Do I need the accountant for the whole year?

[archer100]

Hello, Merry Christmas and Happy New year to everyone!

I work as contractor via my own LTD. I started on July and in October I hired a freelancer accountant through Upwork. We agreed for a monthly fee of $115. I had a couple of questions about the company's account life cycle and my business and transactions best practices and he helped me with this. Also he asked me to add all the invoices and bank statements to a Google Driver and gain him access.
I am happy with his services and I feel good to have someone to go if I have any questions. He will also be a great help at my company's year end and all the account work at that moment.
However I have some concern if this cost is logical and normal given that he will be doing nothing for all the months from Jan to Sep. My transactions are pretty simple, I get a payment monthly to my business account, I withdraw some money and spend some other to business expenses. I have not VAT. It looks like this will be the case for all next months. My company's year end is 31 Oct 2023. My question is does he deserve this $115 monthly for all these months Jan-Sep? Is this something usual and the common practice for the LTDs and the contractors? Will the work that he will put at the year end excuse this yearly $1310 cost? Or it would be better to let him go and hire him or some other one only for the year end Accounting work? I guess I can find guys that will do this for let's say $300

Long story short: I hired a freelancer accountant through upwork for $115 monthly. he helped me with some questions only for the first month and now I pay him for doing nothing, until my company's year end which is in 10 months from now. Should I keep paying him or let him go and hire him or someone else only for the company's year end Tax work?

Thanks

[Lance]

Hello, Merry Christmas and Happy New year to everyone!

I work as contractor via my own LTD. I started on July and in October I hired a freelancer accountant through Upwork. We agreed for a monthly fee of $115. I had a couple of questions about the company's account life cycle and my business and transactions best practices and he helped me with this. Also he asked me to add all the invoices and bank statements to a Google Driver and gain him access.
I am happy with his services and I feel good to have someone to go if I have any questions. He will also be a great help at my company's year end and all the account work at that moment.
However I have some concern if this cost is logical and normal given that he will be doing nothing for all the months from Jan to Sep. My transactions are pretty simple, I get a payment monthly to my business account, I withdraw some money and spend some other to business expenses. I have not VAT. It looks like this will be the case for all next months. My company's year end is 31 Oct 2023. My question is does he deserve this $115 monthly for all these months Jan-Sep? Is this something usual and the common practice for the LTDs and the contractors? Will the work that he will put at the year end excuse this yearly $1310 cost? Or it would be better to let him go and hire him or some other one only for the year end Accounting work? I guess I can find guys that will do this for let's say $300

Long story short: I hired a freelancer accountant through upwork for $115 monthly. he helped me with some questions only for the first month and now I pay him for doing nothing, until my company's year end which is in 10 months from now. Should I keep paying him or let him go and hire him or someone else only for the company's year end Tax work?

Thanks

It's not £115 a month. It's £1380 a year. The work comes in chunks, but they are doing you a favour by spreading the payments out.
That's just under 2 hours of your work per month if you're a half decent contractor. Stop dicking around, read the accountant recommendations thread and choose one.
I use Gorilla (happy to share a referral code if you want to PM me), and am very happy with the service.

[malvolio]

It helps to understand what's happening. 90% of your accountant's work is doing the year end. You just pay for it over the year. Obviously if you need advice or other help during the year, you should get it for "free".

Just so you know, there are cases in the system now where paying for a service from the accountant is being treated (wrongly, of course!) by HMRC as the accountant operating your business for you, under the Managed Services legislation, which is illegal. We all think that is a total non-starter for HMRC, but don't confuse what you (and most of us) are paying over the year with buying an ongoing service from an accountancy.

[archer100]

I use Gorilla (happy to share a referral code if you want to PM me), and am very happy with the service.

Gorilla was the last firm that I contact before shifting to freelancers. They said that they don't have experience with overseas contractors and suggested to search for someone with more experience.
By the way what is their annual charge for an LTD?

[Lance]

Gorilla was the last firm that I contact before shifting to freelancers. They said that they don't have experience with overseas contractors and suggested to search for someone with more experience.
By the way what is their annual charge for an LTD?

and you left out this vital piece of information why exactly?????
You can still use a UK accountancy firm to do the company accounts, in fact I would suggest that you should. They just won't be able to advise you on tax efficiency or personal taxation.

Engage a local accountant in your local region for tax advise.

[archer100]

and you left out this vital piece of information why exactly?????
You can still use a UK accountancy firm to do the company accounts, in fact I would suggest that you should. They just won't be able to advise you on tax efficiency or personal taxation.

Engage a local accountant in your local region for tax advise.

I have a local accountant in my tax residency country. This is why I am considering the UK accountant. Paying both a uk accountant $115 per month plus my local accountant, this makes a significant portion of my income. I would be happy to pay a UK accountant to do all the paper work at the year end (account submission to CH and HMRC, tax returns, etc) but I consider the $1380 yearly pretty much, as the rest year he does nothing. It would be different if I had VAT, employees, loans, etc But I actually I have nothing than 1 deposit and some charges in my LTD bank account. I don't want to sound stingy, neither I am, I just want to pay some fair amount for any service I get.

[archer100]

You can still use a UK accountancy firm to do the company accounts, in fact I would suggest that you should. They just won't be able to advise you on tax efficiency or personal taxation.

Would you suggest an accountancy firm compared with an upwork freelancer? I am still on a dilemma. I am very happy with every freelancer I have worked with on Upwork and I do a good research before hiring them. For UK accountancy firms, I did a lot of research, spoke with some of them, read reviews, etc I decided to go with Gorilla but with no result. I even spoke with a "shady" firm that promised me an very high percentage of take home, which made me scared. I say all this to show that I have already done some research of the accountancy market on the UK. Also, I found many firms at the range of 600GBP per year, which is much lower than the $1380 I am currently paying, so I am wondering if a firm of 600-700 would be a better option against a freelancer of $1380, especially if their service is better.

[ladymuck]

You need to be clear about what services you actually need - how much can you do yourself and how much do you need an accountant to do for you. There is no right or wrong answer to that one, it's personal to you. Make sure you're not being asked to pay for services you don't need.

If you need something extra, like tax advice because you're resident overseas then you either need to find a UK accountancy that has personal taxation experts for your country of residence or engage two firms - UK based and local. I suspect, but cannot prove, that a UK company accountancy with overseas personal tax services will not work out much cheaper.

Whether you pay monthly or annually for an accountant (I pay mine annually) is down to the arrangement you have with whoever you engage and what it is you're asking them to do for you. As mentioned above, your monthly payments are just the annual fee spread out over 12 months.

[Fred Bloggs]

I wonder if the OP's country of residence also requires the UK Ltd Co to file accounts there? Since if the OP is director of the UK company then the UK Ltd Co might also be defacto resident in OP's jurisdiction as the Ltd Co seat of control is there.

As with many of these posts, I think an awful lot of importaht and relevant detail is missing. I doubt it's really possible for UK a based contractor lay community to give solid advice. No matter how well meaning it might be.

There's an entire HMRC taxation manual relating to this. OP might care to look it up. From what I can see here, the chances of the OP being compliant both in the UK and another jurisdiction is about zero.