Accountancy fees too high , any software recomendations ?

[etrades]

Hello Everyone

I have been charged quite high fee from my accountant recently .
For a VAT quarter i was charged 900+vat

We are online based trading company and there were about 1000 transactions
They normally charge us based on time spent , although we are trying to make the reports they need for next quarter but havent agreed yet to any specif fee

i would like to know from experienced accountant, how many hours would they put in doing accounts for a client when they would have charged around same amount of money

Business insight

ebay
amazon
website
and few wholesale orders per month

Also we have great trouble in maintaining individual sales and purchase records

Any software recommended ?

Thankyou for any suggestion that follow this thread
kind regards

 

[Employment Law Clinic]

As you're looking for recommendations, you should post in Tenders & Recommendations where full members can spam you!



Karl Limpert

 

[David Griffiths]

As you're looking for recommendations, you should post in Tenders & Recommendations where full members can spam you!

He isn't asking for a recommendation for an accountant. He's asking for recommendations on software and information about the amount of work involved. No doubt some people will jump in with me me me, but that's not what is being asked for.

For the OP, much will depend on the records that you keep yourself, and it sounds to me as if the accountant is doign the basic bookkeeping for you. The amount of work for £900 will generally depend on where the accountant is based - London is normally more expense - and the size of the firm, where rates are usually higher for bigger firms. Those are only generalisations of course. I'd guess that the rate for that kind of work could range from £20 to £50 - thats 18- 45 hours, probably at the lower end of that time scale as a £20 rate from a practising firm would be pretty rare

I'd recommend that you have a look at some of the online accounts packages, because they are geared up to import your transactions from banking and Paypal accounts, sometimes automatically. I use Xero, but others to consider could include KashFlow, Accounts Portal, e-conomic, Liberty. Most of these are designed for non accountants and are quite intuitive and easy to pick up with some guidance.

Most of them also link in with outside programs for things like CRM and stock control, although some have them built in, sometimes at extra cost. Brightpearl has CRM and stock control but costs significantly more and charges per user. Most of the others allow unlimited users so you can access the software from anywhere

I've looked at most of those and settled for Xero. Even as an accountant it saves me, and the rest of the team, a good couple of hours each month.

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

Why not ask your accountant how you could save fees - most good accountants will gladly discuss this with you.

The majority of our online traders use Accounts Portal which works very well but as David mentions you have lots of choice and I'd certainly try a few. Again why not ask your accountant if they work with any particular packages and if they can get any discount for you, many can.

 

[faradaykeynes]

Normally all good e-commerce platforms have option to export sales and stock management, ebay, amazon can generate sales reports too. Quite a lot e-commerce platform can be integrated with accountancy packages like quick book, sage etc.

Find out with your web developer which accountancy software can be integrated.

 

[adeelg]

Actually accountants charges vary from area to area and business to business. Mostly, all accountant decide about relevant fees to their services themselves.
Are you considering to change accountants?

For sales records, try invoicera its good sales, invoicing solution at least.

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

Have a read of this ...

http://www.cheapaccounting.co.uk/blog/index.php/easy-guide-to-accounting-for-paypal-and-amazon/

I do find that there is a tendency to 'over account' for paypal etc.

Getting something like Kashflow that is integrated with an accountant who is used to working with e traders can help.


Always impossible to draw a comparison to your circs as no information given on volumes etc and what you do / what you have asked your accountant to do.

 

[MyAccountantOnline]

For sales records, try invoicera its good sales, invoicing solution at least.

That's not one I've ever heard of - is it something you use?

Would that actually help the OP bearing in the requirements?

 

[etrades]

He isn't asking for a recommendation for an accountant. He's asking for recommendations on software and information about the amount of work involved. No doubt some people will jump in with me me me, but that's not what is being asked for.

For the OP, much will depend on the records that you keep yourself, and it sounds to me as if the accountant is doign the basic bookkeeping for you. The amount of work for £900 will generally depend on where the accountant is based - London is normally more expense - and the size of the firm, where rates are usually higher for bigger firms. Those are only generalisations of course. I'd guess that the rate for that kind of work could range from £20 to £50 - thats 18- 45 hours, probably at the lower end of that time scale as a £20 rate from a practising firm would be pretty rare

I'd recommend that you have a look at some of the online accounts packages, because they are geared up to import your transactions from banking and Paypal accounts, sometimes automatically. I use Xero, but others to consider could include KashFlow, Accounts Portal, e-conomic, Liberty. Most of these are designed for non accountants and are quite intuitive and easy to pick up with some guidance.

