Accountant recommendation threads inc local requests

[Drei]

Anyone know anything about these guys?

Contractors APS

CONTRACTORS APS LTD - Overview (free company information from Companies House)


They are very keen to get people onboard, offering pretty much the full packaged at half the cost of most other providers, they even keen to do a 1 year £60 trial (so they say). Yes, if it is too good to be true, 99% of the time ALWAYS is.

[mitchell888]

Newbie - First post here. I'm sacking in my notice at my Permy job and looking to set up a LTD company. Going with Gorilla based on this thread and the fact they offer FreeAgent.

[Alchemy Accountancy]

Hi I'm a new here,
I was a limited company in Jan 2017 until July 2017, received an email from HMRC to submit my self assessment, Is Gorilla the best to go with?

Thanks in advance.

There are plenty of accountants that contribute to this forum that could help you with this...

[sparkster35]

Which accountant firm?

Hi I'm a new here,
I was a limited company in Jan 2017 until July 2017, received an email from HMRC to submit my self assessment, Is Gorilla the best to go with?

Thanks in advance.

[Nut]

I am a Crunch customer for 7 or so years now and I can give you an honest review of them.

The price is good, if you pay annually it works out at 62.55 per month + VAT and that package has everything you need in it really.

Their software is probably their strongest point, and also one of the most annoying. It works well, but using it on a mobile device is a insanity inducing experience. It is not mobile optimised at all. They have made some strides on this in recent months on certain pages but it is not a cohesive experience.

They tell you to use the mobile apps to alleviate this, but even so this is not all that useful. Take for example the process of logging a car park expense. You use the mobile app to log the car park expense, but the default vat for this expense is 'exempt' and cannot be changed in app. So you log the expense with exempt vat from the app. You then have to then log in to the mobile site and try and navigate the awfully optimised mobile site or remember to do it later from desktop to log in and change from exempt to standard vat, if you have been charged it by ringo or whatever. Minor complaint really just a bit annoying when you do it on a daily basis, sort of like walking with a small stone in your shoe, just annoys you after a long period.

Other things are fairly straight forward and work as you'd expect them to, invoicing etc is all really straight forward.

Where it starts to fall down really is the service really seems to depend on who your account manager and accountants are.

The way it works is you do NOT have a direct line to an accountant. Your queries are fielded by your account manager who, depending on who you have, may or may not know the answer to your question. Their SLA seems to depend on first response from them and not when you actually get to an acountant.

For many years I was really happy with the service there but it was pretty much due to me having a fantastic account manager. She was brilliant, responded fast, if the couldn't answer then I could rely on her to push the accountants for a timely response. On the basis of her service I recommended a number of people to sign up there.

It all changed when for some reason I was bumped off her team and put in with a new team which seems really inexperienced. The service is slow, I don't really get on with the new account manager, and the accountants response is now super slow.

Ultimately, I can TLDR this by saying if you don't need any help and don't need to contact them, they are a cheap accountants and the software is functional (mostly) and you can get done what you need. The service you get from the team depends to a huge extent what 'pod' you are assigned to (meaning who your account manager and accountants are).

As my service has gone from really good to really lacklustre, i'm looking to change, and i'm looking at Gorilla. Northernlad - split a referral?

[Waldorf]

I would NOT recommend Danbro
Their IT cock up earlier in the year was a joke

Not sure what that was but Danbro Ltd (the brolly) owed HMRC £3.5 million due to errors of treatment of client expenses etc. Despite having assets within the group, the company went into administration after changing its name to Tuiga Limited and ‘selling’ its assets to a new company called Danbro Workplace Solutions Ltd.

Make up your own mind but the full details are filed at Companies House.

[Ashleigh]

Crunch are great!

Add crunch to the list although that's more for the software than their advice which I don't personally use. Others however do and seem to like them.

Crunch are great! I actually used to worked an Accountant at Crunch and majority of their clients are in fact IT Contractors. It's their area of expertise.

I'm now onto pastures new and work at an Accounting firm named 'Numerical Insights Ltd' based in Hastings. We're fairly new to the accounting/taxation game and pride ourselves on being a digital forward thinking practice attempting to emulate Crunch but replacing their software with Xero!

[Gurps]

Thanks!

Just wanted to say a big thank you! I have now proceeded with signing up with Gorilla accounting following studying the vast information here and being provided with invaluable advice. Have chosen Metro Bank as recommended by Gorilla, they seem good. Hopefully I have made the right choices

[Anonimouse]

I would NOT recommend Danbro
Their IT cock up earlier in the year was a joke

[Gurps]

I'm with them and I would agree. They'll help you with the setup and the basics and will help you get used to Freeagent which is a great tool.

Remember though, it's your business to run. You need to understand your finances as you ultimately sign them off. Ask as many questions of your accountant until you understand.

I'll split the referral. Mention Nluk and that you want to split. They'll know.

Good luck.

Hi,
Many thanks for your swift reply and for the advice. I will contact them tomorrow to get the ball rolling and provide your name given so that we can split the referral. I have so many questions and will ensure I am clued up before fully committing but this forum has already helped with providing me with the fundamental info.

Thanks again.