Accountants fees

I definately wouldn't get an accountant in for things like invoice raising and basic accounts. If you really don't have time to do this yourself then as mentioned above look at maybe getting someone in on a part time basis or try a book-keeper for the majority of the work as they tend to be much cheaper.
For example I work for a limited company as a general book-keeper (well among other things anyway!) so do all invoicing, accounts, bank reconcilations etc and the accounts get passed to an accountant once a quarter to check them over and deal with tax, vat, directors expenses etc. This works out drastically cheaper then what they used to do which was getting someone in a few times a month.

Whilst the above can be true it will depend on how much ADVICE you also need. Should you go flat rate VAT or not? Did you know what flat rate VAT was to know to look into if its right for you or not? How does IR35 impact you, if at all?

An accountant can be anything from £600 to £1800 for a contractor (which is what it sounds you will be) and can include insurances or not.

Assuming you are contracting then there are very few recruitment agencies these days that require you to raise invoices manually. Most have automated web based systems which raise the invoices for you.... with the one I'm currently using I enter my hours worked into an online timesheet, that gets emailed to the client to sign off. I then go back in and attach the timesheet to an invoice and it then its job done and tells me when the payment will be made.

hippyadam wrote: »

If your a freelancer or contractor check out https://www.crunch.co.uk

Not used them personally but quite a few of my friends do and they love the service. Fixed monthly fee as I recall and no contract (but could be wrong on the last bit)

There are quite a number of qualified accountants offering similar and cheaper services if you google for them. Their "comparison" between their services and what they purport to be normal accountancy practices are a little flaky to say the least! You could google for cheapaccounting, and myonlineaccountant for a start, operated by Elaine and Nicola respectively who are qualified accountants and offer personal service for those kind of prices (or less), rather than an anomymous large firm where you may be little more than a file number on their production line. I'm not saying Crunch are worse or more expensive - I'm just saying that what they offer is actually quite standard/common for an online accountant.

Pennywise wrote: »

There are quite a number of qualified accountants offering similar and cheaper services if you google for them. Their "comparison" between their services and what they purport to be normal accountancy practices are a little flaky to say the least! You could google for cheapaccounting, and myonlineaccountant for a start, operated by Elaine and Nicola respectively who are qualified accountants and offer personal service for those kind of prices (or less), rather than an anomymous large firm where you may be little more than a file number on their production line. I'm not saying Crunch are worse or more expensive - I'm just saying that what they offer is actually quite standard/common for an online accountant.

Like I say, I can't comment directly as I don't use Crunch, i'm going off my friends who use and like the service

I'm sure Nicola & Elaine are also lovely :beer:

seismicryan wrote: »

I am going to raise the issue with the accountant andbasically ask is there anything I can do to reduce the bill.. otherwise I will have to go elsewhere!

I have a colleague who used to work as an accountant. They are psyching themselves up to write to our accountants / auditors to dispute the bill for preparation of this year's accounts. And they tell the story of one of their former colleagues who left the accountancy practice to work for one of the firm's clients, just after personally completing preparation of that client's accounts. The first thing they did in their new job was write to the accountancy practice to dispute the bill ... which they had been responsible for producing! :rotfl:

I must ask if the bill was actually reduced!