Wondered if I could ask the forum, whether smaller/medium size accountancy firms now offer their clients a cost review as standard ?
I ask because I run a price comparison website for card processing costs for SME's and recently I have noticed more and more accountants and other advisers using our website to get quotes for card processing. When I've followed up with them all have said they were looking on behalf of clients.
I had thought that cost reviews tended to be the domain of the larger firms - is this now a service that is commonly offered by smaller/medium sized firms and bookkeepers?
We had started an affiliate program for accountants to refer clients but am now wondering whether we are pitching this to the wrong size of accountants and that this might interest a wider audience?
If we think that our clients are overpaying for a service that they use regularly we try to inform them of such.
Doing the accounts of a few clients who purchase similar services you can often see huge disparity for little if any difference in the service that they are receiving.
That could be use of a recruitment agency, bank charges, leasing, utility costs, phone charges.... basically anything.
If we feel that a client is overpaying or getting a lesser service then whilst we may not charge for the service we may make them aware that they may not be getting the best available deals.
Personally I would feel that it was down to the client to do the actual searching for the best deal. I just tend to drop hints because I've seen how much less others may be p[aying for something.
Also, if one charges for a service one acccepts responsibility for it and whilst I may be able to tell a client that they are not on the best tarriff possible I would not take the responsibility for telling them another service that in my opinion is.
I would not even tell them which sites to look at as that also is creating proximity to the decision made by the client.
And where there's proximity there's a legal claim.
kind regards,
Shaun.
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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.
Thanks Shaun, I didn't appreciate that UK SME's were considered so litigious? Personally speaking as an SME business owner I like our advisors to be very direct with informal advice and I always understand the accompanying caveats. I don't think I would hire an advisor who beats around the bush!
unfortunately we seem to be becoming a little America over sueing people at the drop of a hat so professional advisors need to adopt pretty non commital approaches to advice of that nature.
Its all in the approach.
You would be saying the the client things along the lines of
"well, due to competition in your market sector there's a downward pressure on selling prices, have you considered all of the various options for reducing costs in order to maintain margin?".
The client tells you that they have thought about x & y and then you come in knowing that they are able to save money in other areas by changing suppliers and advse them to start looking at saving money in areas a, b and c.
For actual issues within the books / business where one is not giving advice related to third party products one still adopts the age old tried and tested home truths approach to keep clients on the straight and narrow.
There is a gap though between that sort of advice and advising clients over perhaps x electricity supplier is cheaper than y which there are plenty of companies out there who specialise in that sort of thing (I imagine yours being one of them).
But, you would not say go to Uswitch or whoever, you would say look on the net as there are plenty of comparrison sites out there which puts the emphasis on the client but you know full well that the answer that they need will be on page one of the google search that they use.
All in all I think that nobody who has studied Audit would be cavalier about the inherent risks associated with advice and the threats to one's objectivity that such creates.
A client asks me about the treatment of a bit of PPE then I'm happy to tell them and know that IAS16, 17 and 23 are there to be quoted chapter and verse back up my arguement.
Someone asks me about changing utility companies then its personal opinion and facts applicable at that moment which may not be true the next day.
Thats not accountancy advice, thats just guessing.... Ok, lets not talk about forecasts and projections, lol.
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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.
In 1994, I was at a conference where a confident business owner said he had never felt the need to have professional indemnity insurance. Almost twenty years later, and in the face of the modern trend to blame others for every misfortune and to seek compensation/redress for even minor inconveniences, who dares to be without PI insurance today?
And advice on something outside the scope of your declared business activities will not be insured.
I write this knowing I will not be popular...........it does strike me that one of the reasons accountants may have lost ground in being "trusted advisors" to businesses is that the approach is often too negative with downside obsession. Of course, prudence, etc is a necessity but businesses often want a view (even if caveated to hell), and if their accountant/bookkeeper won't give it, they go elsewhere. I say this as a business owner and a former accountant.
Thanks for feedback, though have to say the limited comments thus far don't fit with the accountants I have spoken with who seemed keen to go beyond their core remit to provide their clients with additional support.
but that arguement follows the logic of only wanting to listen to people who agree with you.
You are completely right of course, a good accountant will look at the business of client from the perspective of what can go wrong.
They do that because they want client businesses to succeed and success can only come through ensuring that the business is robust and protected.
You still cannot hope to defend against every eventuallity but you do try to put the client in as good a position as possible to weather the coming storms as so often when things are going well clients only see the calm waters ahead.... Not the coming storm or edge of a waterfall that they are approaching.
Also of course in a culture where advice taken and acted upon puts the advisor in a position where they may be required to put the client in the position that they would have been in had they not acted upon such advice does make us wary about what advice is given to the point where quite often with SME's anything beyond keeping clients out of jail and off the HMRC most wanted list is simply not worth the fee's available.
And therein lies another problem. SME's do not want to, or cannot pay the sort of fee's required to mitigate the risk to the accountants livelihood.
kind regards,
Shaun.
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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.
Who are they qualified with? (Chartered (ICAEW, ICAS, ICAI), Chartered Certified (ACCA), Incorporated (IFA), AAT, AIA, ATT, CIMA, Cipfa... thats not an exhaustive list)
When did they qualify? (Emphasis on ethics and risk is relatively recent (post 2007). The world of accountancy has changed a lot post 2000 due to the likes of Enron / Worldcom / Tyco, with serious emphasis shifts reflecting adherance to the IFAC code of ethics for practicing accountants).
You will always find variances between accountants.
Look at the different personalities on here. For example,
I am provisional wing prudent applying the letter of the law / standard / HMRC guidance.
Mark and Michelle (Marks and Foxy) I would say are more realists applying an element of common sense to scenarios (even though HMRC guidance is on occassion lacking in it).
Oops, got to go out, talk later,
Shaun.
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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.
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.
Like Shaun, I do not see that giving comparative advice about various suppliers' prices is part of what I do: it's certainly not included in my PII proposal. I would be willing to observe that a client's costs seem relatively high, if I felt they were, and that there are more competitive deals to be had, but I would not be willing to go further than that. If I gave a recommendation "conversationally" it would not be as a cost adviser and I would neither profit from the recommendation, nor expect to be held responsible if the person was dissatisfied.
If pressed to conduct research, I would want additional payment and I would want to extend my insurance beforehand. But why would a client ask me for such advice? Because he doesn't want to pay a fair price for his cost review, I would suggest.
Thanks, interesting. Does seem there is a split in the accounting profession. On one hand you have more general business advisors willing to take on other client needs and on the other you have a more rigid, core, nuts and bolts offering. I guess there must still be a market for the latter but surely coming under a bit of pressure given technology innovation like the various cloud accounting packages which are cropping up? Again, as a business owner, we can do the accounting ourselves - what interests us is advisors that share their all round business experience with us.
yes, I make quite a good living from business owners who have been doing their own accounts.
Never fails to be funny to see their faces when they realise how much they have been costing themselves by not using a professional.
I've seen no pressure from cloud offerings at all. Main problem that I have is smaller clients thinking that they have to use Sage if they are in business and for many businesses it's a sledgehammer to crack a nut (there is no reason at all that any IT contractor or indeed single person service provider should be using Sage).
I do offer other services so not just compliance stuff.
I also give advice where I am employed by a client to do so and such advice will be used only internal to the organisation in order to improve the bottom line.
However, like Iain I would not offer advice that I was not covered to.
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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.