Most of them also link in with outside programs for things like CRM and stock control, although some have them built in, sometimes at extra cost. Brightpearl has CRM and stock control but costs significantly more and charges per user. Most of the others allow unlimited users so you can access the software from anywhere

I've looked at most of those and settled for Xero. Even as an accountant it saves me, and the rest of the team, a good couple of hours each month.

Thanks a lot David, as usual some really good points from you.

well yes we are based in london, The reason they said they charged us more is bcoz they list each and every transaction and purchases against them on an excel sheet which took time

We were hoping thats not needed as long as sales figures are up to date and purchase invoice match the amount mentioned for VAT purposes

The other queries involved are

1.We ship by royalmail and they dont provide VAT receipt, so do we pay VAT on postage charges or not ?

2.We are VAT registered on Std scheme, now 10% of our purchases are used goods/refurbished and we receive marginal VAT invoice for them
in such cases do we just count that as an normal VAT invoice and still pay VAT on the difference between sales and purchase price ?
or Do we have to register for marginal scheme additionally

3.Thirdly i Wanted to know if i did all excel work and inputed data and handed final figures to an Accountant , what sort of fees should we be looking at

Once again Thankyou for your input,Time & experience you ll share on this Forum


Kind Regards

 

[etrades]

Have a read of this ...

http://www.cheapaccounting.co.uk/blog/index.php/easy-guide-to-accounting-for-paypal-and-amazon/

I do find that there is a tendency to 'over account' for paypal etc.

Getting something like Kashflow that is integrated with an accountant who is used to working with e traders can help.


Always impossible to draw a comparison to your circs as no information given on volumes etc and what you do / what you have asked your accountant to do.

Thankyou this will really help us a lot !!

 

[etrades]

We want to know if sage is right way ahead, we currently have about 20 transactions however in busy period and going forward we are expecting to have about 100 sales per day

we have heard and looked at TRADEBOX not sure if thats the right option for us , however as far as accounts is concerned is SAGE necessary or just doing it by forming an excel sheet and handing on to Accountant would suffice

Thankyou

 

[Jayser100]

It's not a good idea to have your bookkeeping done off site in my opinion. The problem is that you soon lose the plot of where you are with things - some commercial bookkeepers / accountants will provide a monthly report, but it's so much better to be able to click a couple of buttons on one of your office machines and get the financial information, profit and loss, graphs etc. when you need it and not when the next meeting with your bookkeeper comes around.

I have a bookkeeper who comes in three times a month to do the books here, and an accountant who I also pay on a quarterly basis. The total cost is high - the whole lot comes to about £1,300 a quarter, however we make well over 1,000 invoices during that period. because we sell to trade and end-users worldwide, through eBay, 4 x Amazon sites and our own company site, the bookkeeping is in fact fairly complicated.

The cheaper option is to do it yourself, but I just don't have the time.

If the accountant you use is effecting all your bookkeeping for that amount, I would actually say it is very competitive. You should only budget to pay a lot less for bookkeeping / accounting if you can spare the time needed to do it yourself, and you have the necessary skills. If, like me, you find there aren't enough hours in the day to do the books on top of everything else then it would be better to accept this is the price you pay for having the time to run your company. professional bookkeeping and accounting are a necessary expense for all but very small companies who only make, perhaps, 100 or less invoices a month, or those lucky enough to have someone with the time and skill to do it well.

 

[David Griffiths]

The other queries involved are

1.We ship by royalmail and they dont provide VAT receipt, so do we pay VAT on postage charges or not ?

No there is no VAT on postage charged by Royal Mail (although there might be VAT on services provided by parcel force.) Not that just because Royal Mail don't charge you VAT, this doesn'nt mean that postage that you charge to your customers is also exempt. The general rule is that it is charged at the same rate as the goods, so normally standard rate.

