A fair quote?

[retrocircles]

i've got a quote from an accountant to do:

- 14 months accounting (abbrev)
- 2 corporation tax forms (apparently)

to basically close down my limited company (accounts aren't 'due' just need abbrev accounts to go along with corp tax return).

accounts are in good order, in files of bank statement, with supporting receipts. each transaction & receipt is numbered. doing this took us 15+ hours to do ourselves.

quoted £750, reckoning he's knocked £600 off the bill for us doing the numbering ourselves.

would you say this is fair?

[Williams lester]

Sounds fair to me.

[Tom McClelland]

Not quite clear from the above if you've given him a trial balance/management accounts and reconciled the real bank account to the bank balance in the management accounts. If you have done those things I'd ponder if he couldn't reduce it a little. If you haven't then he's being more than generous IMHO.

[Zeno]

I don't like commenting on things like this because we do not know the full circumstances but I would say that for a limited company and two corp. tax returns £750 is not unreasonable.

You need full accounts to go with your corporation tax returns incidently. Abb. accounts are for Companies House.

[DavidT]

I'd agree with the others... it seems reasonable. Though like Zeno we can't really judge it without knowing everything.

If you do have reason to doubt it I'd suggest getting another quote to compare it with.

David Toohey
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[lesliedocherty]

that seems a good price, just make sure they dont try and shaft you by adding on extra charges at the end for supposed extra work.

[Philip Hoyle]

Have you shown him exactly what you've done? It sounds a little on the cheap side if you havn't actually done any "books". From what you've said, whilst you may have cross referenced supporting paperwork to the bank statements, there isn't actually any summaries for him, and therefore he'll have to analyse your bank statements which is quite a time consuming (and therefore costly) exercise. Are you absolutely sure that his expectations of what he expects actually matches what you have done - if not, as others have said, there is scope for additional charges as, to be honest, it sounds a little on the cheap side for no accounting records being presented.