Page 165 - The UnCaptive Agent

138 THE UNCAPTIVE AGENT

Having accurate and timely financial statements
and knowing how to read them is what lets you know
how well you’re doing and what progress you’re mak-
ing. Banks and other lenders will demand them, and
so will many insurance companies before they appoint
you. The question is not will you do accounting, but
who will do it? Will you be the accountant as well as
performing other functions in your agency? If you’re
a trained accountant, or you have skill or education in
accounting, this may be an acceptable answer. Most
good salespeople lack the necessary attention to detail
to make them excellent accountants, so a better solution
would be to pay a monthly fee to a bookkeeping service
or to your CPA firm initially. Another option is to hire
an insurance accounting service. Several businesses can
do agency accounting for you, regardless of where you’re
located. Their expertise in insurance agency account-
ing means that you’ll get excellent service for a very
reasonable cost.
Eventually, as your agency grows, you may want to
consider hiring a staff accountant. This will generally
not be necessary until your agency revenues exceed $1
million.
Another unique set of administrative tasks that must
be performed in any agency is the management of infor-
mation technology resources, including hardware and
software. As discussed elsewhere, agencies are responsi-
ble under a raft of state and federal privacy, data security,
and other laws, as well as insurance carrier contracts for
maintaining the integrity of their data. How do you do
this? How can you possibly know how to do this? Large
agencies have full-time people focused solely on this.
Your business may not be as large as theirs, but your
responsibilities are! The good news is that these services
are widely available from firms that specialize in doing