Average cost of an accountant?

[LITSM]

I've just started my new company and have found myself one client which I am hoping will obviously increase. I've been advised to get an accountant to help with my accounting. The annoying thing is that prices for this are not laid out in a clear manner. I wanted to know if £150.00 per month is a fair rate for no more than 20 transactions?

For last month I had a single income and expenditure and spending £150.00 per month seems very high. This is why I wanted to know what the entry cost was for simple accounting.

[northernladuk]

I've just started my new company and have found myself one client which I am hoping will obviously increase. I've been advised to get an accountant to help with my accounting. The annoying thing is that prices for this are not laid out in a clear manner. I wanted to know if £150.00 per month is a fair rate for no more than 20 transactions?

For last month I had a single income and expenditure and spending £150.00 per month seems very high. This is why I wanted to know what the entry cost was for simple accounting.

There is currently a thread 8 below yours running that will give you a good idea of what everyone is paying.

https://forums.contractoruk.com/acco...ccountant.html

£150 is a little on the high side but not enough to start swapping accountants if yours is OK. I think you are doing the standard thing the newbies do and underestimate the services they offer. Firstly an accountant can charge upwards of 80 quid an hour so you are getting less than 2 hours a month from them. How much time would you give your client for £150? Not a lot I bet.

They also do A LOT more than check transactions. For a start they are always on hand to take a call from you, there is then the time they spend keeping up with legislative changes and tax levels and so on. There is then the year end work they do to prepare company accounts and in most cases personal ones. Then there is VAT and regular reviews of your account and so on.

It only takes one screw up and you could easily end up being fined much more than the cost of your accountant for a year so as Mal likes to say, a good accountant costs you nothing.

It's also not really a monthly charge. It tends to be a yearly one broken down in to payments that a true month by month service so your end of year stuff is rolled up in to.

I expect a bit further down the line you'll question the value of your accountant again as they don't provide you a proactive service and run your business for you so here is another thread where that is also covered.

https://forums.contractoruk.com/acco...-complain.html

HTH

[northernladuk]

Might be worth dropping Admin a note to change your profile name as well. Not the best idea to post under your real name.

[malvolio]

The quick answer is that a good accountant is free in that they will save you more than their fees in timely reporting and useful financial advice plus saving you the bother of keeping up with a myriad of rules and regulations and taxation boundaries. Bad ones will cost you money regardless of their fees.

[LITSM]

Thanks for the info. I took a look at that link you sent me and it does indeed look like I'm paying a lot more than the average. In fact a small company with 5 employees pays less than my company of "1 person". Once things are rolling well with the company I'll look at increasing costs but for now, I've got to make sure that they are kept to a minimum.

I'll also send the admins an e-mail regarding changing my username as you recommended.

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

Average cost of an accountant?

Be careful of judging this by price alone. As has been mentioned above accountants do a lot more than most clients realise. It’s not our time your paying for, per se, it’s our knowledge, judgement and expertise. Surely if we implement a tax planning process that saves you say £5,000 per year, you wouldn’t grudge the fee, even if the process itself only took half an hour.

There’s also the tipping point to consider. At some stage, the lower fee is inevitably going to lead to substandard service.

I think, oh, £89 plus vat per month is the perfect price point.

[oilboil]

You need to look at accountancy as a part of your business. You aren't paying them to record two transactions a month (in the OP example), you are effectively paying a retainer so they are available when you need them for queries or at document submission times (VAT, Corp Tax etc.)

Many months your accountant will do less work on your account than the implied hourly rate is worth; but a few times a year they have to do considerably more. All you are really doing is paying on an annualized scheme - similar to how you probably pay for Gas or Electricity