If you run finance at a foreign-owned company in Japan, you have probably had this problem: a technical accounting or tax question comes up, and there is nobody obvious to ask. Your auditors are the counterparty. Head office works to a different reporting regime and will not know the local answer. The question is not big enough to commission an advisory piece, but it is too big to guess at.

That is the situation a monthly retainer is for, and it is how CFOs and finance directors at foreign-owned companies have typically used ours — for audit response, accounting treatment and tax treatment questions, on call.

What a CPA retainer actually covers

With a lawyer the concept is easy to grasp. With an accountant it is vaguer, so it is worth being specific. The work falls into three areas:

1. Finance — funding, capital structure, business planning
2. Tax
3. Accounting

They are listed in order of how often we are actually retained for them. Recent engagements have been finance-led: working through a start-up’s revenue model, translating it into a business plan, and reviewing subsidy and financing options.

Accounting comes last, and deliberately so. Implementing a cloud accounting package sits outside what a monthly retainer is for, and routine bookkeeping questions can now often be settled with ChatGPT. We would rather say that than sell you a retainer that earns its fee doing work you do not need.

If you have something outstanding in finance, tax or accounting, please get in touch.