I've visited my client 3 times to update books and advise/train them in the use of Sage Instants. When I visited today and told the client that the opening bank balance needed to be entered so that I could start to reconcile the bank. Once I started to go through the bank statements and pointed out all the items that need to be entered via journal to enable the bank to be updated and reconciled the client had a wobble. She doesn't want all the ealier transactions entering as it is going to take time and also cost her money paying me to update all of this. I explained that everything being up to date is better as it shows a true picture of how the company is doing.
I also tried to explain that the more I do the less the accountant has to do and his rates are higher than mine.
Do you think it is imperative that everything is entered and up to date or am I being a bit fussy in expecting everything to be perfect.
It's how I work in my full time job. Everything has to be posted for the month end/year end.
I hope all clients aren't going to be like this.
At the end of the day I want to do a good job and want the best for my client.
Previously the accounts have been done manually. The turnover is approximately £300k per year.
I would say with that turnover then yes they should be all up together.
It amazes me the amount of people who don't do them etc. I have a new client, just got him and he has in the past done his own stuff, well hes got behind and now needs help, his turnover isn't as big as that but still fairly decent and they haven't done a Bank rec for over a year, and he admits its just time consuming and haven't got the time to do it. Fortunately he does understand how long things take to do.
Your right the accountant's rates are far higher.
Do they want to learn how to do it themselves maybe? If so this would cut down the amount of your time which isn't good for you but on the other hand if they cock it up it will take you a long time to unravel it!
I started to show then how the bank rec was done and explained for that to be done everything has to be entered that has gone through the bank. She just turned around and said she wasn't going to do it and let the accountant sort it all out. She did say that as of the next financial year which is 13th April she will try and enter everything on. The problem is she has entered invoices on wrong and payment so I don't hold out much hope of her entering PAYE,NI, bank charges etc correctly. They don't want to pay me to do all the work which is silly really. I sent a message back to the accountant as he is the one who passed the client on to me to do the books and he is going to speak to her. I can see it getting a bit messy. Lets hope she sees sense and hands it all over to me to get on with. That way it will be right up to date.
Goo luck with them, it sounds like they don't really understand any bookkeeping and in the long run it will cost them more with the accountant doing it.
Amanda, do you do any final accounts for any of your clients? I am considering doing some basic self assessments for self employed with very simple accounts. I've done my nephews and my mums for the past few years. Eventually once I have a bit more experience under my belt I want to do final accounts for small clients. I have assisted with Management Accounts in my previous job but the organisation is so large I never get involved in any year end stuff. I don't want to do just bookkeeping but for now I am happy with that until I get experienced and become very comfortable doing it.
I would certainly be entering all the bank entries for the year in order that the bank reconciliation could be done.
One thing that could be missed out is posting the sales invoices and purchase invoices and then matching these with the monies coming in and going out as the whole point of using the customer and supplier module in SAGE is for credit control purposes and given you are catching up on stuff there is no real need for this as I assume the client knows who owes them and who they owe. At the year end the outstanding sales and purchases could be entered so that SAGE is right. There is then the other issue of VAT but again you could just post the payments and do journals to net out the sale and purchases/expenses from the P&L.