2.We are VAT registered on Std scheme, now 10% of our purchases are used goods/refurbished and we receive marginal VAT invoice for them
in such cases do we just count that as an normal VAT invoice and still pay VAT on the difference between sales and purchase price ?
or Do we have to register for marginal scheme additionally

Not sure what's going on here. If you are provided with goods where the seller has used a margin scheme, they shouldn't provide you with a VAT invoice at all, so there's nothing that you can recover. You simply operate the margin scheme yourself.

If they are providing a VAT invoice, then it suggests that they aren't using a margin scheme, and you claim VAT in the normal way. If it does say a margin scheme, you need to sort it out as HMRC would deny relief for input tax in that case.

3.Thirdly i Wanted to know if i did all excel work and inputed data and handed final figures to an Accountant , what sort of fees should we be looking at

It should be much less, but I really think that you need to look further than Excel. Excel is OK but extremely limited in usefulness because it isn't "joined up". It might make dealing with VAT simpler, but it won't go on to produce meaningful accounts figures, so your accountant would have to reconcile the bank and tie everything up. It is also far far too easy to introduce errors into Excel sheets

A simple accounts program will do so much more, with relatively little extra work. You've referred to Sage in a later post, but that's not the best for non accountants. I stand by the suggestion to try Xero or Kashflow for example which you should find much easier to use and which should cut your costs significantly. You would do the VAT yourself, and the year end accounts could well cost less than £1800 that you'd pay for only two quarters at the moment. In fact, you might find that the accounts will be charged over and above the £900 per quarter

 

[Jayser100]

People get very confused by the postage VAT thing but it is actually quite simple. if you charge for 'postage and packing', you are supplying a service to the customer and that is VAT chargeable. YOU buy the postage from the Royal Mail, not the customer, and so you don't have to pay VAT on what it costs. you are not selling postage to the customer, however - you are selling them a VAT rated service - I hope that makes sense.

 

[E Storey]

I think Jayser100 makes some really good points.

It does sound like your accountant is also doing the bookkeeping, and they would naturally be more expensive than a bookkeeper. also agree that many clients, especially ones with complex transactions, or those that are disorganised really do benefit from having a bookkeeper doing the day to day stuff on site.

For £900 per quarter, (1000 transaction per quarter = 83 transactions a week) you could get perhaps get an admin/finance person in 2 days a week, AND purchase an accounts package. I would ask for someone with small business experience, probably using sage, and i would expect them to do data entry, filing, bank recs, invoce credit control, general office admin, submit VAT returns and do a small payroll, with the accountants doing the year end stuff and looking over the monthly or quarterly reports.

It's not a good idea to have your bookkeeping done off site in my opinion. The problem is that you soon lose the plot of where you are with things - some commercial bookkeepers / accountants will provide a monthly report, but it's so much better to be able to click a couple of buttons on one of your office machines and get the financial information, profit and loss, graphs etc. when you need it and not when the next meeting with your bookkeeper comes around.

I have a bookkeeper who comes in three times a month to do the books here, and an accountant who I also pay on a quarterly basis. The total cost is high - the whole lot comes to about £1,300 a quarter, however we make well over 1,000 invoices during that period. because we sell to trade and end-users worldwide, through eBay, 4 x Amazon sites and our own company site, the bookkeeping is in fact fairly complicated.

The cheaper option is to do it yourself, but I just don't have the time.

If the accountant you use is effecting all your bookkeeping for that amount, I would actually say it is very competitive. You should only budget to pay a lot less for bookkeeping / accounting if you can spare the time needed to do it yourself, and you have the necessary skills. If, like me, you find there aren't enough hours in the day to do the books on top of everything else then it would be better to accept this is the price you pay for having the time to run your company. professional bookkeeping and accounting are a necessary expense for all but very small companies who only make, perhaps, 100 or less invoices a month, or those lucky enough to have someone with the time and skill to do it well.

 

[0-First]

Hi,

There is also Xero - Its an online (web based) accounting system - and you use it on a subscription basis. You can also include a paypal link on customer invoices.

We specialise in accounting software (I'm an accountant but not in public practice and don't handle the accounting or tax side).

As other members have pointed out - the key thing with a system such as Xero is you'll process (code) all your payments and receipts up front.

Then your accountant (who ever that will be) can access the same system as you. And do whatever they need to do to process your accounts.

