When to get a forensic accountant

Pennsylvani Family Law Blog published what I think is an important post in DO I NEED A BUSINESS APPRAISER? AND JUST WHAT IS A FORENSIC ACCOUNTANT? about a ssubject that does not come up often but when it does it comes up with a vengeance.

But reason needs to be part of the process. A business with one employee selling product using a desk and a phone rarely sells for a lot of money. You don’t need a forensic accountant to successfully argue that the children’s cell phone bills are not business expenses. But if the matter is complex and the business appears to have a value that a buyer would be interested in paying a substantial sum to take over, clients need to examine seriously the need to employ talented experts to tell the story in court.

The starting point before engaging experts is for both the lawyer and the client to get the core financial documents and review them before the accountants and valuators become involved. Clients bring information to the equation that experts will never develop alone. The fact that valuation is a cooperative enterprise involving coordination and a common understanding of the objects at hand. Failure to do so produces an expensive and often unintelligible result.