Coastglen Financial, a small-business funding service in Pensacola, FL, explains accounting firm financing: lines of credit for payroll between billing cycles and term loans for buying a practice or a book of clients. Escambia County, FL had 124 accounting, tax preparation and bookkeeping employer establishments in 2023, two thirds with fewer than five employees.
Workload and billing can fall out of step
Some firms do a large share of their work in a few months and collect fees over a longer stretch, while salaries are paid on a fixed calendar. Whether your own firm follows that pattern is visible in a year of bank statements; plan from your numbers rather than from a general rule.
A line of credit is one option for this: draw for payroll in the months when collections lag, repay when they catch up.
Can you get a business loan to buy a business?
Yes. Practice purchases can be funded with a term loan. For an accounting firm, the asset being bought is mostly client relationships, so partners may focus on billing history by client, client retention after past ownership changes, and how the seller will introduce the buyer.
How do I get a business loan to buy a business? Start with the seller's records: three years of billings, a client list with annual fees, and the transition terms. Partners will also look at your own experience.
How much does it cost to buy a CPA firm, and what sets the price?
A price may be negotiated on the annual fees the buyer expects to keep, with part of the price sometimes tied to client retention. No local average exists in public data, so the purchase agreement sets the number. The acquisition loan calculator shows the monthly payment on the financed part.
Illustration only: a book billing $200,000 a year, bought with $40,000 down and $160,000 financed, has to keep enough clients that its fees cover the payment, staff time and a margin. If a quarter of clients leave, rerun the numbers.
Accounting business loans for growth
Hiring a second preparer, opening an office or upgrading software are smaller decisions. Working capital or a modest term loan fits, sized to the cost and the months until the new capacity pays.
Retention clauses and the payment plan
Some practice purchases tie part of the price to how many clients stay through the first year. That protects the buyer, but it also means the final price, and sometimes the amount financed, is not known at closing.
Plan the financed amount on the fixed part of the price, keep the retention-based part as a payment the practice's own fees cover, and run both through the calculator before agreeing terms.
The local picture
Escambia County, FL had 124 accounting, tax preparation, bookkeeping and payroll services employer establishments in 2023, with 1,123 employees and an annual payroll of about $69.6 million; 66.1% had fewer than five employees (U.S. Census Bureau, County Business Patterns 2023). Nine used a downtown ZIP 32502 address (U.S. Census Bureau, ZIP Code Business Patterns 2023). Separately, 331 firms had no paid employees in 2024 (U.S. Census Bureau, Nonemployer Statistics 2024).
Most of these employers are small, with 66.1% under five employees. The wider view of local professional firms is on accounting, engineering and consulting firms.
By Coastglen Financial · Updated