All you do is grant them access (this is a standard feature of Xero)

More than happy to chat - I have a free set up on offer to full members - are you a full member?

Hopefully I have caught you in time.

Regards
Simon

 

[eno]

that is nothing, I am looking at moving accountants because they charged me that for 1 month then charged us 1200 for 3 months when they said the real cost should have been almost five thousand pounds but they were doing us a favour. I am still in shock!! and we are not based in London!

 

[ILilja]

I am not an accountant, but I believe your questions regarding accountant fees have already been answered

With regards to accounting software, I agree with David that an easy-to-use system which your accountant could access should get you going. Am I reading something into your question, or are you considering skipping your accountant to do the bookkeeping yourself? If you decide to keep your accountant despite the fees, they probably have recommendations on software as well.

I work at E-conomic and I'm therefore naturally biased, but if you are trialling online accounting systems, I would be happy if you gave E-conomic a shot too. I think you'll find it easy to use, but let me know if I can help you out or provide more info.

 

[Alison Jones]

I would advise if you not got the time get an admin/bookkeeper in to do the day to day bookkeeping, sounds like you paying an accountant more then you need to. If you have time to do the bookkeeping yourself get software that you feel comfortable with yourself, if you feel comfortable with sage but if you never used it before you might be overcomplicating it and could do more simpler spreadsheets. I used to be a bookkeeper and went to clients who thought they were doing their bookkeeping right on sage but turned out they had only been doing quater of the job on it missed lots of things out so nothing was reconciling. I was hired to sort out all the messes they made going back a few years.

 

[jon.jenkins@smartaccounta]

I concur with the comments above and would definitely take a look at Xero and KashFlow as these could dramatically reduce the amount of manual 'work' required by an accountant or bookkeeper and keep your costs down whilst giving you better more up to date information.

This way you will always have access to your accounting information.

 

[Tradebox]

we have heard and looked at TRADEBOX not sure if thats the right option for us , however as far as accounts is concerned is SAGE necessary or just doing it by forming an excel sheet and handing on to Accountant would suffice

Hi OP, I just wanted to clarify how Tradebox works with Sage, so you have the full picture. We have over 1,000 UK online retailers that use Tradebox with Sage Accounts, so have quite a bit of experience of the customer's accounting and logistical needs.

Tradebox works with both Sage Instant and Sage 50. Within this range there are 5 Sage Accountancy products which increase with functionality and price as you move up the line. Sage Instant is the cheaper and least complicated. Yes there is a learning curve to understand Sage, however the benefits of having instant access to up to date financial reports are substantial.

Tradebox's job is to connect to your online platforms (eBay, Amazon, Play, websites) download your completed sales and create customers and invoices in Sage Accounts. Tradebox does this in a fraction of the time it would take to do manually. So the 100 sales per day you mentioned would probably take a full day to enter into Sage, assuming you do individual customers and invoices and not simply summary entries. This would take Tradebox about 4 minutes. You can access a number of videos of Tradebox and Sage via our website.

In terms of invoices, Tradebox creates an individual invoice in Sage for every unique order downloaded. So if a customer purchases 3 items and then checks out, Tradebox will rise an individual invoice in Sage Accounts in the name of the buyer, with both their billing and shipping address, each item purchased on a separate line, the VAT calculated against each item (so it will take into account VAT and Non VAT goods), the customer order number, the shipping charged. Tradebox will also take into account where the order is being shipped to in the world for VAT calculation purposes. All invoices created by Tradebox in Sage are unposted. This means that they can be edited if required. Once you select and post the invoices in Sage (2 clicks) then all of the financial data is reported to the relevant nominal codes. At this point, the sales receipt (which registers the actual payment of the invoice) can be automatically be paid into a Sage bank account. Different payment methods can be allocated to different Sage banks in Tradebox. So if you accept 3 payment methods on your website and the 100 orders are paid for using a selection of all of them then sales receipts can be registered in 3 separate banks in Sage automatically when the invoice is posted.

This is a lot to consider and we are happy to talk you through this if you are considering Sage to account for your online sales. The overall picture is that accounting for your online sales internally using an accounts software package (whichever one you go for) will be significantly cheaper and more beneficial to your business than outsourcing this function.

