To change accountants?

[doubleginplease]

My accountants bill for this year has just arrived. Its gone up by £600 and we were informed by invoice after the work had been completed. It was £1500 for the P&L, Balance sheet and submission for a very basic limited company. I do all the book keeping and payroll. Plus another £200 each for 2 very basic returns for my husband and I.

On top of that, he's recently made a mistake thats cost us £2700. Well when i say cost us, we would have owed it anyway, but he forgot to include it in our last return and I didn't question the figures he gave us for our tax payment. This has meant threatening letters from the HMRC and an investigation. I've got the money so its not a problem, but i would have preferred to have notice so i could have budgeted for it (its come out of my savings). This isn't the first mistake he's made unfortunately.

The only other issue is that he's a family friend. We've gone through a couple of family bereavements recently and he's been supportive.

AIBU to look for another accountant?

Its hard to say without knowing how much work was done, but that doesn't sound too ott. If there was quite a lot that needed doing to the books you provided and 'finishing off' that needed to be done before the final accounts were prepared then the costs add up pretty quickly.

Also, what was the mistake that was made?

I would. He's made more than one mistake, that makes me think one of two things - he either isn't as careful with your work as with others as he's a family friend, or he's just not that great.

I would change

PM me if you're interested in a quote

He forgot to include dividends from another company I have an interest in when he calculated my student loan repayment. A couple of years he forgot to include my DH's student loan completely. Also this year we were told by him that we don't have to pay my DH's student loan anymore as its been paid but received a fine and also a bill as £50 balance is still there. Not much but i had been told!

I do monthly payroll, pay our 3 employees, do a monthly download from our business bank account and put in excel justifying each expense, then do a monthly P&L which adds up to a yearly P&L, meeting notes, dividend vouchers, print and file invoices in date order and number them according to my spreadsheet. I put comments on the spreadsheet for example if I've lost a receipt or to explain an odd looking expense. So really, all he needs to do is check it all adds up (there's formulas to automate it) and work out what I owe. He doesn't have to sort anything and there's nothing different from last year.

He's also made mistakes about dates for our return and his emails seem to be in riddles. We also had to ask him about childcare vouchers and whether we might be better off having those. He said 'oh yes, you'll be £200 better off a year!' Is it too much for me to ask that he's proactive and suggests these things to me and not wait until I suggest it? Are my expectations too high?

We are thinking going to a specialist accountant in a larger firm as in the next 5 years we are looking to acquire a business and he has a specific experience in helping our profession do this. He's roughly the same price perhaps a bit more.

I've noticed the number of company's he is secretary for has dwindled and someone else in my field has stated that he's not known for being great but that person is generally negative about a lot of people so i ignored it!.