Who needs accountants?
Everyone in the business require accountants to sort out or to assist them with meeting their statutory obligations such as advice on relevant forms to be filed at Companies House for changes in directorship or company secretary, the terms and conditions for dissolving a company before filing Form 652a to Companies House, statutory accounts preparations and preparations of tax returns and filing at HM Revenue and Custom.
What can businesses gain from their accountants?
Business owners can concentrate on their business operations. Accountants are normally ahead of businesses in terms of what law and regulations and relevant accounting and auditing standards are affecting particular industry and businesses.
They would be able to advice on steps to be taken to ensure compliance with these rules with minimum disruption to your business operations and add value to the business.
How accountants charge their fee?
Generally, accountants fee are charged with consideration of the following on a reasonable basis.
• The level of professional expertise necessarily engaged on the work.
• The time expended;
• The degree of risk and responsibility which the work entails;
• The urgency of the work and the importance of it
If your business is in a specialist industry such as oil, diamond or mineral extraction that required specialist knowledge, it would be reasonable to appoint accountants/auditors specialised in these industry of which they would have experienced staff to handle your business financial affairs. This will also give you the confidence that you could rely on their advice. Expectedly, practices with these industries knowledge will be the big 4 accountancy firms.
Today, small and medium accountancy practices have good knowledge of all industries and well diversified in order to provide good quality services and stay competitive in the market.
Normally, accountancy practices charge their accountancy services based on hours spent on your affairs. However, Some accountancy firm offer fixed fee package to help small owner managed businesses to take care of their statutory obligations such as preparations of statutory accounts, corporation tax returns, personal tax returns, forms P11D (benefits in kind) including filing to Companies House and HM Revenue and Customs according to dateline so that they could concentrate on their business operations.
Newly start up business owners always have nightmare in ensuring statutory obligations are taken care of. They do not know where to start and what would be needed especially keep accounting records in order to fulfil their obligations. We would strongly recommend you to speak to your accountant (as soon as possible) to get you started such as would keeping your accounting records in excel spreadsheets sufficient for the first year of trading or recommend use of accounting software (i.e. Sage) would be appropriate for VAT registered business.
We recommend newly start up businesses to consider the following when appointing accountants to deal with your business financial affairs:
- The reputation of the accountancy firm in the community.
- How would they charge their fees? If it is hourly basis. How much per hour. Please request quotation on services you would like them to provide and compared to others.
- Do they offer fixed fee package? If yes, what services are included in the fixed fee package? Sometime, it is more cost effective to obtain fixed package then uses hourly fee services at least you are in control of the fees payable and of certain of the services you are going to receive.
- Ensure that your accountant include their fees in the letter of engagement that you are going to sign.
- Additional services which are not part of original engagement are discussed and agreed before execution.
Should in any circumstances, a fee note to be rendered is substantially different from what has been quoted; Please request your accountants to explain the reason for the variation in writing. Should you have genuine doubts as to the propriety of the fee, and are not actuated by malice or lack of means, You may write to ACCA regarding the fee dispute, ACCA can arrange for an arbitrator to be appointed to determine the fees charged. (if ACCA is your accountants governing body).
Please feel free to email us should you have any questions or would like to share your experiences with us.
