Sole Trader - I need a Cheap Accountant

scorpio13

Hi,
i'm a Sole Trader of a Small Online Business which has only been going 6 months.
I haven't set up any kind of Excel software for my accounts or anything (i just basically print out my invoices each month).
My average transactions/Sales are probably only 20-30 each month but i haven't really got a clue how to do my Bookeeping or Tax Returns etc. properly.
I'd like to get a cheap accountant that can just take care of my basic accounts, so nothing fancy really.
As i'm just starting up, i obviously don't have much money to play with, so any recommendations and/or advice will be greatly appreciated.

I was looking at this website earlier.......they seem quite cheap and hassle free.
Something like this would be ideal but the "Mazuma name" doesn't really fill me with much confidence.
http://www.mazumamoney.co.uk/accountancy-bookkeeping-taxation-and-all-that/

Mistral001

There are evening classes in accounts for small businesses. I did one at my local technical college and it was very helpful.

chalkie99

You can probably pretty much do it yourself and, even if you use an accountant, you can certainly reduce your costs by learning how to keep your records correctly. thereby reducing the amount of work the accountant needs to do.

A couple of ideas -

Call a few accountants local to you and see if they offer a free introductory meeting. Many do and you can use it as an opportunity to find out what records you need to keep and how they prefer you to present them. They can obviously give you an estmate of their costs at the same time.

Get in touch with your local tax office and ask them for details of their free half day courses. These are well worthwhile and will teach you what HMRC expect of you. Plenty of newbie and clueless people go on these so nothing to be scared of.

LianneCarlaS

You can do it yourself but firstly do you want to? Secondly is it worth your time? Thirdly, do you have the knowledge to ensure you deduct all applicable expenses so that you aren't paying too much tax?

Lets take a plumber who charges his time out at £30/hr. He could spend say an hour and a half doing his bookkeeping or he could send it to a bookkeper who can do it in an hour

Cost of bookkeeping himself - £30*1.5=£45 in lost work

Cost of getting a bookkeeper - £20*1 = £20
minus the hour and a halfs work done = (£45)

= £25 better off for outsourcing the bookkeeping

One key point is - get a bookkeeper to do your books and an accountant to do your accounts. That way you have the right expertise for the right job and you won't be paying the accountants much higher rate for bookkeeping.

I may be biased but I think it is important for accountants to give a really personal service. You need to be able to know and trust the person who is dealing with such an important aspect of your business and be able to pick up the phone and speak to someone who knows the ins and outs of your business. What can I say, I'm passionate and soppy and believe that the actual accounts are only a fraction of what having an accountant does for your business. I would be very interested in seeing what mazuma offer and what kind of compromises have been made in order to provide such a large scale fairly low cost service.

AbbieCadabra

we're a small Limited company & we use (& can recommend) cheapaccounting, they do offer sole trader accounts too.

pooch

scorpio13 wrote: »

Hi,
i'm a Sole Trader of a Small Online Business which has only been going 6 months.
I haven't set up any kind of Excel software for my accounts or anything (i just basically print out my invoices each month).
My average transactions/Sales are probably only 20-30 each month but i haven't really got a clue how to do my Bookeeping or Tax Returns etc. properly.
I'd like to get a cheap accountant that can just take care of my basic accounts, so nothing fancy really.
As i'm just starting up, i obviously don't have much money to play with, so any recommendations and/or advice will be greatly appreciated.

I was looking at this website earlier.......they seem quite cheap and hassle free.
Something like this would be ideal but the "Mazuma name" doesn't really fill me with much confidence.
http://www.mazumamoney.co.uk/accountancy-bookkeeping-taxation-and-all-that/

It doesn't sound like you need an accountant at this stage, just a good book-keeper.

You may need an accountant when it comes to doing your tax returns. To be honest, an accountant that charges more in fees may actually work out at lower cost to you in the savings they can produce your business.

Book-keepers fees and accountants costs can also be off-set against your business profits to further reduce your tax liability.

scorpio13

LianneCarlaS wrote: »

You can do it yourself but firstly do you want to? Secondly is it worth your time? Thirdly, do you have the knowledge to ensure you deduct all applicable expenses so that you aren't paying too much tax?.......

Exactly,....No i'd prefer not to. (Lol).
I just don't want the hassle to be honest.

I'll do some phoning around to see what's available and i'll also check out cheapaccounting who Abbiecadabra recommended.
Thanks Guys.

HappyMJ

£240 PER YEAR...I'd rather do it myself. It takes a few hours but if you can do a little bit every week it doesn't take very long and the amount of time you tke collecting everything for the bookkeeper/accountant is about the same anyway. It's just matter of adding it all up yourself and entering the figures yourself.

PlutoinCapricorn

HMRC do free courses where you can learn about record keeping and claiming expenses.

Pennywise

The "right" book-keeper can work out cheaper than an accountant doing the book-keeping, but it's by no means a guarantee.

I've had two small business clients recently, both shops, who've been charged way over the odds for their book-keeping by two separate so-called "qualified" book-keepers. Despite being simple, both book-keepers have made a right meal out of the jobs by doing proper double entry book-keeping on Sage under the "accruals basis", i.e. by first entering all invoices, and then entering payments against invoices, - completely unnecessary for what is basically a "cash" business!

I'd have done it on the cash basis and then done year end reversals for the unpaid invoices - far quicker and simpler.

The book-keepers charged £2k-£3k and I charged a few hundred, making the total costs for each circa £3k, whereas I'd have done the book-keeping and accounts in one go, for well under £1k.

It's a potentially costly mistake to assume that a book-keeper will be cheaper than an accountant. Some book-keepers don't have the skills/experience to find legitimate short cuts and insist on using the likes of Sage (unnecessarily) which takes a lot more time.

Pennywise

To the OP, get yourself some decent software and you should be able to do the book-keeping yourself at least.

I usually recommend the free cash book from https://www.vtsoftware.co.uk which is very easy to use and simply records & analyses your income and expenditure. That's the crux of the matter, knowing how much comes in and out, and to analyse properly (VT comes with a choice of account templates so you don't have to make them up yourself).