SJD accountants

[Eirikur]

I've been using SJD since the formation of my ltd company over 3 years ago, never had many complaints, besides the fact that I had a new accountant about every 6 months and they are relatively expensive for the actual work they do, but lately they seem to have gone worse.
Anybody else experiencing this or is it just my current accountant?

Did anyone on here ever manage to negotiate a reduction on their rate?

[Support Monkey]

Unless you can/want to do it yourself just pay your money, somtimes it is better to pay a professional to do the job you don't want/cannot do, which is presumably also why contractors exist in the first place

And to be honest when you take into consideration what you/contractors earn it's not much of a drop in the ocean, and you have to say to yourself what would I want an hour to do the work

I am not with SJD by the way

[MyUserName]

I am with them, have never had any problems.

Not sure whether they are expensive but they charge a cost I don't mind paying for the service they provide.

[Ruprect]

Is there anything specific in the degradation of service that you're alluding to?

[Eirikur]

Is there anything specific in the degradation of service that you're alluding to?

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

[malvolio]

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

Perhaps emailing Simon Dolan would get better attention. Your experience is vastly different to mine.


But as others have implied, good accountants are free; if they cost you money they're not doing their job.

[lukemg]

Get switched to Jamie Leigh in Manc office, very helpful, very quick to respond and has sorted a few things I messed up with extra effort on her part.

[noddy2]

I'm in the same boat - have been contracting in the current company for 3 years, been with SJD all this time. I also feel the service is a little expensive for what you get. I get generic reminders for filling stuff in which I did weeks before - but have to check just in case. I also feel they could have given a little more advise rather than just the generic stuff - plus I'm fed up of the old spreadsheet system and want to move to something more up-to-date. Haven't bothered looking to reduce the rate (I'm still on the £126 inc vat per month rate - so expecting an increase). Anyway I'm going to move to one of the others recommended on here, expecting similar service but for less cost.

[lancsguy]

Great service from the SJD manchester office here too. My account was taken over by a guy called Mike early last year and I've had nothing but great service. Would definitely recommend SJD to others

[d000hg]

And to be honest when you take into consideration what you/contractors earn it's not much of a drop in the ocean

I don't know this is quite the case, some of the contractor-accountants are quite pricey and of course it depends what rate you're on. If you are bringing in £600/day, £150pcm isn't much but if you are in the £250-300 range, which is probably far more common, it's not quite so trivial. It IS part of the cost of working through a Ltd though of course either way, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't pay attention to your costs.

I wonder if any contractor accountant ever worked their fees as a % of your rate rather than fixed rate?