There is a saying “Happy wife, happy life”. But for accountants and advisers, it should be “Happy engagement agreement, happy life”. The engagement agreement solidifies all of our work relationships, boosts communication, and helps ensure that everyone feels like a winner as a result of our work together.
Our 14 page engagement agreement is longer than most. It is written in plain basic English (and not legaleze) for clarity, broken down into logical sections, and is clearly captioned. It is meant to be easy to skim through, find applicable sections, and quickly reach a conclusion that ‘this makes sense; it says exactly what I would have expected it to say’. That’s the main point.
We revise the engagement agreement from time to time as the laws controlling us and standards of practice in our industry change.
The 2025 engagement agreement has a few changes from 2024. A statement was added for minimum fee. This is meant for communication purposes; meant to communicate that if your needs or expectations are below this minimum cost, then we are not a good fit. Also, clarification on the general prohibition of contingency work in tax practice as a result of recent IRS updates.
A copy of the 2025 agreement is available for download:
_Jan 2025- Tony Novak CPA Nantuxent Group Engagement Agreement