What do you look for in an accountant?

[Alan @ BroomeAffinity]

Apologies for the gratuitous market research but if you have time perhaps you could share with us what you actually want / need / expect from an accountant.

I would guess that you'd look for Contractor Expertise; Service Guarantees; Fast email / telephone response times; no surprises; fixed fees with NO add-ons; etc etc.

Is the marketing important or would you only respond to personal recommendation?

How important is the level of fee in the decision?

Are professional memberships important? I'm thinking mainly of PCG QA here?

Thanks for any comments, guys.

[oracleslave]

I would guess that you'd look for Contractor Expertise; Service Guarantees; Fast email / telephone response times; no surprises; fixed fees with NO add-ons; etc etc.

Is the maketing important or would you only respond to personal recommendation?

How important is the level of fee in the decision?

Are professional memberships important? I'm thinking mainly of PCG QA here?

Thanks for any comments, guys.

I would look at all the factors you mention regarding expertise, response times etc. Obviously I wouldn't know all that from the off so would probably go with a word of mouth type recommendation (which is what I did when I chose SJD)

Level of fee didn't really come into it for me. I mean the difference between £110 and £80 a month is not significant enough to sway me one way or another.

I think that professional memberships can only help.

[sidknows]

I would call them and see how long they have dealt with contractor accounts -- ie if they were managed company service providers before and overnight becmae accountants .. avoid them!

[SueEllen]

Recommendation from people who use the accountant and have similar businesses. Basically I rely on other's market research.

[chris79]

Blonde hair, blue eyes, trim figure and an open mind.

So far I've not yet found my ideal accountant.

[BrilloPad]

Blonde hair, blue eyes, trim figure and an open mind.

So far I've not yet found my ideal accountant.

massive norks

[Bumfluff]

massive norks

Norks yeeeeaaaaaaa ( * ) ( * )

[Cheshire Cat]

are you an accountant? are you looking for ways to better market yourself?
nothing can beat solid reputation and excellent customer service. the qualifications etc speak for themselves, but in terms of marketing, treat all your clients as though they were roman abramovich and you won't go far wrong.

[Sockpuppet]

Thanks for any comments, guys.

Essentially no fixed fee.

I mean a fixed fee that is variable depending on what you want done. I run my own payroll, bookeeping, vat returns etc so I don't want to be lumped in with someone that wants payroll and their hand held through VAT returns etc.


Essentially someone offering a service of "here is my sage data" or my case "here are my year end accounts I have prepared". Here is the nominal activity from sage. Assuming I am not lying and have stuck all the info in the corrent nominal codes (which I do) do you agree with the amount of corp tax I reckon that I should pay.

Simple. Last accounts charged me £900 for that. They won't get the business again.

[malvolio]

As a contractor, the QA badge...

I've been reccommended to use what turned out to be crap people before, so that doesn't help. If I were looking now the list would include awareness of the contractor market and issues, general awareness of current fiscal law, accessibilty (not necessarily physical access, but website and email addresses that point to people, for example), professional status and the quality of the intial communication - "We provide this, we expect you to do this, this is the format we would like you to use..." - impossible to define precisely but the comfort factor that you're dealing with a professional not a marketing machine.