How much are you paying for accountants fees?
Discussion
Just wanting to make sure I was grossly over paying.
I have a small 2 person business, and I do my own PAYE. Turnover is about £200,000, fairly simple stuff, 2 company cars, usual office equipment, and we keep fairly tight records. All income is paid by cheque or BACS. We deliver accounts as monthly spreadsheets of costs broadly under the headings the accountant uses, provide chronological lists of invoices, cheques etc and all receipts in monthly batches. We also provide the VAT breakdown to match to the returns for him to check. The accountant handles our annual CT return but we do all the other annual returns to HMRC and Companies House. He also does my personal tax return, which is fairly simple. I meet twice a year with him for about 90 minutes a time, on delivering the paperwork to explain things and answer any questions he has and then when the accounts are complete for the same reasons, but in reverse, when we also do a bit of planing for the next one/two years to minimise tax liabilities.
We are charged around £220 plus VAT a quarter. Does that sound about right.
I have a small 2 person business, and I do my own PAYE. Turnover is about £200,000, fairly simple stuff, 2 company cars, usual office equipment, and we keep fairly tight records. All income is paid by cheque or BACS. We deliver accounts as monthly spreadsheets of costs broadly under the headings the accountant uses, provide chronological lists of invoices, cheques etc and all receipts in monthly batches. We also provide the VAT breakdown to match to the returns for him to check. The accountant handles our annual CT return but we do all the other annual returns to HMRC and Companies House. He also does my personal tax return, which is fairly simple. I meet twice a year with him for about 90 minutes a time, on delivering the paperwork to explain things and answer any questions he has and then when the accounts are complete for the same reasons, but in reverse, when we also do a bit of planing for the next one/two years to minimise tax liabilities.
We are charged around £220 plus VAT a quarter. Does that sound about right.
Edited by Leftie on Friday 5th January 11:27
Eric Mc said:
To be honest, that sounds pretty resonable to me.
Is he including the personal tax work in that overall fee (and, if he is, are you declaring it as a taxable Benefit in Kind?).
Is he including the personal tax work in that overall fee (and, if he is, are you declaring it as a taxable Benefit in Kind?).
Hi Eric,
I'm interested to say you think that sounds reasonable - it sounds very cheap to me compared to what I am getting. You may be too far away from me to do it, but coudl you give me a quote on doing our returns. I could send you a sage file or something like that if it would make things easier for you to see?
Leftie said:
Just wanting to make sure I was grossly over paying.
...
We are charged around £220 plus VAT a quarter.
...
We are charged around £220 plus VAT a quarter.
You want to make sure you are overpaying?
In absolute terms, how could you be 'grossly over paying'? At it's most extreme, even if it should be free you'd only be overpaying by £220/qtr.
Our guy (semi-retired) charges £500/day and it looks like he'll have done about 40 days last year.
Edited by deva link on Friday 5th January 16:57
JagLover said:
Leftie said:
We are charged around £220 plus VAT a quarter. Does that sound about right.
Does that include preparation of your quarterly Vat returns?. If so you are getting a very good deal.
No, but that is pretty easy for us as we only issue about 2 or 3 invoices a week. We just keep a spreadsheet with the paid date and the VAT quarter it is acounted in, then sort by quarter and coy and paste out into the VAT calculation sheet.
Sounds like the price is about right verging on good!
BTW I do of course declare my self assesment as a BiK (cough)
Leftie said:
Sounds like the price is about right verging on good!
If they are not doing your Vat returns it depends on your records really. It sounds about right anyway.
Leftie said:
BTW I do of course declare my self assesment as a BiK (cough)
If you were ever investigated by the IR your accountant might get in trouble for not 'decoupling' the fee.
dcw@pr said:
Hi Eric,
I'm interested to say you think that sounds reasonable - it sounds very cheap to me compared to what I am getting. You may be too far away from me to do it, but coudl you give me a quote on doing our returns. I could send you a sage file or something like that if it would make things easier for you to see?
dcw@pr et al - I'm looking to set up a small business myself at present (see earlier posts) - and wanting to get off on the right footing for a successful future - is Sage a worthwhile package looking at?
