Valet att behålla revisorn eller att byta till redovisningskonsult i små tillväxt- och levebrödsföretag

The mandatory auditing in Sweden was deregulated in 2010, that meant that small businesses that has a maximum of 3 employees, a net sale of maximum 3 million Swedish kronor and a balance sheet total of maximum 1,5 million Swedish kronor themselves got to choose to either keep the accountant or not. These companies that are started before 2010 faced a choice to either keep the accountant or not and that is why the purpose of this study is to contribute with a deeper understanding of why small businesses choses to hire an accountant or not, and if this choice differs between livelihood- and growth companies. This is achieved by explaining how small businesses acted and reasoned after the deregulation of the mandatory auditing. This study has a qualitative method where twelve personal interviews were conducted in order to acquire the empiricism. The result of this study shows that the factors behind the choice to keep the accountant or not, differs between livelihood- and growth companies. The factors that matters to growth companies who keeps the accountant is time, quality the accountant profession. To the growth companies that don’t keep the accountant the factors are the cost, saving for growth and the accounting consultant. While the factors for the livelihood companies who keeps the accountant are education, quality and the accountant profession. The factors that matters to livelihood companies who do not keep the accountant is cost, quality, different expectations and the accounting consultant. Conclusions to be drawn from the results of the study, is that small businesses in both emerging and subsistence businesses mainly affected by the auditor, or accountant in their choice. Those small business owners who choose to retain the auditor do this even though they have the knowledge, but not the time to do all the economic work, while they values the auditor's knowledge and thus experience a higher quality of the accounts. Those small business owners, who decide to switch to the accounting consultant, do this because they believe that the audit is expensive where they would rather spend the money on investments in the company.Validerat; 20151209 (global_studentproject_submitter