Beyond Tax Season: How Year-Round Advisory Services Help Veterinary Practices Grow
When most veterinary practice owners think of their CPA, they think “tax season.” Maybe you scramble to get your financials in order once a year, send them off, and breathe a sigh of relief when your tax return is prepared and filed, but what if your accountant could be doing much more for your practice all year long?
Year-round advisory services aren’t just “nice to have.” They can be a strategic driver of growth, profitability, and peace of mind for veterinary practices of all sizes.
Tax Prep Is Reactive. Advisory Is Proactive.
Traditional tax prep looks backward: gathering last year’s data, filing returns, and ensuring compliance. Planning and advisory services, on the other hand, are forward-looking, helping the practice owner to strategize for taxes instead of just reacting to them, make smarter financial decisions before year-end, identify opportunities for growth, savings, and better cash flow, and align your financial operations with your long-term business goals.
Think of it like preventive medicine for your business focused not just on treating symptoms but strengthening the whole system. At CBAS, our business advisory service includes year-round tax planning. However, we also offer year-round tax planning to veterinary practices needing such services. Our fees are charged monthly and usually include the tax preparation fee to allow greater predictability of expenses and cash flow. The tax return should be a byproduct of the year’s watchful planning.
What Year-Round Advisory Services Include
A good veterinary-focused advisor will help you with:
- Monthly financial reviews: Tracking KPIs tailored to the goals and objectives of the practice and their owners.
- Quarterly Tax strategy: Identifying ways to legally minimize your tax burden with strategic planning, entity structuring, and proactive deductions. Making sure the business is apprised of tax law changes that might impact their practice.
- Cash flow forecasting: Helping you anticipate slow seasons, major expenses, and opportunities to invest in growth. Creating a dynamic plan that integrates actual year-to-date in comparison to projected period-end results.
- Budgeting and goal setting: Establishing clear, achievable financial goals for the year. This helps with determining annual salary reviews and product ordering.
- Profitability consulting: Analyzing service mix, pricing strategies, and staff productivity to maximize profitability as well as stressing the types of services you want for your patients.
- Exit and succession planning: Preparing for eventual transitions, whether that’s bringing in a partner, selling your practice, or retiring. Pencil in your retirement NOW even if you are a young vet. This will keep your vision trained on the future exit plan, preparing your business to become a salable asset.
This ongoing support turns your numbers into tools not just reports.
Why Veterinary Practices Especially Benefit
Veterinary medicine has unique financial rhythms and risks with highly seasonal cash flows, rising labor costs, staff shortages, increasing client expectations for technology and specialty services balanced with the inability of clients to sometimes pay for these expectations. There are also high equipment and facility costs plus opportunities/pitfalls in practice expansions or acquisitions.
An advisor who understands these dynamics can help you not just “keep up,” but succeed. If you’ve only worked with your CPA during tax season, consider expanding the relationship or look for an advisor who specializes in veterinary practices. You’ll want someone who offers proactive planning, not just compliance, understands practice operations and key metrics as well as communicates with you clearly and collaborates regularly.
Treat your advisor like a strategic non-equity partner, not just a form-filer.
Your Practice Deserves More Than a Once-a-Year Checkup
You wouldn’t advise your clients to only visit when their pets are in crisis, instead you would recommend regular wellness checks. Your practice deserves the same kind of proactive, year-round care. With the right advisory relationship, you’ll gain clarity, confidence, and a clear path to sustainable growth, not just at year end to prepare and file a tax return.
