Reply to: Do I need an Accountant if I go for FreeAgent?

[Spoiler]

If you manage to find a decent accountant with a fair price, I'd be really grateful if you could share their details. I'll be doing the same shortly and if I find a good deal I will let you know.

will do - thanks

[The Spartan]

Yep. I will phone round a few FA accountants and see if they will do a custom package. I will do the tasks that I feel confident in doing.

If you manage to find a decent accountant with a fair price, I'd be really grateful if you could share their details. I'll be doing the same shortly and if I find a good deal I will let you know.

[Spoiler]

Yep. I will phone round a few FA accountants and see if they will do a custom package. I will do the tasks that I feel confident in doing.

[The Spartan]

Hijacking the thread because ... it's topical for me this.

Been using FA for over 8 years now, and also using a usual contractor accountant who does vat, payroll, accounts, etc.

But, looking at moving away from daily contracting next April, but planning on keeping the ltd going for a while, to use for adhoc projects, and also generate some income from a couple of hustles.

I won't be doing payroll and also plan to deregister for vat, so I reckon main need will be accounts. Now, on the last filed accounts I did review and had a few questions for the accountant, so I don't think I am competent enough yet to take these on myself. Confident enough to do my personal tax return though.

Thing is, current accountant has quoted ~£80/month to keep on doing the accounts from April next year (with no payroll or vat) including a p11d - and that is really with no transactions going through the ltd. I reckon this is steep, so looking at other options.
Will look locally, but did find one online accountants who will do the annual accounts for £360/yr (actually they found me via online advertising!).

Oh, also planning to open up a bank account with Mettle (if they will have my ltdco back, closed an account there last year!) or NatWest to get FA included.

I'll be in the exact same position around April hopefully, £360/yr sounds like a bargain. £80/yr sounds ridiculous, I'm not too happy about the recent fee increase with the accountants I'm using given that FreeAgent does most of the work for them; it sounds pretty hard to justify extra costs when the tech is actually doing their job for them.

[ladymuck]

Hijacking the thread because ... it's topical for me this.

Been using FA for over 8 years now, and also using a usual contractor accountant who does vat, payroll, accounts, etc.

But, looking at moving away from daily contracting next April, but planning on keeping the ltd going for a while, to use for adhoc projects, and also generate some income from a couple of hustles.

I won't be doing payroll and also plan to deregister for vat, so I reckon main need will be accounts. Now, on the last filed accounts I did review and had a few questions for the accountant, so I don't think I am competent enough yet to take these on myself. Confident enough to do my personal tax return though.

Thing is, current accountant has quoted ~£80/month to keep on doing the accounts from April next year (with no payroll or vat) including a p11d - and that is really with no transactions going through the ltd. I reckon this is steep, so looking at other options.
Will look locally, but did find one online accountants who will do the annual accounts for £360/yr (actually they found me via online advertising!).

Oh, also planning to open up a bank account with Mettle (if they will have my ltdco back, closed an account there last year!) or NatWest to get FA included.

Sounds like your LtdCo will be eligible to submit micro entity accounts. FA can submit these and your CT. If you're going to keep things really, really simple then I don't see why you can't do it using FA. My experience of FA since starting to use it this summer, is that it really does a lot of the hand holding for you. I'm used to the likes of Sage and Xero where you can properly screw things up if you don't have a good grasp of basic accounting/book-keeping principles.

[Spoiler]

Hijacking the thread because ... it's topical for me this.

Been using FA for over 8 years now, and also using a usual contractor accountant who does vat, payroll, accounts, etc.

But, looking at moving away from daily contracting next April, but planning on keeping the ltd going for a while, to use for adhoc projects, and also generate some income from a couple of hustles.

I won't be doing payroll and also plan to deregister for vat, so I reckon main need will be accounts. Now, on the last filed accounts I did review and had a few questions for the accountant, so I don't think I am competent enough yet to take these on myself. Confident enough to do my personal tax return though.

Thing is, current accountant has quoted ~£80/month to keep on doing the accounts from April next year (with no payroll or vat) including a p11d - and that is really with no transactions going through the ltd. I reckon this is steep, so looking at other options.
Will look locally, but did find one online accountants who will do the annual accounts for £360/yr (actually they found me via online advertising!).

