Changing accountants is routine and usually amicable. It still goes wrong regularly, because the outgoing firm holds records the incoming firm needs and nobody makes a list until three months later.
Ask for these before you announce the change, not after.
What to request
Copies of filed returns for at least the last three years, as filed, including every schedule. Not a summary — the complete return.
The depreciation schedule. The single most important document and the one most often missed. It lists every fixed asset, its cost, its in-service date, the method being used, and accumulated depreciation to date. Without it, your new accountant cannot continue depreciating your assets correctly and may have to reconstruct years of history from purchase records that no longer exist.
Carryforward items. Anything with a balance rolling into future years — loss carryforwards, credit carryforwards, basis calculations, at-risk and passive activity amounts. These live in the preparer's software, not on the face of the return, and losing them can be genuinely costly.
The trial balance and adjusting journal entries for each year. Your books and the filed return usually differ — the accountant made adjustments at year end. Without the entries, nobody can explain the gap.
Any elections made. Accounting method, entity classification, specific tax elections. These persist and constrain future choices.
Correspondence with tax authorities. Notices received, responses filed, anything open.
Two things people forget
Access to filing portals. If the firm set up your state tax accounts or a federal e-filing account, make sure the credentials and the registered contact belong to you. Notices go to whoever is on record, and if that is a firm you no longer work with, you will not see them.
Who is the responsible party. On several federal and state registrations there is a named responsible party or contact. If it is someone at the old firm, update it.
How to handle the timing
Do not switch mid-filing-season if you can avoid it. The window right after a return is filed is the calmest — the year is closed, the records are current, and nobody is under deadline pressure.
Also: request the documents before you tell them you are leaving. Not out of subterfuge, but because a routine records request handled in the normal course is faster than one attached to a departure. Most firms are entirely professional about this. A few are slow, and slow is the main risk.
What your bookkeeper should be doing
This is where having current books changes the difficulty of the whole exercise.
If your books are closed and reconciled, the handover is a package: statements, trial balance, reconciliations, and the documents above. Any competent firm can pick that up.
If the books are behind, the new firm's first engagement is reconstruction, and their view of you is formed by that. Getting the books current before switching is the cheapest thing you can do to make the transition smooth — and it puts you in a better negotiating position, because you are asking someone to review clean records rather than rescue you.
We hand over that package as part of monthly bookkeeping, and it is the same package described in what your CPA actually needs at year end. Note that the depreciation schedule and carryforwards sit with your accountant rather than with us — that is tax work, and it is exactly why the request list above matters.
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We handle your bookkeeping end-to-end — categorization, reconciliation, month-end close, and clean financial statements, so your books stay current and CPA-ready.