It’s the one thing that all prospective clients want to know, but is something that appears to be steeped in mystery by the vast majority of accounting businesses.
How much do we need to pay you to get the job done?
In all honesty, there is a reason why a lot of accounting businesses don’t publicly set a “one size fits all” policy in terms of their pricing. Because every business is different. And the needs of every business is different.
Put it into perspective. I could spend £175k building a 3 bedroom house, or I could spend £500,000 building a 3 bedroom house. At the end of the day I’ve still got a house, right? Well, kind of. But actually, you’ll have two completely different specifications, which will have had two different requirements on build, and will likely have used different materials and components to get there. For one person, £175,000 is what they need. For another, they want the £500,000 version.
That’s exactly the same for accounting services.
So, what I’ve just done is, basically, not answered the question I set out to. Because it’s actually impossible to do so without speaking to you, finding out how you want to work with us, what you want us to do, how frequently and so on. That’s why we'd always want to jump onto a discovery call to get an idea about your business, or meet up for a coffee and then price things up.
But, let's just take a look at a few generic scenarios so that you can get a feel for what it might cost to work with us.
Subcontractor wants to pay as little tax and do his own bank account postings
Dave owns his own company and works primarily as a subcontractor to other builders/contractors. He provides digger driving services. The company isn’t VAT registered, and Dave wants to do everything he can to make sure he files what he needs, on time, and pays as little tax as he can along the way. Dave’s happy keeping his paperwork on Receipt Bank, invoicing out of Xero and keeping his bank reconciliation up to date himself. Dave sometimes has a few questions, so he likes to know he can drop us an email any time during the month.
In this scenario, we’d expect to provide Dave the following:
Company accounts & tax return, plus confirmation statement
Directors self-assessment return
Payroll for one employee (Dave)
Complete of his company CIS reclaim paperwork
Xero & Receipt Bank licences (because we get it cheaper than off the shelf)
Half an hour of support time each month.
For all of this, Dave’s probably looking at investing around £130-£140 a month with us to keep on top of everything.
Darren's Developments Limited
Dave's brother Darren is also in construction, but he works as a “general builder” (hate that term). The company works directly with consumers on all building work, from new build property construction, extensions and internal work.
The company uses a number of subcontractors on its sites and also employs two full time employees, as well as Darren as a director.
The company is comfortably turning over £500,000 each year and is VAT registered. The company has its own bookkeeper who takes care of the finances on Xero and Receipt Bank.
Darren is looking for someone to take care of the payroll, CIS returns, VAT returns, annual accounts/tax returns and also wants to have 6-monthly meetings to go over the business. Like Dave, Darren likes to have the option to get in touch with any off the cuff questions as they crop up.
For a business like this we’d be expecting a business to be investing somewhere between £230 - £270 each month.
Designs by Daisy Ltd
This company provides architectural services to both commercial and domestic customers. The business employee 7 full time architects, 1 admin assistant and an office manager. The company is turning over around £45,000 per month but is struggling to return a decent profit for the two business owners/directors. The business wants all the compliance work completed (accounts, tax returns, payroll, VAT returns) plus regular monthly management accounts and quarterly meetings to work on the business. The bookkeeping is all handled in house by the practice manager.
A business with these types of needs can initially look at spending £430 - £480 each month with us.
Hopefully you’ll see from the above that these services are all provided to fit the needs of the business. Your business may need to chop and change items between each of these scenarios, or add in completely separate services entirely.
It’s quite often that we’ll have clients ask us to assist them with raising finance, obtaining loans, forecasting/budgeting and lots more in between!
If you think that the services we provide might work for your business hop over to our How We Work page to see if our service fits your needs.
