Before a first meeting with an accountant, people clean up. They spend the weekend forcing a year of chaos into a spreadsheet, then present it shyly, the way you might tidy a house before the cleaner arrives. It is understandable and it is backwards. The accountant is about to quote for looking after your affairs. If they quote against the tidied version, the price is wrong, and the relationship starts with a misunderstanding.
Bring the mess. A good practitioner has seen far worse than yours, and the state of your records is precisely what they need to see.
The paperwork that makes the meeting real
For a sole trader: your last tax return if one exists, recent bank statements for whatever account the business runs through, and a rough note of income and outgoings. For a limited company: the last filed accounts, your Companies House details, any payroll records, and VAT returns if registered. In every case, bring the letters. The brown envelopes from HMRC you have been afraid to open are the first thing to hand over, not the last. Deadlines and penalties hiding in unopened post change what needs doing first.
Add one thing nobody thinks to bring: a sentence about where you want the business to be in two years. Selling up, scaling, staying deliberately small. It changes the advice more than any bank statement.
The questions that reveal the firm
You are interviewing them as much as they are assessing you. Ask who will handle your work day to day, because in larger practices the person charming you at this meeting is not the person doing your bookkeeping. Ask how they prefer to communicate and how quickly they answer. Ask what the fee covers and what triggers extra charges. Ask which software they will put you on and who pays for it. And ask what they need from you, by when, in a normal year. Their answer to that last one tells you whether they run an organised practice or an inbox.
What should happen next
A good first meeting ends with specifics: a written fee proposal, a list of what they need to take you on, and a clear statement of the first deadline they will handle. If it ends with warm noises and no letter of engagement, nothing has happened yet. The letter of engagement is the moment you have an accountant.
Most firms give the first conversation free, which means you can sensibly hold two or three before choosing. With 3,441 accounting firms listed on this site there is no shortage of candidates: pick a shortlist from practices near you, or set out your situation once and let firms respond before you book anything.
Then gather the pile, unopened envelopes on top, and book the meetings for the same week. Comparing three quotes against identical mess is the fairest test you can run.
