Finding an accountant

[fonejacker]

I would add the following:

- are there any guaranteed response times? (some big firms offer guaranteed response times which is one reason why you pay them more, if you pay joe blogs the same amount and he doesn't respond to your questions timely then it doesn't matter if he's a wizard)
- what is the client to accountant ratio? (probably will dodge this question, don't want to show they are overloaded)
- what happens when main accountant is away? who takes over?
- do they use outsourcing at all? some accountants farm donkey work offshore (probably will dodge this question)

I was with a big award winning accountancy firm previously and enjoyed the guaranteed response times as I knew when I fired off an email it would be answered same day, when I switched to another smaller firm the response times were much slower but my switch was pure for monetary reasons.

[WordIsBond]

Read this thread, it's exactly the same question:
https://forums.contractoruk.com/acco...countants.html

[Maslins]

- are there any guaranteed response times? (some big firms offer guaranteed response times which is one reason why you pay them more, if you pay joe blogs the same amount and he doesn't respond to your questions timely then it doesn't matter if he's a wizard)
- what is the client to accountant ratio? (probably will dodge this question, don't want to show they are overloaded)

Just to play devil's advocate on the above:
- we've heard a lot of people say the guaranteed response times were a farce. Many times they'd get a response "thanks for your question, we'll look into it and come back to you"...it's a response within a short time so ticks the box, but doesn't really help.
- it's not as black and white as that. Firstly the term "accountant" doesn't mean anything. Are they qualified with many years experience within the contractor sector? Or are they a junior minion who can do basic processing but not much else? The support team around the person answering the questions is massive. I think sometimes clients wrongly believe "their accountant" does everything, but typically there'll be many others behind the scenes. Of course you don't want a firm who are struggling to cope with their existing client numbers, but I don't feel that you can really compare firms based on a metric of clients:accountant.

OP - I kinda agree with Fred Bloggs. Much of what you're asking isn't relevant IMHO, but best of luck with it.