How to choose an accountant in Ottawa, asked properly.
Most comparisons stall on price and proximity — the two least revealing facts about an accounting firm. These are the questions that actually separate firms, and the answers worth holding out for.
Updated August 2026 · Reviewed by the VertAcc accounting team · Ottawa, Canada
Start with the model, not the rate
Two firms can quote the same monthly figure and cost you wildly different amounts by December. The difference is the model. Ask three questions before any number means anything:
- Is the fee fixed or metered? A fixed monthly fee agreed before work starts means a heavy month is the firm’s problem. Hourly billing means it is yours — and it quietly discourages you from calling with the question you should be asking.
- Are calls and emails billable? If a five-minute phone call can appear on an invoice, you will stop making five-minute phone calls. The expensive version of that is finding out in April what you should have asked in September.
- What is a separate line item? Some firms quote bookkeeping, then bill filings, CRA letters and software separately. The quote looks smaller than the invoice will be. Ask for the all-in annual number in writing.
The single most revealing question you can ask any firm: “What will my total cost be for a normal year — everything included — and what would make it change?” A confident firm answers in one sentence. An hourly firm cannot.
Ask who actually does the work
At many firms the person who wins your business is not the person who keeps your books. The work flows to whoever is available, and you re-explain your business every time you call. Ask directly: who posts my transactions, who reviews my year-end, and who do I talk to — and how many people is that in total? “A named person, and the same one” is the answer you want.
Ask what the software costs — and who owns your books
Accounting fees usually sit on top of a software subscription you also pay: QuickBooks, Xero, a payroll add-on, a document tool. Two questions expose the real position:
- Is software included in the fee, or billed beside it? A per-seat licence that rises every year is part of your accounting cost whether or not it appears on the firm’s invoice.
- If I leave, what do I leave with? The honest answer is a clean export of your books and every document the firm holds, with no exit fee. Anything vaguer than that is a warning.
Check the claims you can check
Credentials that live in a public directory are worth more than credentials that live in a paragraph. An Intuit ProAdvisor listing can be looked up. Google reviews under real names can be read. E-FILE authorization with the CRA is a registration, not a slogan. A firm whose claims are all checkable is telling you something about how it keeps books, too.
The Ottawa specifics
Any Canadian firm can file a T2. What you want from a local firm is fluency in the ground you actually operate on: Ontario’s Employer Health Tax, WSIB, provincial incorporation and annual returns, and — if you run a law practice — trust accounting to the Law Society of Ontario’s By-Law 9. Ask a candidate firm which of those they handle in-house and which they refer out.
Where we sit, stated plainly
This guide is the checklist we would want used on us. Our answers: fixed monthly fee agreed before we start, calls never billable, one named team, software included because we build the platform ourselves and set it up free, and if you leave, you leave with a clean export and every document. The claims are on the accounting page, with the directories to verify them.
The short version of working with us
VertAcc is an Ottawa accounting firm that writes its own software. Bookkeeping, tax, payroll and year-end run on a fixed monthly fee — no hourly meter, calls never billable, and the accounting platform is included with setup done free. If your books are behind or a deadline on this page is already past, that is ordinary work for us, not a judgement.