As well as my self-employed work I have a 9 hr a week employed position in a charity. Their year end is 31st December and the Treasurer likes to have everything to the Accountants by the middle of January - aargh (I try to make this later due to not all invoices for December being received by then and not always expecting them as many are for restricted projects).
Anyway everything (and I mean everything - all sales and purchase invoice files, all bank statements, all cheque books and paying in books, all VAT returns, payroll file, a file with 15 report print outs from QB) was packed up and sent to Accountants together with a back up from QB. Why they need reports printing when they could print any they want themselves I do not know.
Anyway this morning I got an email from Accountants requesting the following:
Sage Employee History from 1st January 2011 to 31st December 2011.
P32 for P9.
Screen print of legislation from Sage Payroll.
Bank statement for Savings Account (despite there being no transactions since previous year end and no interest) ie no movement on the account at all.
Cr Card Statement dated 8th January (which had zero transactions)
Details of any cheques written since last cheque book provided (bearing in mind most bills are paid on-line) - There was one cheque for payment of a December salary (the first one in a new cheque book).
Minutes of all standing committee and trustees meetings (this one not from me but centre manager's yay).
So I fished everything out, scanned them and emailed them.
THEN got an email back asking for the Employee History Summary (I'd sent the detailed, presumably she didn't want to have to add it up!!!)
AND all pages from the zero transaction Cr Card statement saying there are usually 6 or 7 pages, when the statement I sent clearly stated 1 of 2 and the second page had no relevant information just the usual disclaimers etc.
I was and am still spitting bullets. I've never worked with a firm of Accountants who request all this information from a client and THEN visit and always pick at something or other.
I work with other Accountants and just send accounting program backups, paper files and list of accruals and prepayments with no problems.
Anyone else work with an Accountancy firm like this one?
Not like this one Sheila, they sound like a right picky bunch. I always find that any accountants I've ever worked with have had to find fault though, no matter how small. It's almost like they are trying to justify the bill.
When I worked with a credit union we had an accountant, like yours, who wanted the backups from our software (which they also had) but insisted we print half a tree worth of reports too. Just living in the dark ages I guess.
Anyway, it does wonders to get it all off your chest, I do it regularly. In fact I've started a blog about living with idiots to log every idiot I come in contact with each day (there are loads, and I can't believe its just me)
I'll go along with the, "Someone padding the bill" comment. All of this stuff that they're requesting is going on a statement to the client as itemised line items that the client then pays for. Just me being cynical. Pushing up the billable hours.
I always ued to ask for a list of what they wanted in advance, and thats what they got.
It always headed off any requests for additional stuff later on the grounds they should have asked for it in the first place and if they didn't it just showed they were incompetent.
The best accountant I worked with years ago, used to ask me for a copy of the trial balance and then they would send me a written list of what they needed. I never had to send them anything extra and they did a really good job.
