Accountant owe me money?

LinasPilibaitisisbatman

whitewing wrote: »

Yes but them haven't actually done a lot for the money now have they?

I certainly think OP should get a partial refund.

They held any initial meetings, admin of keeping payments etc, admin of asking for the details etc.

It is not really their fault that the OP didnt give them the info to complete the service.

WestonDave

Really depends what you signed up for - if it was £50 a month to manage your "accountancy affairs" as they arise then they've stuck to their part of the deal and dealt with everything you've thrown at them - not their fault it is nothing! (in reality if you signed an agents authority for them with HMRC they will have been dealing with some stuff behind the scenes etc).

If you asked them to do your accounts and tax which they quoted £600 a time but you could pay £50 a month on account then they haven't done it all so you should have some of what you have paid on account back.

Pennywise

You need to check their letter of engagement and/or terms of business. More and more professional firms have moved onto monthly retainer packages where basically there is no direct correlation between work done and fees charged - some months they do nothing, other months they spend several hours. The whole point of a retainer is doing what's required when it's needed.

I'm a practising accountant and offer monthly retainers which work out a lot cheaper than the old fashioned hourly rate billed annually. However, in our case, we clearly explain that it's a retainer to the client and it is clearly written in the terms of business there is no link between the fee and the time spent, so it is quite possible that we can do far more or far less work than average.

If you were paying on a monthly retainer basis, you have no claim as they would have done the work had you asked them to - they'll have planned to do the work and it isn't their fault if you didn't communicate with them - presumably you could have cancelled the s/o several months sooner and saved yourself the money.