Changing Accountants and charges levied for taking on your accounts

[northernladuk]

Which part of being charged £hundreds when they don't mention it on their website is common sense to you exactly? Any decent accountant would at least warn the new customer rather than start the switchover and issue an impersonal invoice. That's just bad service.

Read the chain, it was in relation to him waiting till year end.

[Rivendell]

Read the chain, it was in relation to him waiting till year end.

and your point is oh great one?

[Greg@CapitalCity]

Thats weird. SJD, Cloud 9 Accountancy, and K&B Accountancy all use the exact same wording as you quoted above. I wonder who copied who </sarcastic observation >

[Waldorf]

Thats weird. SJD, Cloud 9 Accountancy, and K&B Accountancy all use the exact same wording as you quoted above. I wonder who copied who </sarcastic observation >

Well SJD charge £110 - so I guess he is changing to them? Do SJD charge catch up fees?

Personally I don't have an issue with so called catch up fees, if I employed a builder to build a brick wall and I sacked him before it was finished because it was a crap job, surely I wouldn't expect my new builder to charge less because I had already paid my old builder. The new builder still has to start again and re-build the wall!

[psychocandy]

I can the OPs point though. New accountant should have made it clear there would be catch-up fees I think.

I switched to NW about 3 months into my first year and they didnt charge me any extra though which was good of them.

[JamJarST]

Well SJD charge £110 - so I guess he is changing to them? Do SJD charge catch up fees?

Personally I don't have an issue with so called catch up fees, if I employed a builder to build a brick wall and I sacked him before it was finished because it was a crap job, surely I wouldn't expect my new builder to charge less because I had already paid my old builder. The new builder still has to start again and re-build the wall!

Bad analogy though as he didn't change accountants cos they did a bad job, they did the 5 months work, he expected the new accountant to pick up where they left off. So to use your analogy lets say the builder built a good wall but only 3 feet tall and you paid another builder to raise it to 5 feet, you would pay for the original work again???

[northernladuk]

Bad analogy though as he didn't change accountants cos they did a bad job, they did the 5 months work, he expected the new accountant to pick up where they left off. So to use your analogy lets say the builder built a good wall but only 3 feet tall and you paid another builder to raise it to 5 feet, you would pay for the original work again???

You say it is a bad analogy and then further build on that analogy.. see what I did there.. build on it.. oh well...

I seem to remember when I changed to SJD there was some extra cost when I changed mid year but this was due to my last accountant just diappearing so expected them to have to do some extra work to catch up where he had left of as it was a bit of a mess. This was explained to me and made sense bearing in mind my situation so surprised this wasn't mentioned to the OP.

[JamJarST]

You say it is a bad analogy and then further build on that analogy.. see what I did there.. build on it.. oh well...

Lol yeah, I meant the analogy of crap work being fixed was bad.

[Clare@InTouch]

If a previous accountant does 6 months work that consists of reviewing data but not actually preparing the tax return, accounts, payroll year end etc then the work for a new accountant isn't that much less - this is why they charge the catch up fee. It's not that the new accountant's workload is halved just because you've had a different accountant for 6 months, so the wall analogy is misleading. It's more like rebuilding nigh on from scratch.

Many firms will waive any catchup fee as a gesture of goodwill, provided you join within a reasonable time before your year end. You just need to check before you sign up.

[d000hg]

Read the chain, it was in relation to him waiting till year end.

So what? I know many accountants work on the basis of charging for a whole year, and you know it, and many/most contractors do. But that's acquired knowledge, which is the opposite of common sense.