Oh, also planning to open up a bank account with Mettle (if they will have my ltdco back, closed an account there last year!) or NatWest to get FA included.

[sadkingbilly]

Yeah, I get that.

It look me a long time to move to cloud based accounts from locally installed software and I still export all the transactions annually to make sure I have a complete back up, just in case.

I could do it all on excel but I like the download of banking transactions and the direct submission of PAYE and VAT.

It's not so much the data integrity for me, it's more secure on my machine than out There, somewhere, bundled up nicely with x,000 other peoples, waiting to be nicked.
I don't trust 'apps' and 'cloud' security as far as i could throw it.

OMHO of course

anyway i managed with paper before excel* came along

*other spreadsheet software was/is available.

[ladymuck]

Also, I really don't like the idea of putting my financial info on 'cloud'*


*Someone Else's Servers.

Yeah, I get that.

It look me a long time to move to cloud based accounts from locally installed software and I still export all the transactions annually to make sure I have a complete back up, just in case.

I could do it all on excel but I like the download of banking transactions and the direct submission of PAYE and VAT.

[sadkingbilly]

I manged for a very long time using excel and a local for advice and filing YE.
it's not rocket science.

Also, I really don't like the idea of putting my financial info on 'cloud'*


*Someone Else's Servers.

[ladymuck]

I've just switched from Xero to FA, crikey it's different. It is most certainly designed for people with no accounting experience. Very little flexibility in how you input transactions.

Sadly Xero kept mucking about with things I'd much rather they left well alone so they had to be binned off. It's a shame it's only FA who include the ability to submit micro accounts and calculate CT. None of the other online accounting packages do that but I'm not sure the nannying you get with FA is going to annoy me even more.

[sadkingbilly]

I manged for a very long time using excel and a local for advice and filing YE.
it's not rocket science.

[northernladuk]

Is there a middleground? I'm quite confident doing everything through software like FreeAgent - but would like to have an accountant for year end / or any queries like VAT etc...

So I wouldn't mind finding a service that's like half the usual £100-150 that most charge - e.g. £600/year for year end / occasional queries.

Any accountants do that sort of thing?

I'm sure there is but it's more likely to be a friendly local accountant rather than the sausage factory types. Someone who knows you and is more familiar with your books rather than a business where multiple people pick it up over the year. You'd be best ringing a few and getting a feel. Remember though for 100 quid you are going to get less than two hours work so have to be clear on what you want from them and then negotiate.

[dogzilla]

Is there a middleground? I'm quite confident doing everything through software like FreeAgent - but would like to have an accountant for year end / or any queries like VAT etc...

So I wouldn't mind finding a service that's like half the usual £100-150 that most charge - e.g. £600/year for year end / occasional queries.

Any accountants do that sort of thing?

[courtg9000]

FreeAgent is IMHO only.
Im more of a XERO fan but hey ho.
Only thing to be aware of really is that although FreeAgent is free for business customers of Nat West and this is a nice perk, West Register a subsiduary of NatWest own FreeAgent.
This of course means that your bank if you are with NatWest have more information readily available about your financial positions than you may like.
This is probably the main reason I would rather use an alternative product.

[WTFH]

Why would you need any extra spare time? 15 mins a week I would say. As I said already, it pulls in the details from your bank statement automatically and you just either confirm the categories its assigned or assign one yourself. Job done.

I have a degree of complication myself, in that I invoice and are paid in USD. But even that is simple to handle, and it adds currency gains or losses into the accounts all on its own. Accounts are constantly available, so I can always see how much next years corp tax is, what expenses are etc etc.

I would reword what you said from really simple to: if your accounts are standard and you have 15 mins a week. Free 30 days trial and its totally free to all Natwest customers (which I am).

OK, so if everyone uses one particular bank for their business accounts and they are a one man band but think they are a company, and they are happy that the software is only free for 30 days and that it will take an hour a month to pull information together, and you still need to submit the various pieces of documentation, and it doesn't offer you any advice, and, and, and,... then sure.