How to Find a Good CPA: A Practical Checklist
Most advice on choosing a CPA is generic enough to be useless — "look for experience", "check references". Here is a process that actually narrows the field, in the order worth doing it.
Step 1: Decide what you're hiring for
The word "CPA" covers work that different firms do very differently. Before you contact anyone, decide which of these you need:
- Compliance — the return gets filed correctly and on time.
- Advisory — someone who tells you in October what to do before December.
- Assurance — a compilation, review, or audit, usually because a lender, investor, or grantor asked for one.
- Representation — someone to deal with the IRS on your behalf.
Firms specialise. A practice built for high-volume individual returns is not the one you want for an investor-driven review, and vice versa. Saying which you need in your first email filters out half the wrong matches immediately.
Step 2: Verify the licence yourself
"CPA" is a protected title, and every state board publishes a lookup. It takes about ninety seconds:
- California's is the CBA licence lookup; every other state runs an equivalent, and CPAverify covers most of them in one search.
- Check that the licence is current, not merely listed — statuses like inactive, delinquent, or expired are common and mean the person cannot practise as a CPA.
- Check the firm as well as the person. In most states a firm needs its own registration to offer attest services.
This matters more than it sounds. Plenty of businesses describe themselves in ways that imply a licence without holding one. That's fine for bookkeeping — but not for anything requiring attestation or IRS representation.
On this site, firms matched to a state board roster are marked as licensed and show the address on file with the board. Firms that only describe themselves as CPAs on their own website are shown as claiming it, which is a different thing.
Step 3: The five questions
Once you have three or four candidates, these separate specialists from generalists faster than anything else:
- "How many clients like me do you currently serve?" Not "have you worked with" — currently. A firm with eleven restaurants knows your P&L structure before you explain it.
- "What software do you work in?" If they want you to migrate off a stack that works, that's a cost. If they already run it, onboarding is weeks shorter.
- "Who will actually do my work, and who do I email?" Perfectly reasonable for that to be an associate — you just want to know before, not after.
- "What does it cost, and what makes it cost more?" Vagueness here reliably predicts surprise invoices.
- "What's your capacity in March?" A firm honest about being full in busy season is more trustworthy than one that says yes to everything.
Step 4: Signals worth taking seriously
Good signs. Specifics on their own website — named industries, named software, published price ranges. Clear scope in the engagement letter. A straight answer about who does the work. Proactive contact outside filing season.
Walk-away signs. A guaranteed refund amount before seeing your records. Fees quoted as a percentage of your refund — prohibited for most return preparation, and a genuine red flag. Reluctance to give a PTIN or licence number. Refusal to put scope in writing. Nobody answering in February.
Step 5: Check the fit is mutual
The best working relationships in this field are ongoing, not transactional. Before committing, confirm the boring logistics: how you'll send documents, expected turnaround, whether questions during the year are billable, and what happens if you leave — specifically, that you can take your own records with you without a fight.
Do you need a CPA at all?
Often, not for everything. A bookkeeper handles monthly transaction work at materially lower rates; an enrolled agent can prepare returns and represent you before the IRS. A common setup is a bookkeeper monthly and a CPA annually for the return and planning. We've written more on the differences between the roles and on what CPAs charge.
Where to start looking
Browse firms by city to see who's near you, or search by service, industry, and software if fit matters more than proximity — a large share of firms now work remotely, so the right specialist often isn't the closest one. Every profile here links straight to the firm's own website; there are no lead forms and no fees.