Our experience over the last few years is that there is a bit of a love hate relationship between accountants and bookkeepers.
We believe accountants should do accounts/tax and bookkeepers should be doing the books and helping clients day-to-day, week-to-week or month-to-month. But, it seems accountants want to make margin from bookkeepers and resist reducing their fees because the books are better/completed.
We are also picking up on a development where accountants are actively looking for bookkeeping and pricing as a loss leader. Some are even outsourcing the work overseas and new technology like Xero is reducing the processing time.
We are adding on new services extensions as we believe basic bookkeeping isn't enough but we are also looking at having a central accounting/tax centre that bookkeepers can funnel work to so they can offer the all-in services.
What is your experience of accountants?
Do you fee that not being able to offer accounts/tax makes you less marketable?
With the type of clients I have my experience is the accountants expect business owners to do some sort of bookkeeping, it is prove to be too much for the owners and this is the job I am taking over. So even if it makes the accountants life easier, the job I do has not much to do with them if it makes sense. My clients are sole traders and small businesses so most probably this is the reason I had no problems with accountants as yet.
I deal with quite a few accountant and find some are exceptionally helpful and are happy to share their knowledge to benefit other and I have developed good working relationships. Others seem to actively try to poach the bookkeeping business by or hike their bills up by blaming "the bookkeeper"for other work that the state they have to do.
I do believe that if for sole traders and small businesses bookkeepers could offer accounts/tax it would make our business more marketable and offer the sole trader and small business a better value for money package.
-- Edited by BC Boy on Wednesday 22nd of September 2010 01:06:48 PM
It is obvious that any additional services bookkeepers can offer will only benefit their business in the long run.
I find that the problem for me is less of an accountant/bookkeeper divide than simply that joe public is unsure of the difference between the two. For me their is a belief out there that if you have an accountant you have no requirement for a bookkeeper. This could be, as you say, because the roles develop out of a necessity to attract additional business that you have accountants offering a bookkeeping service and conversely bookkeepers offering some of the accountancy services.
I think that this is down to us bookkeepers to resolve. I think we, and our professional bodies, have a duty to educate business owners as to the differences between the two and where we, as bookkeepers, can provide additionality to businesses. For myself that is in making business owners aware of the need to have up-to-date information at their disposal to help with their decision making processes. I find that this is something my local accountants neither have the time nor inclination to do. They will happily do it once a year, or once a quarter, but not more regularly. Their clients may not be prepared to pay an accountants fee to have this done, whereas they may pay a bookkeepers fee.
I think that the competition has also changed a little, where before you just had to worry about other local accountants and bookkeepers now online accountancy services are the big threat. They are the ones who are able to offer prices to compete with local bookkeepers.
In response to Bob regarding bookkeepers being able to offer tax and accounting services, of course I am sure there are many bookkeepers who may wish to offer this service, it is only really going to be practical for a franchise to acquire these services for their franchisees. For bookkeepers who work alone, or with one or two others like the majority on here that is not a realistic aim I don't believe. We need to look at other additional services we can offer to enable us to attract a wider range of clients.
The views expressed in this post are my own personal (HRA protected) views, and are not representative of any organisation I have any involvement with.
We believe accountants should do accounts/tax and bookkeepers should be doing the books and helping clients day-to-day, week-to-week or month-to-month. But, it seems accountants want to make margin from bookkeepers and resist reducing their fees because the books are better/completed.
I kind of agree with this that Accountants are less willing to reduce fees even if the books are better prepared. The only thing I would mention is that no matter how well the books are prepared, Accountants (or rather a good honest accountant) still have to do all the year end leg work.
They have to spend time putting a file together and reconciling the balance sheet items as well as reviewing the profit & loss account for unusual items and fluctuations compared to previous years, sorting out the afterdate invoices, prepayments and accruals, Stock adjustments etc... After all, if you get investigated and the accountant has done a crap job, then they will be in trouble as well.
For my clients, I do a majority of the year end work for them. Having spend 10 years in practice I know what they want and how they want it, so basically the accountant just reviews it and perhaps makes a few small adjustments to get the accounts right. I put a file together, like they do and provide all copy paperwork and reconciling reports for all the key balance sheet items and I even list out odd or unusual items in the profit and loss and provide the copy invoices to support it.
This help the accountant do the job quicker and in turn reduce the fees accordingly.
