How to Reduce your Accountant’s Bill

• 10 March 2011

In this current climate of recession, businesses are looking for ways to reduce their costs, and this includes their accountancy bills.

Many accountants and book keepers will charge on a time basis and so, the easier and more organised your records, the less time it will take. We have all heard of the nightmare scenario of businesses being caught by surprise with a huge accountant’s bill. Even if your accountant offers you a fixed fee, the quote will be based on a view of the complexity of the business and the state of the paperwork. If the books are incomplete and in a state, this will ultimately be reflected in the following year’s quote and impact your next bill.

So, here are some top tips from C & M Services, on how to make sure you do your part to get that bill down:

1. Make sure you have a separate bank account for your business and ensure that only business transactions go through it – whilst this is not essential for sole traders, it will mean that the accountant does not have to review your personal bank accounts looking for business costs and income. A separate bank account increases the probability that the accounts and therefore the tax return are going to be complete and correct.

2. Date and number your sales invoices. Make sure you mark up each sales invoice with the date that it is paid. This will help your accountant identify which ones are outstanding at the end of the year and which ones, if any should be considered for bad debts.

3. When sales invoices are paid by cheque or cash, mark paying in slips with either the customer name or invoice number. Again, this helps in ensuring that the debtors at the end of the year are correct.

4. Provide your accountant with a complete set of bank and credit card statements. This is one of the key reasons why there is a delay in completing accounts. Go through all the statements yourself to check they are complete. Request duplicates or download any that are missing before you pass them to the accountant.

5. Keep supplier statements, in particular those dated at your year end as this will validate the creditors figure in the accounts.

6. Keep all paperwork concerning amounts paid on credit, Yell statements, loans etc

7. Always complete the cheque stub and mark the invoice with the cheque number used to pay it.

8. If you have debit or credit card receipts and no invoice or other paperwork, write on the receipt what it was for – don’t let your accountant have to guess or ask you.

9. If you give your accountant your paperwork and they do the book keeping for you, you can organise your expenses into envelopes by type of cost, add them up and put a total on the envelope – it will save your accountant doing it. So, for example, if you are a driving instructor, collect all your fuel receipts for your trading year, add them up and put them in a separate envelope marked “fuel”.

10. Do consider doing the book keeping yourself, you can either use a book or an excel spreadsheet. Book keepers can cost anywhere from £10 – £25 so why not put aside an hour a week and do it yourself. Alternatively, contact us about the award winning Kashflow software which enables you to invoice  your clients, track monies owed and monies owing. As your accoutant, we can access your Kashflow account to prepare your VAT returns and your end of year account. No excel sheets going to and fro and one version of the truth!

11. Have a chat to your accountant – again, even those charging fixed prices will be recording how they are spending their time and should be able to tell you what they spend most of their time on when preparing your accounts. Ask them for advice on how to keep your books in a better state and it will be a win win all round! And remember, time is money!