Difficulty moving accountant

[PK2]

One of the first things a "new" accountant will do is contact the "old" accountant requesting professional clearance. This is partly an anti fraud thing (eg if you've been doing dodgy stuff the old accountant should warn the new accountant), partly a politeness thing, but critically it's also where the old accountant should forward lots of relevant information to the new accountant. If the old accountant really drags their heels on this, it is a real pain for the new accountant.

If you're confident your company has sufficient retained profit, then go ahead and declare and pay a dividend now. The only issue the new accountant has re this is if they don't know the brought forward position, then even if they know recent transactions, they can't know the current/carried forward position. I similar to if I know £100 went into your bank account yesterday, but I don't know what the balance was before that, then I don't know what the balance is now.

There is a chance that your new accountant is being daft...eg either hasn't sent off anything to the old accountant, or got a reply but haven't done anything with it yet. However I'd guess it's more likely your previous accountant is stalling. Sometimes this can be for reasonably good reason (eg maybe they're finished off one final piece of work for you). Often it's just that they're basically unprofessional, you're leaving, so they think "f#@$ you".

I'd suggest you pester your existing accountant (politely at first in case there's a very good reason for delay/it is new accountant's fault).

Hi. Believe it or not, got a reply from my old accountant essentially saying the process can take up to 2 months!

So I sent them a notice letter early September and according to their reply they're not going to provide my new accountant with anything until September is over (being a notice period of a month), so they can start gathering them only starting October and it can take up to 30 days!

That means the new accountant will potentially receive the documents end of October, almost two months after my notice. Can they even do that? Doesn't it have to be 30 days after the notice is given?

The new accountant reassured me that most of the things can be back-tracked and I can start withdrawing dividends, but still... my old one charged quite a lot.

Edit: later got a follow-up email from PayStream that was more co-operative and reassured me they'll try to do it within a week after my notice period. Lets see.

[Maslins]

It's been 3 weeks since I gave PayStream a formal notice (by email) and my new accountant keeps telling me that they haven't even received any reply from PayStream, so I can't declare any dividends/expenses through the new accountant's portal and I might soon need to withdraw a few thousand £ to rent out a new flat (if the estate agency asks me to pay for the whole tenancy contract upfront, which they will judging by the fact that as far as my new accountant know, I have £0 available to withdraw so that's not a good reference).

One of the first things a "new" accountant will do is contact the "old" accountant requesting professional clearance. This is partly an anti fraud thing (eg if you've been doing dodgy stuff the old accountant should warn the new accountant), partly a politeness thing, but critically it's also where the old accountant should forward lots of relevant information to the new accountant. If the old accountant really drags their heels on this, it is a real pain for the new accountant.

If you're confident your company has sufficient retained profit, then go ahead and declare and pay a dividend now. The only issue the new accountant has re this is if they don't know the brought forward position, then even if they know recent transactions, they can't know the current/carried forward position. I similar to if I know £100 went into your bank account yesterday, but I don't know what the balance was before that, then I don't know what the balance is now.

There is a chance that your new accountant is being daft...eg either hasn't sent off anything to the old accountant, or got a reply but haven't done anything with it yet. However I'd guess it's more likely your previous accountant is stalling. Sometimes this can be for reasonably good reason (eg maybe they're finished off one final piece of work for you). Often it's just that they're basically unprofessional, you're leaving, so they think "f#@$ you".

I'd suggest you pester your existing accountant (politely at first in case there's a very good reason for delay/it is new accountant's fault).

[northernladuk]

All three of mine took less than three working days, plus a bit of paperwork follow up giving HMRC permission to deal with the new team. Perhaps I've just been lucky? The first one - from SJD - including hooking up with a new Freeagent account...

Useful. Thanks.

[malvolio]

All three of mine took less than three working days, plus a bit of paperwork follow up giving HMRC permission to deal with the new team. Perhaps I've just been lucky? The first one - from SJD - including hooking up with a new Freeagent account...

[PK2]

Yep I have from a one man band and from SJD.

It is the nature of the beast if you leave you aren't high on their priority list. You have to look at the T&C's or the letter of engagement that came when you joined to see what their SLA is around leaving. The other thing you could do is just ring them every day and play holy hell. They'll give up eventually.

With regard to your flat, yes, you'll have to pay the deposit and the first months rent before they'll give you the keys for fairly obvious reasons.

Not having your accounts transferred is not a problem though and I'm surprised your new accountant isn't supporting you. As long as you aren't doing anything daft there is no problem taking the payment and sorting the paperwork later. Even if you are not comfortable back dating the dividend paperwork you can class it as a Directors Loan which just requires a journal entry. The fact either of these are not done at the time you actually withdrew the money is no biggie. Certainly not compared to losing your flat.

Check your T&C's
Ring Paystream and complain, quote T&C's if the SLA is in there. Follow it up with an email and repeat until it's done.
Ask your new accountant why they aren't being more helpful

Thanks. Next time I'll take it with a pinch of salt when the new accountant tempts me in by quoting transferal SLAs of 1-2 weeks.

I'll start chasing both of them up but maybe the new one is waiting for the info before they resort to manually recalculating everything.

It's a good point about a director's loan, just a shame because the estate agent might have been fine with me not paying for 6 months upfront if he saw I have enough profit sitting in my bank account but If I were to just show them my bank statement the number might not mean anything without being able to verify how much of it is a liability and how much is available to take out as dividends.

[northernladuk]

Yep I have from a one man band and from SJD.

It is the nature of the beast if you leave you aren't high on their priority list. You have to look at the T&C's or the letter of engagement that came when you joined to see what their SLA is around leaving. The other thing you could do is just ring them every day and play holy hell. They'll give up eventually.

With regard to your flat, yes, you'll have to pay the deposit and the first months rent before they'll give you the keys for fairly obvious reasons.

Not having your accounts transferred is not a problem though and I'm surprised your new accountant isn't supporting you. As long as you aren't doing anything daft there is no problem taking the payment and sorting the paperwork later. Even if you are not comfortable back dating the dividend paperwork you can class it as a Directors Loan which just requires a journal entry. The fact either of these are not done at the time you actually withdrew the money is no biggie. Certainly not compared to losing your flat.

Check your T&C's
Ring Paystream and complain, quote T&C's if the SLA is in there. Follow it up with an email and repeat until it's done.
Ask your new accountant why they aren't being more helpful

[PK2]

Hi everyone,

For those of you who moved accountants how long did the process of getting your accounts up to date with the new accountant take?

It's been 3 weeks since I gave PayStream a formal notice (by email) and my new accountant keeps telling me that they haven't even received any reply from PayStream, so I can't declare any dividends/expenses through the new accountant's portal and I might soon need to withdraw a few thousand £ to rent out a new flat (if the estate agency asks me to pay for the whole tenancy contract upfront, which they will judging by the fact that as far as my new accountant know, I have £0 available to withdraw so that's not a good reference).

Don't PayStream have 28 days to comply and in the worst case if there were to refuse to cooperate, wouldn't the new accountant be able to work everything out by themselves? (I saved all the transaction history & other things I thought are helpful before giving my old accountant the notice).



Thanks