My accountant does peparation of annual accounts, corporation tax computations and CT600 return, PAYE/NI, quarterly VAT returns, director's (ie. my) personal income tax returns, deals with all routine tax queries including random audits/inspections, preparation of annual return to Companies House and related Companies House administration, ad-hoc advice and IR35 contract reviews for £800 + VAT pa.
muppetdave said:
dcw@pr said:
Hi Eric,
I'm interested to say you think that sounds reasonable - it sounds very cheap to me compared to what I am getting. You may be too far away from me to do it, but coudl you give me a quote on doing our returns. I could send you a sage file or something like that if it would make things easier for you to see?
dcw@pr et al - I'm looking to set up a small business myself at present (see earlier posts) - and wanting to get off on the right footing for a successful future - is Sage a worthwhile package looking at?
It is definitely worth keeping a good set of records from the word go... and if they are easy for your accountant to understand, then all the better.
Sage Instant Accounts or Line50 are pretty much industry standard, i.e. understood by most accountants and bookkeepers, and taught in many schools and colleges around the country...
Also, I had a look at a new product from Sage recently called Start-up which they say is aimed specifically at start-up businesses. I thought it was much easier (dead easy) to use than Instant or Line50 and has the added benefit of diary and appointment management, and access to a whole host of web based business advice included... and a backup disk from Start-up can be sent to and restored straight into Line 50 used by your accountant or bookkeeper.
Very similar, 2 person company, we do all the accounts and send the accountants a QuickBooks file to do year-end accounts, although they do all the company returns and stuff.
£875 + VAT for the year. We do all the VAT returns and PAYE directly.
So £220/quarter for what you are getting sounds pretty good.
(Suggest you try QuickBooks instead of Sage - I couldn't get along with Sage, everything seemed really hard to do. IMHO.)
£875 + VAT for the year. We do all the VAT returns and PAYE directly.
So £220/quarter for what you are getting sounds pretty good.
(Suggest you try QuickBooks instead of Sage - I couldn't get along with Sage, everything seemed really hard to do. IMHO.)
Mrs Topsparks here:
I've used TAS Books for about 7 years who are now part of Sage. TAS might be cheaper than Sage and does everything I need for our small company (VAT returns, day to day accounts etc.) and the accountant just comes in once a year and uses it to do our final accounts. So like someone said before it is important that your accountant knows how to use the package as well but usually they do.
I've used TAS Books for about 7 years who are now part of Sage. TAS might be cheaper than Sage and does everything I need for our small company (VAT returns, day to day accounts etc.) and the accountant just comes in once a year and uses it to do our final accounts. So like someone said before it is important that your accountant knows how to use the package as well but usually they do.
Being a limited company more or less doubles the fee, in my experience.
The reporting requirements and tax affairs of companies are a few orders of magnitude more complex than a similar sized sole trader.
Sage and Quickbooks are both fine accounting systems. Sage is popular with accountants and book-keepers becuase it uses traditional terminology and techniques familar to anyone who has studied double entry book-keeping. Quickbooks uses "lay" terms and as such, is more easily understood by non-book-keepers/accountants.
The reporting requirements and tax affairs of companies are a few orders of magnitude more complex than a similar sized sole trader.
Sage and Quickbooks are both fine accounting systems. Sage is popular with accountants and book-keepers becuase it uses traditional terminology and techniques familar to anyone who has studied double entry book-keeping. Quickbooks uses "lay" terms and as such, is more easily understood by non-book-keepers/accountants.
Edited by Eric Mc on Saturday 6th January 16:56
Depends on what you are wanting I guess. A client of mine paid 60k this year, we pay a couple and a bit which includes a monthly site visit to tie up our inputting and also to produce managements reports (Plus all returns in personal).
Going to be interesting this month if the cival servants strike - make sure all those returns have a signature to prove you sent them.
Going to be interesting this month if the cival servants strike - make sure all those returns have a signature to prove you sent them.
JonRB said:
My accountant does peparation of annual accounts, corporation tax computations and CT600 return, PAYE/NI, quarterly VAT returns, director's (ie. my) personal income tax returns, deals with all routine tax queries including random audits/inspections, preparation of annual return to Companies House and related Companies House administration, ad-hoc advice and IR35 contract reviews for £800 + VAT pa.
wow, sounds goog, as he does your PAYE and VAT for that too, and the companies house stuff.
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