Most accountants charge their fee according to the amount of time taken to deal with your affairs. Many use a sophisticated time recording system to keep track of the time they spend on each client’s affairs, for example, meetings, telephone calls, dealing with tax inquiry, VAT registration, and preparation of annual accounts and so on.
Many accountancy firms have a team of staff members each with different charge out rates depending on their technical ability. A trainee accountant will obviously be charged out at much less per hour than a partner. The accountant will use the most suitable grade of staff to look after the different aspects of your assignments.
Clearly, if you present your records to the accountant in a neat and tidy condition they can keep their fee to a minimum. But if they had to spend many expensive hours sorting out a messy set of records, their fee will certainly reflect the extra work.
Do make sure that your work on writing up the records will in fact help your accountant. Some businesses owners spend hours writing up records but they are not in the right form for their accountant resulted much of the time is wasted. Discuss your records requirements with your accountant and agree to best way of doing things from the beginning.
Concise Accountancy offer fixed priced accountancy services to newly start ups companies. Small businesses often find it very helpful as they are aware of how much money is needed to sort out the company accounts and taxation affairs at the financial year end.
Canterbury Accountancy - Information for small companies and enterprises
