In the past I have written that if you don’t feel comfortable picking up the phone to talk to your CPA (attorney, banker, insurance agent, financial advisor) you are not in the right type of relationship and should change it.
These five positions should be working to get you to your goals, period.
The reverse of that is having a client with whom you hate to meet with, talk to, or respond to inquiries. I have had this situation.
They were rude, they lied, and it was almost impossible to get information from or a nickel out of them in payment. It wasn’t the right fit for us or them. Thank God this only lasted 5 or 6 months.
I wanted to fire them almost immediately, when I went to meet them at a scheduled time, they blew off the meeting with no call or notice. I was talked out of dropping them. The office believe that they could work around my issues. They keep missing meeting, not sharing information and out and out lying to us.
Then, thank God, she fired us, I was off the hook; yes I had to write off a balance owed. We found out when a new accounting firm contacted us for information. Since they were not a CPA firm, I had to explain that I was not able to send them anything under IRS Circular 230, they had no consent disclosure. I also had to explain that the client gave us only limited access to information beyond their QB file. There was nothing to turn over, they would have to go hunting for the data and access from the client.
It is wonderful when a proven system works.