Switching accountants, without the drama.
Most businesses stay with the wrong firm for an extra year because the switch feels like a project. Here is the honest size of it: one email from you, and the rest is the new firm's job.
Updated August 2026 · Reviewed by the VertAcc accounting team · Ottawa, Canada
The signs it's time
- You hesitate before calling — because the meter runs, or because you'll wait a week for a reply.
- Every invoice is a surprise — the quote and the bill stopped resembling each other.
- You meet your own year-end as a stranger — the firm reconstructs your year each spring instead of knowing it all along.
- Deadlines are your job — you remind them about HST, not the reverse.
- You've outgrown them — payroll, a second entity, a trust account, and the firm's answer is always that it's extra.
What switching actually involves
Your part — one email: thank the current firm, state the end date, ask for your records, and authorize them to answer the new firm’s questions. Settle any outstanding bill. That is genuinely all of it.
The new firm’s part — everything else: collect the file (software access or exports, the last filed returns, year-end statements), pull anything missing directly from the CRA with your authorization, migrate the books onto their system, tie the opening balances to the last filed year-end, and take over the filing calendar. Here that migration and setup are included in the fixed fee — switching costs nothing beyond the engagement you were quoted anyway.
The test of a firm worth switching to: ask what happens if you ever leave them. The right answer — a clean export and every document, no exit fee — is the answer that makes the question boring. It is also our published answer.
Timing: tidy versus true
The tidiest moment is right after a year-end is filed — the old firm completes their engagement, the new one starts a clean year. But tidiness is a convenience, not a rule. Mid-year books transfer routinely, and if you are already double-checking your accountant’s work or missing deadlines, the cost of waiting for December is real while the cost of switching now is one email. If the books themselves are the mess, catch-up and the switch are one engagement, not two.
Choosing better this time
The questions that separate firms — the pricing model, who actually does the work, what the software costs, what leaving looks like — are laid out in our guide to choosing an accountant, written as the checklist we’d want used on us. Ask them of every candidate, including us.
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.