charge for bookkeeping - The Book-keepers Forum (UK)

lor · Guru

charge for bookkeeping

Alison · Senior Member

HI

I have always charged all clients hourly rate (to the nearest 15 minutes) and have found clients have always been happy with this, the organised clients with paperwork in good order end up paying less and the disorganised clients end up paying more but they don't mind either because they say they are too busy to be organised and they will pay what it takes to have it all done for them.

I find the trouble with quoting a fixed fee is that sometimes the client pays too much compared to what it takes so unfair on client and othertimes the client pays too little compared to what it takes so unfair on the bookkeeper.

If you need an inbetween you could work out fixed fee with an exception that if the number of transactions a month/quarter/year is more then X then any extra work will be charged at £X per hour.

Alison

Weebly_one · Veteran Member

I too charge an hourly rate. I am Sage Accredited rather than having formal book-keeping qualifications and manage to command a rate of £15 per hour (plus VAT) but I know another book-keeper who has ICB membership and charges £20 per hour.

Terri · Senior Member

Wow, those are pretty impressive hourly rates, I charge £8 an hour and still cannot win any clients. Maybe that's where I am going wrong? Maybe people think that I am really cheap because I'm not very good? Mmmm, I think that I need to rethink my prices.

Alison · Senior Member

HI Terri

Would say it is best to compare your price with others in your area. Bookkeeping hourly rates can really differ from one part of the country to others.

I started my business after 14 years experience (no real bookkeeping qualifications apart from RSA Bookkeeping) at £12 an hour after spending a long time researching the hourly rates in my area. I have increased my hourly rate once since to £12.50 an hour, annual increase each January and for existing clients this increase does not affect them until 6th April to thank them for their loyalty. This January because of the economic climate left the hourly rate the same, normally would increase by rate of the inflation rounded up to nearest 50p. I did not really raise my rates once I got all but level 3 manual bookkeeping with ICB qualifications.

Alison

lor · Guru

Okay, thanks for your replies, I normally quote fixed prices but I think it is difficult when you haven't seen the accounts to quote. I think I shouldn't quote firmly till I have seen the accounts and records.

KrisGutowski · Member

I have client who makes on average £450K-500K PA in profit.
It's a lot of paperwork involved. Before she registered Ltd company I have been charging her £100 per month for VAT register and £120 for payroll (about 50 people on the payroll).
That makes a total of £220 p.c.m.
Now she runs a limited company and we have implemented QB Pro to her business, which attracts bank recs and credit card recs.

How much should I charge her for the package?

Do you recon £300 pcm is fair charge for this?

Regards

Kris Gutowski

SarahT · Veteran Member

Hi Kris

Using QuickBooks should speed things up a bit, so I would say £300 sounds about right.

______________
Sarah

Flex Accounting Services · Senior Member

Personally I think £120 is very steep for a 50 employee payroll, but well done if your customer is paying it

Marky65 · Guru

KrisGutowski wrote:

I have client who makes on average £450K-500K PA in profit.
It's a lot of paperwork involved. Before she registered Ltd company I have been charging her £100 per month for VAT register and £120 for payroll (about 50 people on the payroll).
That makes a total of £220 p.c.m.
Now she runs a limited company and we have implemented QB Pro to her business, which attracts bank recs and credit card recs.

How much should I charge her for the package?

Do you recon £300 pcm is fair charge for this?

Regards

Kris Gutowski

Hi Kris

I think that your charges seem spot on, but make sure that you review it at least once a year to ensure that you are not selling yourself short and also not overcharging your client.

Regards
Mark

-- Edited by Marky65 on Wednesday 12th of August 2009 10:42:13 AM

Em · Newbie

Hi Im just starting my training to become a bookkeeper and I will be working from home. I was thinking of charging per hour but Im not sure how I can explain to my clients that I promise to work on there paperwork for said amount of hours and not sit there watching TV. How do I assure them im not going to take 40 mins to work on there paper work but charge them 3 hours?

RSBookkeeping · Veteran Member

I work from home and will only ever charge a set fee, more often than not it will work out at around £15 per hour. I think it would be unfair to say I'll charge £x per hour as I do not have any software that will record how long I am spending on the accounts should my clients ask.

RuthA · Senior Member

I mainly charge per hour. Although I offer a fixed fee, several of my clients say they would rather feel able to ask me to do extra and pay me for that.

I think that trust is an important part of my relationship with my clients, if we don't trust each other then it really isn't going to work out. So the issue of whether I'm sat watching the TV is not something that has ever been raised.

cheapaccounting · Veteran Member

Has the client got a budget in mind?

What can they afford?

Can you do it at that price?

Can they do a bit more to get it in budget?

How about a one off to get started, get things organised, set a system then a fixed fee from there as you know what is involved.

lor · Guru

this post is old, just realised people have recently replied. I can't really remember which customer this was for. I didn't get the work though! But then you can't win them all. I am pretty happy with the amount of my clients at the moment wouldn't mind extending to a few more. I'm still working full time, so there isn't too much room to take on a hugh number of clients. Doesn't look like I will be taking the leap to self employment full time. It seems too easy for me to carry on doing my full time job and the self employment as a side line. Maybe I will re-think in 2 years time.

