It may sound a little odd, an Accountant giving ways to reduce their income, but any Accountant should primarily be concerned with giving a good service to his client.

To my way of thinking, letting clients know how to reduce their cost of accountancy, is a good thing.

1.      Get Organised.

As in a previous article, getting organised with your books and records is not only good business practice, but also a sure way to save money with your Accountant.  Accountants loath being handed a bag of mixed invoices and being expected to sort them out into date order and file them before any work can begin. Sort your paperwork out before giving it to your Accountant.

2.      TRY AND ENTER AS MUCH DATA AS YOU CAN.

This will depend on what service you have opted for with your Accountant; if your Accountant is looking after all your books then you can ignore this. However, the more data that you’re able to enter for yourself, the better it will be on cost. There are many systems out there now, particularly cloud based software that will allow an Accountant to take care of the functions you don’t want to do and allow you to do the things you do. Both the Accountant and client can access the same data and system effectively, meaning your Accountant becomes an outsourced accountancy department at your disposal.

3.      Reconcile your data.

If you look after your own books, (either using Sage, QuickBooks, or just spread sheets), always make sure that the data reconciles to the bank statements etc. What this means is that the data is matched, so any discrepancies are found and can be explained, or if an error is identified it can be fixed.

If this isn’t done, the Accountant has to go through the data and check to see if it matches to the bank statement. Reconciling your accounts will save your Accountant time and therefore save you money. Handing your Accountant a fully reconciled set of books will make drawing up a set of ‘end of year accounts’ significantly easier, which your Accountant should reflect in the price he or she charges you.

4.      BE AWARE OF DEADLINES

Accountancy is massively deadline driven, if you hand your Accountant your data the day before an important deadline is due they‘re likely to charge you a premium rate for having to drop everything. If you give your Accountant plenty of time to deal with your affairs then he or she won’t have to charge a premium rate.

5.      Ask questions.

Ask as many questions of your Accountant as you can, learn what you need to know in order to run your business effectively. Try to become informed about the issues facing your business, ask your Accountants to let you know about changes in business practice / law etc.  This will allow you to ask the right questions of your Accountant and guide him or her to do the best thing for you.

6.      Be clear.

Be very clear exactly what services your Accountant will be providing your business and how much they will cost. Let them know that you need to be informed in advance of any potentially higher charges agreed and the reasons.

Duncan Jones MAAT

Managing Director of Revoy & Jones Limited