This might be another impossible one to answer! but.... our yearly bill from our accountants is pretty huge and I suspect i'm getting the same things wrong on our accounts every year, but funnily enough they don't want to tell me what those things are! we're contemplating changing from our large accountancy firm, to a much smaller local accountant to try to solve this problem, but until then are there are sensible things I can check before we hand our accounts over? I reconcile the bank account and reserve account every month but don't tend to do the year end until i receive the corrections back from the accountants.
Thanks for any help,
Alto
I don't know much but I'll put my two-peneth in because it's about time I gave something back to this forum.....and my firat year end is upon me so I might learn something too!!!
This is what I will be doing:
Reconciling all the bank and credit card accounts, provide a bank rec with details of O/S items, maybe even with post year end cleared dates.
Agree aged debtors and creditors reports to the figure in the nominal ledger. I will go through each supplier/customer account and advise the accountant of any action being taken re old or unusal items, to save him having to ask the question.
I will make sure my net pay account is zero, or if not, provide a receoncilaition for this also.
I will scan all nominal ledger accounts for misposted/missing items and correct, or advise of corrections to be done.
I'll do something with the VAT account, not sure what yet though, make sure it agrees to something!!
Perhaps where I have accounts that contain a lot of messy but contrad items I will provide my own schedule, that's what used to happen when I used to prepare accounts from the bookkeepers book, they would send me Sage back ups, but also their own schedules and reconciliations.
Basically I would just check everything looks reasonable, speadsheets cast and are easy to follow. That used to happen a lot, I would receive spreadsheets that did not cast, or had no heading or were just impossible to follow.
You could try asking your accountnat in advance what he/she would like. I'm surprised they don't give you any pointers. I used to work for a London firm and if a bookkeeper was doing something wrong we would tell them so that it didn't happen the following year.
Well, that's about all I can think of right now, it might be a load of rubbish so wait until some-one else replies before you act on it. Sorry if my grammer is off and if it's all waffle, I'm a complete rush, as always.
Oh, I'd also prepare a list of items to pre pay/accrue.
what system do you use to do your accounts , a spreadsheet or an accounts package . I would be more than happy to have a quick look at the figures , just to check nothing is obviously out of place . No charge . might be something really obvious could save your accountants fees . enquiries@lynwoodbookkeepers.co.uk Neil
Hi Maria, that's great thank you, I think I understand most of your message... the trouble I find is that 'agree aged debtors and creditors reports to the figure in the nominal ledger' doesn't mean much to me...!
Thank you Neil, that is extremely kind.. we use Sage Instant Accounts Version 10.
If you use Sage you can run off an aged debtors report. The total of that should equal the figure for the debtors code in the nominal ledger, 1100. It should equal, can't remember why it wouldn't but I have had it in the past were it doesn't.
If you do your accounts on a spreadheet, then it might be easy for an error to occur, if things are being entered manually to a debtors control account and then to a debtors ledger.
Excellent thanks Maria, will have a look at aged debtors report... it is all on Sage, which generally I find quite user friendly, considering I didn't have a clue when I started! I definitely wouldn't have a clue trying to use a spreadsheet! nightmare!
They should really be providing a checklist of information they want. If you are going to provide extra beneficial information then you can negotiate a reduction in fees.
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I agree with Phil, you should ask the accountant. It is in their interest that you send them what they need. You'll probably find that no matter how much you send them, they'll always have further questions
One other thing they may ask is whether the company had any disposals or additions of fixed assets during the year. (If you have not recorded them in Sage that is).
Thank you all, very helpful, we have finally decided to change accountants - and have explained our previous concerns with the chap we have found, so hopefully onwards and upwards! our previous bill was so high - nearing £2k we ended up being worried about asking too many more questions!
So Neil - thank you for your kind offer but we have decided to go with someone local, but thank you all the same.