Jill Hicks · Member

How do you price payroll? do you do it on number of employees regardless of company size?

Marky65 · Guru

Hi Jill

I charge per employee but there is a minimum fee per pay run. I don't charge for set up, leavers or joiners, though I know that there are many that do. I charge the same rate for running a year end filing. My charges do not include printed reports, all payslips and reports are submitted to the client electronically if they want them printed then they have to pay extra but I have yet to have a client ask for anything printed

Hope this helps

Regards

Mark

jillhicks · Veteran Member

Thanks for your reply Mark

Do you have to work overtime or pension calculations for any clients, if so do you charge extra per person on the payroll.
At present I do payroll on a self employed basis for a doctor and given diary with overtime etc plus I have to calculate pension.
About 12 employees takes me about 2 hours as I am using HMRC calculator at the moment with hand written payslips and have to complete and file nhs pension return each month.
I am thinking of purchasing payroll manager and doing the payroll at home but dont know best way to charge as I will be printing payslips.
Wondering if best to continue to charge hourly rate with a small charge for ink.

I see you are at Plymouth, I am in West Devon.

Would appreciate your comments

Jill Hicks

gbm · Guru

Hi Jill,

Would recommend you give Moneysoft Payroll Manager a look, it will calculate a lot quicker, and do payslips (which can be saved as PDF files and emailed over).

http://www.moneysoft.co.uk/

Marky65 · Guru

Hi Jill

Apologies for missing your reply

I am currently using Sage Payroll but because of the huge increase in their fees I am in the process of learning 12pay www.12pay.co.uk and will be using this for the next tax year, 12pay is very similar to Moneysoft that Nick has recommended.

My charges are based upon the client giving me a spreadsheet of the hours worked by all staff for the month and then all I have to do is input the hours into the payroll software and run the reports as pdf's. If there are any leavers, joiners or amendments I get them to give me these details on the same file, just on a separate spreadsheet. For joiners I make sure that I have them send me a copy of a P45/6.

If I was doing the payroll for your client I would simply increase the cost per employee to cover the additional work that you have to do in gathering the information and the cost of buying and printing the payslips. By charging by employee I find that it is more profitable than by charging my hourly rate.

It is good to hear that there is another member from Devon on here and you are just up the road from me.

Hope you enjoyed seeing the sunshine from your office today.

Regards

Mark

ayaz786amd · Member

I charge £7-10 per hour and provide bookkeeping, accounts & tax returns services. Please contact ayaz786amd@gmail.com

Dalbir · Senior Member

Hi Ayaz

hope you are well, are things back to normal after floods in 2010?

(for fellow members who think I have gone bonkers- relates to a posting from Ayaz in 3rd quarter of 2010- from memory)

Dalbir

ADAS · Guru

Marky65 wrote:
I am currently using Sage Payroll but because of the huge increase in their fees I am in the process of learning 12pay www.12pay.co.uk and will be using this for the next tax year, 12pay is very similar to Moneysoft that Nick has recommended.

12pay is great Mark and their support has been great when I've needed it. How you finding it?

Marky65 · Guru

Hi Tony

It seems to be going ok. I think it is more of a culture shock for me as I have used Sage for more years than I care to remember and know it inside out/back to front, but learning new ways to do things can't be a bad thing and if it saves me money in the process then even better.

Regards

Mark

gbm · Guru

I've heard good things on here about 12pay, and to be honest never tried it - am more than happy with Moneysoft, have said for a while that it's the best value for money software I use.

I used to use Sage, and understand Mark's comment about changing, but it just highlight's how restrictive and cumbersome the Sage payroll package is. The main reason I changed was when I started doing CIS returns, as I think it was additional in Sage.

lor · Guru

I try to at least charge £20 per hour, can get up to £100.00 per hour though, but I reckon when I balance it out, it's an average of £40 per hour, but then I am also doing Tax Returns, Vat Returns and Year End Accounts etc. I get paid £9.58 in my full time job, and wouldn't want less than that in my part-time business as there isn't so much time to do it, so it needs to be pretty profitable to make it worthwhile. Also I can price a job and 9/10 clients are happy with my prices, I would say they are reasonable, not the most expensive or not too cheap, as I believe I offer a great value service to my clients and do a very good job, therefore I am worth paying that price and my clients get a good deal too :). I am of late getting very confident at selling myself and fluent with the language and questions asked by clients, but I explain my answers in plain english so that they can easily understand and am around after hours for evening appointments too, I'm very flexible :)!.

-- Edited by lor on Saturday 3rd of November 2012 03:52:09 PM

BobHarper · Guru

Amazing, you guys are really under valuing yourselves.

Put some extra effort in so you can add on year-end accounts/tax, roll in some business advice, use the right systems with fixed value based prices and you can get up to £125 an hour.

Ten years ago I worked with an AAT who achieved £60 an hour and that was without the accounts and tax.

The key is client selection and the key to that is your ability to market yourself.

Amanda · Expert

For once Bob I agree with you about Marketing and client selection, I got rid of a really bad one once and I felt so much better for it!!!

I think that's where some of us fall down is the Marketing side of the business, which when you are happily toodling along you forget about continuously marketing yourself so you are adding to your business.