UK Fair or unfair costs?

[sabreone0]

Hello all, keen for some advice please. Our current accountant seems to be charging us quite a lot of money - approximatley 3.5% of turnover. We have an annual turnover of approximately £150k.

The services our accountant currently assists us with are :
Corporation tax
Book keeping
(sales are minimal as generally there is only a single invoice per day)
(purchases are again minimal as our business is a garden services provider)
Quarterly online VAT return
PAYE for 2 directors only (all other staff are contractors)

We provide our receipts quarterly, with 3 PDF months worth of bank statements and a spreadsheet showing all invoices and cheques written for the quarterly period. So, just the receipts to enter onto Sage and reconcilation with the bank statements and VAT online filing for the day to day running. And end of year corporation tax as an annual requirement.

Please advise if the current fees that we are being charged for our accountancy are expensive or about right?

 

[Robert Pearce]

My gut feeling is that £5k-ish feels high for your size of firm. On the face of it, it's certainly more than I would charge (although your accountant may have a different view to you as to the extent of the work that they do and the time it takes). However, only you can say whether you feel that you're getting value for money. Obviously, price is a factor for all clients (particularly given the economic conditions) but you don't mention how you feel about the quality of service that you're being given. For example, can you ring up and talk through any tax or business issues that you're facing? You recently posted a query about purchasing a van - it may have been that your accountant was away at the time but I would expect my clients to contact me about such things rather than posting questions on a public forum.

If you're happy with the service, and it's just the price that you feel a little uncomfortable about, I would discuss it with your accountant. It may be that they're willing to drop their fees a little. It may be that you can restructure things to lower the overall cost. For example, would it be cheaper for you to hire a local bookkeeper to do the Sage entry? That, however, may be a false economy if it results in the accountant needing to do more work pulling the accounts into shape.

If you're not happy with the service, and you don't feel that discussing it with your accountant will help, then you might want to get a few quotes from local (or non-local) accountants and take it from there.

 

[sabreone0]

Thankyou Robert, you have again responded very kindly to our second thread with a really good answer. Your time is very much appreciated.
We have used a large firm for 3 years now, my first thread was placed because we could not get straight forward practical advice to beneift our business. Our accountants seem happy to take our money but seem unwilling to offer basic strategic financial planning. To stay ahead we need a little time from time to time to move our company forward and to keep our company strong.
When we contact our present accountant, the clerk who answers the phone can not assist us and the relevant question answerers are never available. We are told to email which we do and the answers we receive back are usually vague, very rushed and usually miss the point of what we are asking ( to add insult to injury, we are still charged for this)
Off the back of your advice from the first post I think that we are going to commit to the new company vehicle. The final vehicle costing come back even more favourably than expected with a 16k purchase price.
This truck will come with 3 years unlimited servicing and repair (other than service items...oil, filters,tyres etc) and free roadside repair and recovery for 3 yrs.
From this purchase figure we can remove 3.2k for the AIA and then the sale of our existing truck which has a value of 2k.
Thinking about things we have decided to ditch the 5 year plan and to opt for a 3 year plan and after 3 years the truck should still have a saleable value of approx 8k.

To my understanding if we sell the truck in 3 years and repeat the process, the truck would have cost us approx £1000 a year which just cannot be bad!!

Thankyou again for your advice. If you were closer Robert I think we would be coming to see you.
Kindest regards

 

[Robert Pearce]

We have used a large firm for 3 years now, my first thread was placed because we could not get straight forward practical advice to beneift our business. Our accountants seem happy to take our money but seem unwilling to offer basic strategic financial planning. To stay ahead we need a little time from time to time to move our company forward and to keep our company strong.
When we contact our present accountant, the clerk who answers the phone can not assist us and the relevant question answerers are never available. We are told to email which we do and the answers we receive back are usually vague, very rushed and usually miss the point of what we are asking ( to add insult to injury, we are still charged for this)

It sounds like you could benefit by moving to a smaller practice that can offer you a more personal service.

 

[randraccounting]

I would agree with Robert, it sounds as if you may require a more personalised service at a lower cost than your current 3.5% of turnover. A smaller firm would most likely be beneficial. For instance (this is not a pitch to you as we only deal with clients within a 15 mile radius of our offices) all of our fees are fixed, you never pay a penny more than is agreed during our consultation and we ensure that (in our area) we are the most cost effective firm. I would suggest looking at our website and then seeing if you can find the same services in your area.

Ben

 

[randraccounting]

Ps I mentioned our website it's www.randraccounting.co.uk

 

[rwoodfield]

Comparison

Hello all, keen for some advice please. Our current accountant seems to be charging us quite a lot of money - approximatley 3.5% of turnover. We have an annual turnover of approximately £150k.

The services our accountant currently assists us with are :
Corporation tax
Book keeping
(sales are minimal as generally there is only a single invoice per day)
(purchases are again minimal as our business is a garden services provider)
Quarterly online VAT return
PAYE for 2 directors only (all other staff are contractors)

We provide our receipts quarterly, with 3 PDF months worth of bank statements and a spreadsheet showing all invoices and cheques written for the quarterly period. So, just the receipts to enter onto Sage and reconcilation with the bank statements and VAT online filing for the day to day running. And end of year corporation tax as an annual requirement.

Please advise if the current fees that we are being charged for our accountancy are expensive or about right?

Hi sabreone0. We are an Accountancy firm and you can get a price to compare it with on our website. You don't need to speak to anyone all you have to do is fill out a quick form and all your details are kept private and not used for any other purpose other than to give you a price. We are a competitively priced firm so you should be able to see whether what you are paying is too much. Here is the link http://www.accountedforltd.co.uk/quotations/contactinfo