In my daily trawling of what's happening int he industry from all the news streams that I'm subscribed to I found this interesting discussion and reply posts over on Accountancy age today that I'm sure would be of interest to the readers here.
I won't plaigerise by cut and pasting onto this site but just wanted to bring your attentions to this link :
Feel free to discuss your views on their thread and it's meaning from our perspective here.
(There's also a nice side line in the discussion about small clients not wanting to use cloud services).
Happy reading people.
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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.
Thats interesting as in the last 10 years, I can count on one hand the client's who have asked for any interim accounts. I don't lead Ltd's very often, who would need a figure for dividends, but this doesn't explain unincorporated clients. These sole traders etc don't even ask for forecasts any more and I presume the banks are not demanding them.
I do a thorough job for VAT quarters so have draft figures available but they know as long as they're putting away 5th of estimated profits they'll be more or less ok to face the January tax bill. Other than tax or dividends, I really don't know how else I would market management accounts.
Shamus wrote:(There's also a nice side line in the discussion about small clients not wanting to use cloud services).
Great article and discussion, thanks Shaun.
I'm not sure thats how I read the comment about cloud systems though. It sounded to me like they were promoting could services as a cheeper "DIY and we'll handle the rest" option, but some sole traders couldn't be bothered to use it properly, or expected it to be done for them.
I don't think the commenter was suggesting that sole traders don't like "the cloud" as such, just some would have got into a mess regardless of the platform, and still expected it to be sorted out for them as part of the service and at no extra cost.
To address the original articles assersion that clients aren't kept informed enough - surely a system where a bookkeeper does the donkey work and then client then runs whatever reports they want, whenever they want them by just loging on to a shared cloud system would sove this?
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my blog "the bookkeeper's in town - learning the hard way"
Focusing on the point about the lack of information from the accountant, I have found this to be true, not just of older practices, but newer ones as well.
When I gain a new client who has moved from another firm, I like to find out why. Regular gripes that keep cropping up have been clients not being kept abreast of information, for example, flat rate vat. Once I gain a new client, I review their accounts and recommend whatever changes I think will be of benefit, one being flat rate vat scheme if it suits them. My clients continually comment that they have never heard of this before, and ask why their previous practice did not inform them. I suspect this reason may be because the less admin involved in flat rate, therefore less money. I know of another accountant who advised a client not to deregister for VAT, telling him there was no point! (no doubt this was to do with the £2000 per year he would lose by the deregistration).
Some other regular complaints were not being able to get through to their accountant, not having their calls returned, smaller firms feeling as if they were being brushed off, always being redirected to the office trainee, then being handed a large bill for what they felt was their firm doing very little (these complaints usually being directed to larger firms), I could go on.
I fully agree that smaller firms definitely do require more regular financial info than once a year, it's just convincing some of them to pay more attention to this and spend the extra money.
