Should I sack my accountant?

I guess this question is best directed at other customers. I appreciate you need to be unbiased. Like a lot of small business owners my knowledge of accountancy is very limited which is why I thank god for FreeAgent helping me with my books. What worries me however is knowing just how proactive your accountant should be. I would expect them to look at my account on a regular basis to make sure it looks ok. I shouldn't have to prod them every few weeks. I'm concerned that at some point things might suddenly go pear shaped and of course it will all be 'my fault'.

Lee,

Reckon that's a difficult one. If they were more proactive, you could probably expect a lot more regular contact from them via invoices for their time.

We're in a similar position to you, I guess, and I was after the same kind of proactive service. I think you should expect them to get involved at certain tax calendar dates, but otherwise, they won't bother unless they know something is wrong which will probably involve a prod from you when you notice figures not adding up.

We have just started using an accountant (who was very impressed with the power of FAC and its functionality) but despite being able to provide them with the info easily accessed in FAC, they still had to do their due diligence and check official bank statements etc... Consequently we still got a hefty bill.

I think what I'm trying to say is that having an accountant look at your books every month will be costly and probably unnecessary as they will review your accounts in their entirety at year end and charge you accordingly.

We have agreed a more formal arrangement whereby we can have a little 'health check' with our accountant each quarter to make sure we're doing everything right if we think its needed. To be honest, being able to see everything in FAC means we wont need to do this unless something goes horribly wrong.

If you go down this route, you won't then be frustrated if you find your bean counter hasn't been logging in every morning to check your sums!

Hope thats of some help

Jason

Is there somewhere where Free Agent customers have rated their accountants? My accountants failed to set up my flat rate scheme properly despite me paying them extra for this and seem to have done precious little for me. I am very likely to migrate to another accountant who uses Free Agent as I have become a big fan of it.