Is anyone here an accountant?

[TreeClimbingLlamas]

I'm a new business, been trading since start of September but setting up the company since April. Due to ploughing a lot of personal money in from April to start of trading, the accounts are more complicated than I'd like, so I've been in touch with a firm to take them on. They have quoted £250 per month, which is fine BUT they want it backdated to April to deal with the historical issues. Does this sound reasonable?

Exactly what work are they going to be doing? What additional work is needed for tax etc compliance (if not covered in the monthly fee)? What sized firm? What sort of transactional volume do you have?

Yes. More info needed. First example, I'm a qualified book keeper and you havent yet said anything I wouldn't be able to do. Maybe get a book keeper

No. It doesn't sound reasonable to me. It sounds odd.

I'd ask around a few more firms and check out bookkeepers too

Presumably the £250 a month is based on what your normal monthly transactions involve & the time they expect that to take. Being simplistic here, you have a 6m backlog, so they need to be paid for the extra work to sort that. But £3k is quite a bit, chat to some cheaper bookkeepers and see if you really need an expensive accountant for a new business.

That sounds quite expensive, but I haven't seen the mess it is in. Presumably you arent asking for a full set of management accounts for each of the historical months, you just want things in order? I would be inclined to shop around for a better deal if you have time. Maybe try somewhere a bit larger where there is a cheap junior who will do all the monkey-punching of transactions into the accounts.

Or don't rule out using an online-only accountant in the UK (use someone in the UK due to data protection). Often cheap and very skilled, working from home so not needing to pay for premises (you just scan everything and send it to them).

@Bingbongbinglybong

That sounds quite expensive, but I haven't seen the mess it is in. Presumably you arent asking for a full set of management accounts for each of the historical months, you just want things in order? I would be inclined to shop around for a better deal if you have time. Maybe try somewhere a bit larger where there is a cheap junior who will do all the monkey-punching of transactions into the accounts.

Or don't rule out using an online-only accountant in the UK (use someone in the UK due to data protection). Often cheap and very skilled, working from home so not needing to pay for premises (you just scan everything and send it to them).

Shame on you - I take exception to your reference that anything below an actual chartered accountant is “monkey punching” I am a qualified bookkkeeper working as an accounts assistant and it’s actually a very skilled job to enter transactions correctly on the system. Your comment implies I am just a housewife earning pin money - thanks :(

That's expensive. We run a limited company and pay £156 pm which includes filings with companies house & HMRC, self-assessment returns, pension auto -enrollment and PAYE payroll. None of that backdating nonsense either. I'd check out some other firms Op.

Yeah that sounds expensive for a start up but depends on anticipated turnover and sums involved.

I can give you a recommendation on where to look if you need one.

That sounds massively expensive but, regarding the back-dating, it might be helpful to think of the cost for the year's accounts need to be paid. If you approached them one month before filing, they would want more than a month's fees to cover the annual cost. If you are in England and filing after 12 months rather than the 'up to' 18 months for year 1 it used to be?, that would be £3000 for a year, if 18 months then £4500?. Ask them what the annual cost will be and for what services (payroll, returns, annual accounts, tax and so on) then get other quotes to compare on a like-for-like basis.

Good luck.

Thanks guys....it does sound expensive, and we're not really in that big a mess. You've saved me from making a bad decision!

Any recommendations gratefully accepted! Must be xero proficient :-)

Does that include doing year end accounts and filing, PAYE, VAT, Companies House returns etc? Will you be using them as a registered office or SAIL? It's a bit hard to say without more detail but £3000 is not that much if it covers everything.

This is the quote. We are just a tiny new CIC, no staff on payroll even, just a freelancer. The mess is because we started trading in September but prior to that I used personal money to buy stuff for business...

What do you think???

-- Original Message --

Hi,

Thank you for providing the bank statement information. From our discussion and the files you provided I these are the services I recommend:

Subscription to Receipt Bank
Monthly bank reconciliation
Support for Stripe
Annual accounts for filing with Companies House / CIC regulator
Annual accounts and Corporation Tax return for filing with HMRC
Training and support for Xero and Receipt Bank
Add equipment and other fixed assets to accounting records
Transfer any personal purchases to CIC as required

The monthly fee for the services above is £250 + VAT. I would typically charge £300 + VAT for this service, but I offer this at a discount to support your cause. The monthly fee would be backdated to April 2020 to take account of all your pre-incorporation expenses. Please do not add any further transactions to Xero for the moment, we will need to correct the entries to date and set up a system to get everything running smoothly with the accounting process. You can upload receipts etc to your trail version of Receipt Bank, but I can move you over to our RB, which will be included in the monthly fee above.

There is considerable work involved in bringing the accounts up to date so it will be a few weeks before you will have accounts to show the DWP. I am away next week, but will be back in the office on Monday 19th October. If you would like to go ahead with my proposal, please let me know by email and I will issue my terms of engagement for you to sign online.

It's impossible to say really without knowing more about business, turnover etc. You could have thousands of transactions or just a few. It doesn't include things like Companies House returns, filing fees, VAT, PAYE, pensions etc so it seems quite expensive (but I am making huge assumptions that your accounts are simple with a low turnover) as you seem to be doing most of the booking/data entry work yourself. It does include Xero training/support and, reading between the lines, it sounds like you need that but you won't in future years. It also sounds like you don't have much experience so working with a chartered account who is proactive and can give advice rather than a basic online service might be useful but in the future you may not need that. Like anything else, you shouldn't just get one quote. Have you approached other accountants?

Your "mess" of paying for things personally is easily resolved so shouldn't incur huge extra costs but it does sound like they will be doing data entry and sorting out things that have been incorrectly entered into Xero so that is going to cost you quite a bit and it is fair that they are backdating the monthly fee to when the accounts begin to cover that. You could probably find a bookkeeper to train you and sort that out for less than they will charge you.

If the fee is taking into account training you and they are redoing all the incorrect entries, then maybe it is not too bad but I would expect the charges to be less next year.

Does your business really need Receipt Bank as well as HubDoc?