Help regarding accountancy fees

gb12345

paddyrg wrote: »

This is absolutely core bread-and-butter work for any accountant. It's not that complicated, just worth getting right to prevent problems down the line like other posters in this forum have hit.

Took a half hour initial meeting with my accountant for him to set up my company with me and my OH as directors, explain how to declare dividends properly and what salaries to pay ourselves and what I needed to do for VAT.

After that, my only visit to his office was once a year for the accounts (emailed everything to him and went in to sign them off).

Regshoe

Mistral001 wrote: »

How can the OP expect to a to get a quotation from any business if they treat their prospective business suppliers like this?

Quite easily - always nice to see what the competition is charging, then I can slightly undercut each one of their services, without going in too cheaply

On a more serious note the fees are a little on the high side, depends where you are to some extent and as others have stated not all accountants are equal (particularly given then there is no protection to the term "accountant").

I'd probably quote in the region of £1,500 for the annual job (not VAT registered as only a part time practice).

I might add a couple of hundred extra for the transfer to limited company from sole trader, there are a few issues to consider - goodwill and so on. Actually I'm surprised they didn't mention the form of incorporation to you - by taking advantage of entrepreneur's relief and paying a little capital gains tax up front it might be possible to save some tax in the long run.

I'm a little confused about the reference to saving £2k on corporation tax, currently you won't be paying any corporation tax (not being incorporated and all!) so I can't see how you could make a saving on that. The normal saving on incorporation is on National Insurance - which would indeed be a little over £2k, based on the figures quoted.

I would also question the need for Xero - cloud accounting is a hot topic for accountants at the moment, Xero has it's supporters and it's detractors, but they would both agree it is certainly not the cheapest. You mention in the order of 20 transactions a month - potentially paying up to £20 a month to record these seems excessive.

Personally I use VT and whilst it's not a 'cloud' solution the files can be emailed. Presumably the accountants will want to use what they are familiar with and probably wouldn't want to learn a whole new program for one client - but presumably you must be providing them the details in some format currently. Whilst the bookkeeping is slightly different for a Ltd it doesn't have to use a more advanced/expensive method. Only other thing to consider here is that the quote for their work will presumably take into account that by using their preferred software you save them some time.

Might be worth getting quotes off a couple of other local accountants, or online if you like - but don't expect to get an online quote matched - your current accountants will definitely argue that it's not the same level of service, which is true, though the key question is what level of service do you want to have, not what level do they want to sell you. Having some comparable quotes should give you ammunition to negotiate on the quote you've been given.

AbbieCadabra

Ariel1982 wrote: »

Thank you Abbie - I'm going to look at this today. Can you tell me any more about your experience with them? The process outlined by my accountant seems pretty complicated - setting me up as a director, paying share dividends etc - can this company do all that for me?

As stated, my accounts as they are are pretty basic (even for me). I have no employees and very few expenses - it's just dealing with income, so maybe something like this could work for me. I do appreciate the previous advice to stop thinking like a small trader though - maybe I need to change my mindset.

Thanks this is a very helpful recommendation. Interested to see if anyone else has used them also.

any queries i have during the year are answered very quickly, usually via email as i like to have something i can refer back to, this is all included in our monthly fee. for setting up & the initial advice there might be a one-off fee as more time will spent advising you, i'm sure if you asked they could advise further. they're pretty friendly & speak plain-english (instead of complicated accountant speak!).

quite a few of us who use the uk business forums are clients & i don't recall any bad feedback as yet.

hope you get something suitable sorted