 

[business 4 accountant]

Dear Sir,

I am an accountant and I know very well what you mean. A lot of accountants are sadly charging something what isn't part of their job. But you pay for that. An accountant like that is for creating a Financial report or an Audit report.

Worst of all is that most aren't specialist at all. Did you know as Amazon reseller in Europe you are overcharged by Amazon due to the zero rate construction. And did you also know you can avoid that.

VAT returns should cost you only £50,00 a month if you have everything on an excel sheet or in sage (sage instant cost around £125,00).

But don't do VAT returns yourself, because it is not so simple as it looks, unless you have some knowledge about it. But don't hire expensive accountants either. Your accountant is really extreem. He should have been stripped, because I think that is just a scam. But that is the grab culture of UK. Getting charged extreme for minimum service.

Yours truly,

Msc A Pijlman
Business 4 Accountant

 

[elaine@cheapaccounting]

Worst of all is that most aren't specialist at all.


Bit of a generalisation!


VAT returns should cost you only £50,00 a month if you have everything on an excel sheet or in sage (sage instant cost around £125,00).

We use decimals and not commas in the UK - £125.00 for a vat return is very expensive IMO if done via a system

But don't do VAT returns yourself, because it is not so simple as it looks, unless you have some knowledge about it. But don't hire expensive accountants either. Your accountant is really extreem. He should have been stripped, because I think that is just a scam. But that is the grab culture of UK. Getting charged extreme for minimum service.

Good gracious!

 

[business 4 accountant]

Indeed i should be more precisely. What i mean is that a chartered accountant isnt a specialist unless he done tax accountancy. And althought he can submi a standard vat form without much problem. His knowledge isnt based on his specialism. So he overcharged heavily.

You are right that uk has different places for the dots
. Thr price is for the software that is what sage cost roughly. The charge for the accountant is normally around 150 pound. That is by the way not what i charge. I am cheaper than that , but that is what average an accountant is charging. Not 900 pound.

And yes you can do it yourself. But if you have no knowledge about it then i would nt recommend to do so. You apparently would?
I am teaching students in accountancy and they are getting it wrong. So a non professional will easily make mistakes. And that can cause serious problems.

And in the case with amazon most companies actually are processing it completely wrong
But you know how to do that. Good for you. So you manage to put the disbursements correctly in place. Really standard thing to do.

 

[Linden Lewis]

I had a look around for a long time, and have found FreeAgent to be the simplest, cheapest and most helpful. Their support is great!

You can 10% off, by clicking on my referral link below:

http://www.freeagent.com/?referrer=424nrw3x

 

[dimitri1]

hi
We do the work and work with the directors for free for a year - no hidden costs at all - and after that if the client is happy with the service we offer completely fixed fees, everything above board.

 

[Strontium Dog]

hi
We do the work and work with the directors for free for a year - no hidden costs at all - and after that if the client is happy with the service we offer completely fixed fees, everything above board.

Blimey - I've heard of taking a long term view but that goes above and beyond. How do you make any money?

 

[FWDiane]

agree that Freeagent is a really simple system that lets you enter all bookkeeping details yourself, then your 'Freeagent friendly accountant' need not charge you for the bookkeeping.
It has added benefits re invoicing, etc too.
We are accountants with lots of clients using Freeagent happily throughout the year and we deal with the end of year accounts production, CTax etc.
You can try it for free to see if it is going to suit your needs.

 

[box4blox]

If you are looking for user-friendly, don't look past the cloud accounting programme called Xero. Can't put the link here yet, but no doubt you can work it out. Let's put it this way if I can use it, anybody can. It also has to be good as it has got some real big hitting investors in behind it, including the founder of MYOB!

 

[hollyc2012]

Hi, I use Quickbooks for my accounts and i do everything myself and find it very easy.
As long as you make sure you put in all of your outgoings and income the software is all set up to do the rest for you. So you can do you VAT return at the push of a button etc.... brilliant!
Highly recommended.

 

[FoxAccountancyServices]

Hi there

I've written a short article on simple bookkeeping. It's on Squidoo and its called everything-for-the-small-business. If you have a scan of it, and want to know how to adapt anything, for VAT or the like, let me know and I'll talk you through it.