JSA, SJD and 1st accountancy

**tim123** · 23 October 2006, 09:19

There are two things that are important about accounts.

How much they charge

and

How efficient they are.

There is no correlation at all between the two.

tim

**Cipenman** · 23 October 2006, 13:13

I am a client of JSA and have recently been looking through SJD's website. I have been with JSA for a long time and have been quite frustrated with them most of that time. My frustrations come are:

Not understanding them, both from a point of them translating accountant speak into plain English and from an accent point of view.

Issues with software, JSA supply software for accounting which the client has to fill in, but I have always found this software restrictive and with issues. For instance the current software is web based and nearly always disconnects me after 30 minutes plus use, tech support always tell me that it is due to inactivity, but this invariably is not the case.

Lack of proactive assistance in tax management, although initially some guidence was given towards tax planning, all planning is now down to me.

The information on theSJD website leads me to beleive that they are a lot more helpful than JSA, but I would like to see the opinion of a SJD client.

Colin

**malvolio** · 23 October 2006, 14:12

I use SJD and am perfectly happy to reccomend them.

But as I have said before, the cost of an accountant is nothing to do with what you pay them.

Work out how much is your accountant saving you in correct filing of data and calculating correct payments so avoiding interest and penalties (probably £200-ish a year, but last time I tried it was rather more), plus however much time you would need to do it yourself accurately at double your normal rate, since you would be using up your downtime to do it (in my case something like 15 man days a year, or around £15k, and I was an accountant in a former life)

JSA, SJD and 1st accountancy