Thread by @patio11

Don’t sell software to anyone who doesn’t pay accountants or who complains about how much accountants cost.

(The unstated assumption here is “You’re not AppAmaGooBookSoft and can’t spend a billion dollars to make the distribution work.”)

Why do I bring up professional services? Because organizations sophisticated enough to require them are capable of paying material amounts of money for things which enhance their success.

Why the bit about complaining? Because you want customers which are rational.

If an organization thinks its accountants do not produce substantial value a) they’re wrong and b) since you have a far less obviously compelling value proposition than “Pay me $1 I save you $3 and btw you don’t go to jail” you will have excessive difficulty selling to them.

“So accountants entire value proposition is tax avoidance?”

No, but a pretty major part of it is ensuring that you don’t naively implement the tax equivalent of a full table scan just because it was the most straightforward way to write the query.

My favorite example of this from personal life: newly hired accountant looks over this guy’s returns, facepalms, and says “Mr. McKenzie why did you file for being a sales tax exempt business just because all your customers are overseas. You never do that.”

“You instead want to file as a business which is subject to sales tax but which had 0 yen of taxable transactions... and then claim the refund for all the sales taxes that your business paid this year.”

A conversation which didn’t happen but could have:

“OMG is that allowed?”
“Oh I don’t know Mr. McKenzie you might be running the first business in Japan’s history which exports.”