I have been bookkeeping for a couple of years now in an accoutancy practice and the clients all have the same trait. They hand in a bag,pile of invoices,receipts,bank statements and a lot of time has to be spent sifting through the pile and sorting it for approriate indexing and entering. I asked about talking to the clients to get them to bring pile in in some sort of order. My idea being I give them a compartmentalised folder with dividers for bank statements, purchase invoices, sales invoice. etc. Is this a reasonable expectation or could this small effort be enough to turn a client off?
Surely the more organised they are, the less time it takes you to do your job and the cheaper it is for them? Or is this incentive not passed through to them?
one of our big selling points is that we take the mess that they create for themselves and put it in a state where it can go forwards to the accountants. (I appreciate that some bookkeepers offer the full service but unfortunately mine has to stop at trial balance).
I tend to look at sorting out the bin liners / shoe boxers as therapy time. I've got a room that used to be the dining room where I've ripped out the table and chairs and now just wallpaper the floor with clients paperwork to get it sorted.
The knack is though that when you have these cases make sure that you let them know how long it really takes to sort out otherwise you end up working for the equivalent of about 50p and hour! Probably an exaggeration there but it always takes longer than you expect.
My pet hate with sorting through these things is where you get a receipt from PC world (or indeed any of the Dixons group receipts). If it's any more than a couple of months old the writing on it will have disappeared so you have a legitimate VAT receipt with no writing on it.
Quick hint, if you get one in time photocopy it, staple the receipt to the photocopy then bend the photocopy to protect the receipt from the light. The writing will still disappear but slower and at least you've got a copy of what was on it.
Anyway, getting back on track, we can sell ourselves on the fact that it's cheaper for us to sort out the mess before it goes to the accountant than just giving the accountant a bag of receipts. Basically £12 per hour versus £35 per hour... Should be a no brainer for them but I still have the problem that (1) the client expects to have an accountant for £12 per hour, and (2) some clients have the impression that for £35 per hour the accountant does the job three times faster.
Conclusion. I would just keep taking the shoe boxes of receipts and just make sure the client pays an amount appropriate for the time that you spend sorting them out.
Good luck,
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I have been bookkeeping for a couple of years now in an accoutancy practice and the clients all have the same trait. They hand in a bag,pile of invoices,receipts,bank statements and a lot of time has to be spent sifting through the pile and sorting it for approriate indexing and entering. I asked about talking to the clients to get them to bring pile in in some sort of order. My idea being I give them a compartmentalised folder with dividers for bank statements, purchase invoices, sales invoice. etc. Is this a reasonable expectation or could this small effort be enough to turn a client off?
I think that like many things, this will depend on the individual client. Some clients just want to throw their paperwork in a box, hand it over to you and not think about it whilst others would be prepared to file it but don't know what to do.
I would speak to each client and suggest they use your system. Some will be glad of it whilst others won't use it at all.
I would agree with Zoe, some people like the idea of just being able to hand over a carrier bag full of receipts knowing that the bookkeeper/accountant will sort it all out and deal with everything either because they are not very organised, need to spend time doing other more worthwhile things for the business, or they just don't want to!
In my experience the problem arises when the 'budget' for the work is too low and you are always running over the budget because of the mess you are presented with. Then this is not good as the accountant is having to continuously write off the extra time. In this case then I think what you suggest is a good idea, if the client does not want to use the system then they will have to be told that their fees will have to increase accordingly. If they don't want to pay extra and decide to go elsewhere then is it any great hardship losing a job that continually runs over budget?
Our accountants who I work for always request the customer at least supplys some sort of cash book, this gets ticked to reconcile to the bank statement. The clients I do at home just leave everything in my tray to pick up when I pass but, this is done on a monthly basis so not so bad.
Thanks for all the contributions, really very insightful. The main reason my idea has been not so well received in the practice is that they dont really want the client to get to the point where they see that there stuff is organised and that there wouldnt be too much more invovled in inputting the records themselves. Also any sniff of a potential reduction in fees at in the current environment is not on. I dont agree though, I reckon that it wouldnt be too much to educate the client to stuff their invoices the same way but just into the right section and explain that an increase in fees would be avoided.
In my experience, there are those clients that simply cannot or will not do anything more than shove everything in a carrier bag or box - and then there are those that will organise the paperwork into batches (bank statements, sales invoices, purchase invoices, etc) and then there are those who file everything in date order!
In time you get to know who can, can't or won't improve the way they present their documents. In the main I concentrate on making sure the client understands the importance of having all the bank statements and filling in the cheque stubs and deposit slip details.
I do explain that the more 'tidying up' I need to do the more it costs the client - but in general I find that those who prefer the carrier bag method are happy to pay that bit more rather than face doing it themselves. Sometimes it can be a battle in itself just to get them to actually complete the cheque stubs - and on delivery I always check to see if any bank statements are missing. There's nothing worse than getting half way through a VAT period to find that one month of the statements are missing - especially when you have scheduled the work and then need to keep shuffling your schedule around!
-- Edited by Maxholt on Monday 29th of March 2010 09:45:34 AM
