Reply to: Crunch

[northernladuk]

To be honest there's little you need to know about extracting money from a company.

Expense what you can - mileage / travel and other bits
Pay yourself as appropriate £7-11,000 depending on your viewpoint
Take dividends to the higher tax band
And don't forget to put a fair bit in the pension

Dunno, there is a fair bit of complexity around many things as we see with the question from the newbies, phone, 24 month, office costs and the like. Now I've not been with an accountant that's ever fed me these things in the past. Even SJD were a bit backwards in coming forwards. Some standard did you know about company phones type mails to everyone but very little one on one consultation. Many have great resources to tell you but ultimately it's up to you. Gorilla do a quarterly review pointing out if I haven't claimed office costs or if there are fairly obvious missing things but again I don't think it's what iank is after.

Ultimately it's down to you as it's your business and the accountants offer some guidance and advice but you've got to be proactive and ask. Expecting proactive tailored advice from any contractor accountant isn't really the way to go IMO.

[eek]

I'm relatively new to contracting and have been with Crunch for 10 months. I find the visibility it gives you quite appealing. You can check things quickly and easily. What I am not getting is any proactive financial advice – or very little at least. Crunch is great to respond to queries however it’s all online and email driven. If you want to speak to an accountant you can, but it’s someone who only knows about you for the duration of a phone call. Depends what you need.
For my purposes – relatively simple…I’m more or less satisfied. I am not however getting any reassurance that I’m making the most of my income and that’s where I feel sometimes I should be speaking to a person who knows my business. That’s what would make me switch to another provider.

To be honest there's little you need to know about extracting money from a company.

Expense what you can - mileage / travel and other bits
Pay yourself as appropriate £7-11,000 depending on your viewpoint
Take dividends to the higher tax band
And don't forget to put a fair bit in the pension

[iank]

With Crunch for 10 months

I'm relatively new to contracting and have been with Crunch for 10 months. I find the visibility it gives you quite appealing. You can check things quickly and easily. What I am not getting is any proactive financial advice – or very little at least. Crunch is great to respond to queries however it’s all online and email driven. If you want to speak to an accountant you can, but it’s someone who only knows about you for the duration of a phone call. Depends what you need.
For my purposes – relatively simple…I’m more or less satisfied. I am not however getting any reassurance that I’m making the most of my income and that’s where I feel sometimes I should be speaking to a person who knows my business. That’s what would make me switch to another provider.

[JonNorris@Crunch]

The accountants who do their best to ensure a smooth handover when losing a client deserve more credit than they get. We've only won a handful of clients from Crunch over the years, and especially considering they're one of the cheaper accountancy firms around, I've been very impressed at the prompt, detailed info they've provided. Plenty of more expensive firms who have a "Oh, you're leaving, screw you then" attitude, making the switch much more painful for the client.

Thanks - a lot of this is due to our software exporting records in a nice tidy format. We've had (and still have) so much trouble with handovers from other firms we wanted to make sure we weren't causing problems for other accountants down the line. Professional courtesy and all that

[DaveB]

I don't use Crunch, but one thing I do have to give them credit for is that when I went to take a look, plugged in my numbers on the front page, including that I do my own accounts (hence no accountants costs), they came straight back and told me they wouldn't save me any money. No hard sell, no messing about, just a straight admission that the best they could do was maybe save me some time.

Credit to them for that.

[Maslins]

It can often be tricky when you get a client from another accountant. You'll often have limited information to begin with, and the client may be doing things differently to how you'd have recommended. Combine that with having to very quickly figure out where things are with VAT and PAYE to avoid late submissions and there will inevitably be glitches from time to time.

If the client's on top of things, great, they can work with the new accountant to get on top of things quickly. Where clients are sometimes a little clueless, bookkeeping records are poor, and the previous accountant slow/poor at providing information, you're left with a pretty tough situation. You have no choice but to make assumptions/educated guesses of a lot of things. Inevitably from time to time you'll get it wrong...but perhaps a "good" accountant will do so less than a not so good one. Experience can often help you figure out what probably happened to fill in gaps in info.

To me it's one way I (as an accountant myself) judge other accountants. We all lose clients from time to time. The accountants who do their best to ensure a smooth handover when losing a client deserve more credit than they get. We've only won a handful of clients from Crunch over the years, and especially considering they're one of the cheaper accountancy firms around, I've been very impressed at the prompt, detailed info they've provided. Plenty of more expensive firms who have a "Oh, you're leaving, screw you then" attitude, making the switch much more painful for the client.

[JonNorris@Crunch]

I think if you've never had an accountant before then they probably seem alright, but I just don't think they can handle someone coming from a different accountant properly.

We've very aware this can be problematic - hence introducing the new client team to help make transitioning easier. Getting a newbie up to speed with our way of doing things is much easier than someone who is used to doing their books in a certain way.

Can you shoot me a PM with your company details? I'd like to look into those errors to see what happened.

On this point:

Their Web interface is very much written from an accountant's point of view too in my opinion, rather than the main users (contractors).

We'll have to agree to disagree! We do endless user testing to make sure the software is as easy to use as possible - the whole reason Crunch was set up was to be more accessible to freelancers and contractors than Sage / spreadsheets etc. Our accountants don't actually have any input on our software design.

[Cenobite]

I'm with Crunch and I think they're pretty useless. I've had a lot of teething problems but the price has just about been right for me to not leave yet.

I think if you've never had an accountant before then they probably seem alright, but I just don't think they can handle someone coming from a different accountant properly.

I've had to double and triple-check all the tax figures they've sent me. For example, when I first moved to Crunch and my first VAT return was produced, I noticed that it included VAT for an invoice I'd already paid VAT on. This is when I learnt that some accountants calculated VAT for invoices filed but not paid, and some only do it when they're paid. If I'd not spotted this I would have been out of pocket, and I was never asked which way my previous accountant did it when I joined.

Also when I did my personal tax I was asked what I'd gift-aided for the year. For some reason despite asking me for the yearly figure they multiplied what I'd given them by 12 (as if they'd asked for the month). They ended up having to generate my personal tax return three or four times before I was happy.

Their Web interface is very much written from an accountant's point of view too in my opinion, rather than the main users (contractors).

If they cost much more than they do at the moment, I'd be off.

[JonNorris@Crunch]

Hah - thanks guys.

[Maslins]

Yeah good stuff all round. Decent fair pros and cons, decent responses. Well done Crunch

[northernladuk]

Good point - will get this looked at.

Good to see you on the boards and thanks for the useful posts Jon.

[JonNorris@Crunch]

Thanks Jon,

1. New Account manager after 3 months - maybe you should explain this rather than just sending an email saying "This is your new account manager from today...". Comes across badly as a customer....

Good point - will get this looked at.

[DirtyDog]

Yes. As much as it can...

Since you aren't VAT registered, it can't do much for you, can it?

[deanosity]

Does it make VAT easy?

Yes. The system informs me a vat submission is due, I check it and hit submit.

It's as easy as that.

[infosec]

Does it make VAT easy?

Yes. As much as it can...