What usually goes wrong

Calls unanswered for days in the week before a filing date. Messages read and not replied to. Then the deadline arrives and you still do not know whether anything was filed.

Why it happens: a practice takes on more clients than it can serve in peak weeks, because clients arrive year round and the work arrives all at once. Filing season exposes the mismatch.

Prevention: ask what their response time is in filing season, separately from their normal one. Then insist that every filing is confirmed to you with the acknowledgement, unprompted. If confirmations are automatic, silence stops being ambiguous.

You agreed a figure for annual compliance. Then there is an amount for a notice, an amount for reconciling last year, an amount for a certificate the bank wanted. None of it was dishonest. None of it was discussed either.

Why it happens: the original conversation covered what was included and never covered what was not. Both sides had a reasonable and different assumption.

Prevention: ask for the exclusions in writing before work starts, and ask for the price of anything additional to be confirmed before it is done rather than after. A professional with nothing to hide finds this an easy request.

You met an experienced Chartered Accountant. Your returns are being prepared by an articled assistant, and the review is light.

Why it happens: this is simply how most practices are structured, and it is not wrong. It becomes a problem only when it is undisclosed, because you priced the engagement believing something else.

Prevention: ask who prepares, who reviews, and who signs. Delegated work with real review is fine and normal. Delegated work with no review is what you are actually trying to detect.

You learn about a late filing from a notice, an interest charge, or a portal you happened to open.

Why it happens: nobody agreed who was tracking the calendar. The accountant assumed you would send documents in time. You assumed being late would trigger a phone call.

Prevention: get the list of your deadlines for the year at the start, with the date by which you must supply documents for each. Then a missed date has a named owner instead of two people pointing at each other.

The most damaging one on this page. You decide to move, and the books, the working papers, the prior filings and sometimes the portal logins all sit with someone who is now slow to respond.

Why it happens: books were kept in the accountant's own software or spreadsheets, registrations were made using an email address the accountant controls, and no handover terms were ever agreed.

Prevention: use accounting software you have access to, register everything against an email address and phone number your business controls, and agree in writing at the start that records are returned on request in a usable format. Do this on day one. Doing it on the day you want to leave does not work.

The person handling your compliance is not a Chartered Accountant, or is a member without a Certificate of Practice, or the audit was signed by a name you have never spoken to.

Why it happens: the title is used loosely in conversation, and almost nobody asks for the number. Some of it is careless self description rather than fraud, but the consequence at an assessment is identical.

Prevention: ask for the membership number, check it in ICAI's directory, and verify the UDIN on anything signed. The full method is in How to check whether a CA is genuine.

Everything is filed on time and correctly, and in three years nobody has ever told you anything. You find out about a deduction, a structure, or a scheme from a friend.

Why it happens: routine compliance is priced as a commodity, and at that price the work is data in, return out. There is no margin for anyone to think about your business.

Prevention: separate the two. Pay a fair, low price for routine filing, and buy one deliberate review a year from someone senior, before the year ends rather than after. Expecting advisory judgement inside a commodity compliance fee is the mismatch.

Your GST and income tax portal passwords, and sometimes your banking access, sit with the accountant and with whoever else in that office needs them.

Why it happens: it is faster than proper authorised access, so it becomes the default and nobody revisits it.

Prevention: use the authorised representative and additional user facilities the portals provide, keep the primary credentials yours, and change them when anyone leaves. Never share banking credentials at all. See what your accountant will ask for.

Not a fight. The replies just get slower over a year, the work gets thinner, and eventually you are managing your own compliance while still paying someone.

Why it happens: the practice grew, or shrank, or the person who cared about your account left. Nothing was ever formally ended, so nothing forced a conversation.

Prevention: review the relationship once a year against the scope you agreed. If two of the items on this page are true at that review, act then rather than in the month you next need something urgently.

Look at the preventions together and they are the same three sentences repeated.

• Write the scope down, including what is excluded.
• Agree who confirms what, and when, so silence is not ambiguous.
• Keep your records and your access yours from the first day.

None of it requires a lawyer. It requires the conversation to happen before the work rather than during the argument.

Accmeet was built around these failures rather than around a directory. Several of the preventions above are the default rather than something you have to remember.

• Credentials are checked before the badge appears. A gold Verified CA badge means that profile passed an ICAI membership check against official records, so problem six is handled before you speak to anyone.
• Every engagement begins as a written proposal with one price for one agreed scope. There is no verbal understanding to disagree about later, which is problems two and four.
• The conversation that produced the agreement stays attached to the engagement. What was promised is readable rather than remembered.
• Ratings can only be left by a counterparty who actually completed a job, and the trust score built from them cannot be edited by hand. A pattern of problem one or problem nine shows up in a profile instead of staying invisible.

What it does not do is make the scope conversation unnecessary. It gives you a place to have it, on the record. Browse accountants, or read how an engagement forms.