SJD accountants

[minstrel]

Having tried most of the big name contractor accountants in the past, I've settled on Kevin Fagan at KPF Accountancy who I've been using for over 5 years.

£42 per month including FreeAgent subscription. Very responsive, great value service, and he's never got pregnant, been promoted or left his own company. Some of the advantages of using a smaller ICAEW chartered accountant with 20 years experience.

[Andrew@Wisteria]

Having tried most of the big name contractor accountants in the past, I've settled on Kevin Fagan at KPF Accountancy who I've been using for over 5 years.

£42 per month including FreeAgent subscription. Very responsive, great value service, and he's never got pregnant, been promoted or left his own company. Some of the advantages of using a smaller ICAEW chartered accountant with 20 years experience.

Presumably he's the business owner, so he's not going anywhere. A plus of small Partner led firms compared with the big boys and the account managers.

[Dan@OrangeGenie]

Presumably he's the business owner, so he's not going anywhere. A plus of small Partner led firms compared with the big boys and the account managers.

A plus but also a negative, they can't service everyone. I have always had this challenge.

Its intriguing that this thread has been resurrected by an ex-SJD employee

My advice to the original poster is find an accountant that provides the service you are looking for. The less work you do the more expensive they're likely to be, the more you do the cheaper a solution you can find.

The overriding factor has to be compliance. Are you getting the right IR35/MSC guidance? Do you understand your responsibility of owning and running a Limited company?...there's no price for compliant advice, in the long run it will cost you a lot more than the odd £20 a month!

[Andrew@Wisteria]

A plus but also a negative, they can't service everyone. I have always had this challenge.

Its intriguing that this thread has been resurrected by an ex-SJD employee

My advice to the original poster is find an accountant that provides the service you are looking for. The less work you do the more expensive they're likely to be, the more you do the cheaper a solution you can find.

The overriding factor has to be compliance. Are you getting the right IR35/MSC guidance? Do you understand your responsibility of owning and running a Limited company?...there's no price for compliant advice, in the long run it will cost you a lot more than the odd £20 a month!

Think I've now sussed out who all you ex-SJD peeps are now

Clearly one person can't service 12,000 contractors, but if the business owner prefers to deal directly with their clients, rather indirectly via account managers, there's certainly no reason that they can't service a decent sized portfolio. I guess it depends how large you want the business to grow. You can also bring in (tie in) other business partners if the portfolio grows beyond what you can service yourself, but of course, your profits would be lower than hiring an account manager.

[Dan@OrangeGenie]

A professional spy!

I would love to look after all the clients I've signed up but with managerial responsibility service can suffer, which is unfair on clients.

We've trained some brilliant accountants here, so clients are happy to be passed on.

[john1973]

sjd not trustable, make silly mistakes

Filing returns takes too long and is full with mistakes (ltd and personal)
They used to be quite pro active sending reminders for a lot of stuff, like payment of NI due, most of these reminders seem to have gone
They lost my personal tax return details and then wanted to charge me because I had to refile and that was after their deadline after which they charge £100 or so.
In general need to chase them myself on many things

But mostly it's the price quality ratio when paying them almost 1.8k per year (incl VAT) for the little amount of work they do, I would just expect a little bit more from them

I have been with SJD for a year, joined because they put adverts everywhere.
Disappointed so far, wrong calculation of personal returns, I spot it and they did correction, but I wonder
maybe many client will not bother the check themselves.

Since then, I have to do calculation myself for every figure they provide, they made silly mistakes again afterwards

For company account, they started last November and told me it will be done quickly, I did not mean to rush them because deadline is May, but each time I checked, just being told will be done next week. Eventually, it was only done till I complained after 5 months

I think it is just I am unlucky, the account assigned to me seems not capable doing her job.

Complained to her, she said she reported to her manager, but did not get any response after a week, seems to me they got used to complaints and do not expect small client like me to stay for long time.

Time to leave now, I think problem with big company like SJD is just when you raise your voice, you could hardly be heard due to the way they manage

[ruasonid]

Having tried most of the big name contractor accountants in the past, I've settled on Kevin Fagan at KPF Accountancy who I've been using for over 5 years.

£42 per month including FreeAgent subscription. Very responsive, great value service, and he's never got pregnant, been promoted or left his own company. Some of the advantages of using a smaller ICAEW chartered accountant with 20 years experience.

The Website says:

£55.00 per month (ex VAT) including the award winning FreeAgent software (RRP £29.00 pm)

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

I know a little about the Freeagent partner discounts and at £55 PCM there's not a lot of profit in this. I doubt this is a sustainable model. I may be completely wrong.

[Waldorf]

I have been with SJD for a year, joined because they put adverts everywhere.
Disappointed so far, wrong calculation of personal returns, I spot it and they did correction, but I wonder
maybe many client will not bother the check themselves.

Since then, I have to do calculation myself for every figure they provide, they made silly mistakes again afterwards

For company account, they started last November and told me it will be done quickly, I did not mean to rush them because deadline is May, but each time I checked, just being told will be done next week. Eventually, it was only done till I complained after 5 months

I think it is just I am unlucky, the account assigned to me seems not capable doing her job.

Complained to her, she said she reported to her manager, but did not get any response after a week, seems to me they got used to complaints and do not expect small client like me to stay for long time.

Time to leave now, I think problem with big company like SJD is just when you raise your voice, you could hardly be heard due to the way they manage

I understand that SJD offer a guarantee, one of the points is that your accounts will be done within 4 weeks, so if you've been waiting 5 months there is a claim to be made.

Looking at their website, they seem to have lost a lot of staff since the sale to a private equity group, perhaps this is showing up in their service levels.

[minstrel]

The Website says:

£55.00 per month (ex VAT) including the award winning FreeAgent software (RRP £29.00 pm)

The post was from last year. FreeAgent and KPF have both put up prices since then, but it is still great value.

Incidentally, Kevin at KPF has never taken more than a fortnight to do my annual accounts and often turns them around in a couple of days.