SJD Parties like it's 1999

[davetza]

I'm fairly happy with the service I've received from SJD but the amount they charge recently went up and I'm not sure I'm seeing any extra value from them. One of the things that is starting to irritate me is having to copy and paste transactions from my internet banking into their spreadsheet which feels very last decade.

I know Mr SJD frequents these boards and I was wondering if he or anyone else knows if they are going to be introducing a more intelligent way of doing this such as other accountants are doing where you can upload a CSV of your transactions into a portal and then tag your transactions.

If not can anyone recommend a decent accountant that has a service like this.

[TheFaQQer]

InTouch does a CSV upload of bank account details.

I still manually enter mine into a spreadsheet as well, as I like to break my expense categories down into a finer grain than their portal allows.

[malvolio]

I'm fairly happy with the service I've received from SJD but the amount they charge recently went up and I'm not sure I'm seeing any extra value from them. One of the things that is starting to irritate me is having to copy and paste transactions from my internet banking into their spreadsheet which feels very last decade.

I know Mr SJD frequents these boards and I was wondering if he or anyone else knows if they are going to be introducing a more intelligent way of doing this such as other accountants are doing where you can upload a CSV of your transactions into a portal and then tag your transactions.

If not can anyone recommend a decent accountant that has a service like this.

Yeah, it's a real bugger having to spend 15 minutes a month managing your company's affairs, isn't it?

[The Spartan]

It's all about simplicity and getting the right mix of technology to make it happen, asking for a csv upload facility is hardly asking for the cutting edge.

[malvolio]

It's all about simplicity and getting the right mix of technology to make it happen, asking for a csv upload facility is hardly asking for the cutting edge.

No it's not, but (a) it won't save you very much in terms of effort, you'd still have to work through all transactions and apply them to the COA and (b) SJD would have to create the portal, test it, release it and spend a year re-educating their clients to use it properly. What they have works, so why change it? And how much extra would you pay to have it (I'm guessing not very much... )

Call me a Neo-Luddite (I am in Service Management. after all!) and leading edge is good, obviously, but only if it's worth doing.

[TheFaQQer]

InTouch does a CSV upload of bank account details.

I still manually enter mine into a spreadsheet as well, as I like to break my expense categories down into a finer grain than their portal allows.

Meant to say - I actually prefer entering my expenses into the spreadsheet than into a portal. Maybe I'll get used to the portal over time, but I liked using the spreadsheet I had with my last accountant.

[The Spartan]

We all like to see change when costs go up its in our nature especially when we're paying for a service, when I was with Parasol I found their online portal to be really easy to use shame their service was so poor.

Now I'm with ContractorUmbrella I can clearly see how service is a lot more important, they turnaround any query I have in a couple of hours instead of days when I was using Parasol.

[Notascooby]

Slightly different but in the same vein, when I worked for Logicack you could ipmort the company credit card automatically into the expenses application which then auto-categorised the line items e.g. hotels, hookers, pay-per-view-p0rn etc.

Did save a lot of time.

But I do find that a lot of my line items are off company account, e.g. mileage and the rest are really copy and paste e.g. accountancy fees and PI costs.

Suppose I'm not working away and spending much but I find it takes 10 minutes tops - yet to get my company account balance and spreadsheet balance to match though

[davetza]

No it's not, but (a) it won't save you very much in terms of effort, you'd still have to work through all transactions and apply them to the COA and (b) SJD would have to create the portal, test it, release it and spend a year re-educating their clients to use it properly. What they have works, so why change it? And how much extra would you pay to have it (I'm guessing not very much... )

Call me a Neo-Luddite (I am in Service Management. after all!) and leading edge is good, obviously, but only if it's worth doing.

I think you are missing the point here. As a customer I don't care how much effort it takes or how much it costs. SJD are one of the more costlier contractor accountants out there and I'm beginning to question where the value FOR ME is in their recent price hike. I'm currently studying as well as working at the moment so anything that would save me time would be welcomed and the other benefit of a CSV upload would mean less opportunities to make errors in my cutting and pasting.

[xing]

Get one that supports freeagent or xero.

I'm fairly happy with the service I've received from SJD but the amount they charge recently went up and I'm not sure I'm seeing any extra value from them. One of the things that is starting to irritate me is having to copy and paste transactions from my internet banking into their spreadsheet which feels very last decade.

I know Mr SJD frequents these boards and I was wondering if he or anyone else knows if they are going to be introducing a more intelligent way of doing this such as other accountants are doing where you can upload a CSV of your transactions into a portal and then tag your transactions.

If not can anyone recommend a decent accountant that has a service like this.