionals who can help with the more generic questions. Don’t forget you’ll also have access to your external accountants.

And if something goes wrong?

If you get something wrong, the key skill is being able to fix it. Most decisions aren’t irreversible. They might be hard to fix, but not impossible. Everyone is human so making mistakes is a natural trait, but managing the mistakes properly is what differentiates you from others.

Overall, working as the only accountant in a company is an excellent way to progress your career and gain a unique skill set that makes you a more all-rounded professional. It can be scary at first, but turn that fear into excitement and you’ll have a great time!

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