Accountancy fees - what's reasonable

Lumen

I run a small limited company with a turnover of €200-€300k p.a. There are two directors and one employee, all three on PAYE.

We do our own bookkeeping and VAT prep in SAGE (with assistance from accountants) but everything else is done by them.

Last year we were charged over €6k in fees.

I have experienced shoddy accountancy previously, so do understand the value of competency and problems that occur when you cut corners excessively. Our current accountants are very good, but in the current economic climate I feel we ought to be getting much better value.

Thoughts?

yom 1

I work for a practice in dublin and that sounds a bit on the high side to be honest, for whats involved.

Beal Tuille

Very very high.

I am self employed accountant in South Dublin and would estimate a fee of 1.5k on this one.

I assume it's audit exempt.

(I am not touting for business here by the way)

prinz

tbh depends on the breakdown of fees. while it does seem high, if you have a breakdown of the €6k it would be a clearer picture. How much for accounts, how much for the "assistance" they give, presumably on an ongoing basis.

Bren1609

What exactly is the work involved? Is the company audit exempt? Does €6K include the corporation tax return and the 2 directors personal income tax returns? Company secretarial? What about business and tax advice?

Lumen

Thanks for suggestions, will post some breakdowns tonight.

It does include corp. tax, directors income tax returns. No tax/business advice to speak of, just an annual review of director salary allocations.

One example: €75 per bi-monthly VAT return, which basically involves just submitting the Sage PDF we send them.

Our company is professional services (software development), basically one or two sales invoices and maybe a dozen expense line items a month. But we do the bookkeeping.

The most common "assistance" is helping out when Sage Instant Accounts does something confusing. Whoever wrote that piece of junk should be shot.

censuspro

Based on the info above it sounds a little high. However as John Ruskin put it

"It's unwise to pay too much, but it's also unwise to pay too little. When you pay too much you lose a little money, that is all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing you bought it to do.

The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot. It can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it's well to add something for the risk you run. And if you do that, you will have enough money to pay for something better."

misspiggy40

Just a quick suggestion. Why don't you set up your paye/prsi and vat payments by dd each month and then the returns would only need to be annual. They are obviously ticking a fee box for every return which is fair enough....I suppose....but an annual return would have to be cheaper than monthly/bi-monthly. As Tesco says...'Every little helps'

seven-iron

€500pm for what you described and the size of your co. is standard. maybe saying you got a cheaper quote would get you down to €400 odd.