Practice advice please
How do you handle this situation?
A client is given a quote for a one-off job that is outside the scope of annual services. This example is a change of limited company registered office & trading address, and requires updating at Companies House & various HMRC offices (eg. CT, SA, VAT & PAYE).
The client decides to save the accountancy fee & do it themselves, but keeps calling us for advice on what to do.
End result ... it takes us far longer 'helping' the client than if we did the job in the first place, and we would have got a small fee.
We are not talking rocket science. It is mostly the clients laziness, eg. what tax offices are they, what should I put in the letter, etc. The same clients tend to call us for simple info, eg. their NI NO, because it is easier to ring us, than to find it themselves (their words, not mine).
Fortunately, we only have one or two clients like this, and they are generally good in other ways, but I get annoyed that they are so unwilling to pay a small fee but are very willing to take up a lot of our time.
I can think of many solutions to the problem, but ideally, I would somehow like to get the message across that if this continues we will have to increase their fees, but do not want to offend the client, or lose their business.
Any ideas of how to get the message across?
Sometimes clients can be a total pain
Clients can be a pain.
We had one who knew I am a keen photographer. She wanted advice on which camera to buy and I suggested a Nikon.
Couple of days later the phone rang. She had apparently rung me whilst she was in the shop and I wasnt in the office at the time. She was playing hell because I hadnt been available while she was in the shop to advise her on which of the 2 cameras she was looking at was the best.
Clients - don't you just love them.
Scope the engagement
If you are working with fixed fees then clearly define what is and isn't included within the fixed fee and the basis of charging anything outside the arrangement and the time charge for each level of staff inlcuding yourself.
In instances like this, you could then charge the support in line with your agreement as this would clearly be additional work to the fixed fee.
The more time you give to time stealers the more they want. Fortunately, as you mention, they are few and far between so you can always take a view as to not penalise the majority of your good clients, but have these measures in place should you need them.
Jason Dormer
Seahorse (UK) Ltd - For accountants and bookkeepers
Clients have no shame
A client's annual return was due and I would do it for £15 but the client said she'd do it herself. I ended up charging her £60 for her phone calls trying to explain what she had on the screen and what she was supposed to input!
Options
As Jason says, this could be a client who is looking to nick some time because they didn’t accept the offer of a paid service BUT why didn’t you offer multiple services?
Option 1 could be doing it for them for say £300. Option 2 could be a checklist with telephone support £150. Option 3 would be the free checklist.
If you make this offer you are offering free within the fixed fee but protecting your resources. When you make the offer you can explain that "doing it" and "telephone support" is outside the scope of the fixed fee because it is not related to the annual accounts and tax return.
I assume you have a really tight fee otherwise you would be happy do this as part of your service? If this is the case be careful because this part of your service could be what the client values as they said “it is easier to ring us, than to find it themselves” - making your client's life easier is what it is about, isn't it?
Ask yourself a key question - are you blowing the budget because your operational processes are weak or overkill? If you are spending 5-10 hours or more at the year-end I would encourage you to focus on getting more effective rather than trying to bill for minor from client and compromise your service value.
Bob
Portfolio Marketing for Accountants
Value not time
@Pete - you are right - if you have set your fees to return you what you want from your resources. But, not because it is 5 minutes.
What if you could save or make the client £20,000 with five minutes - would you look to charge then or give it away?
Bob
Interesting debate
What I do is a mixture of both. Clients who ask for minor advice, sometimes over and over again on the same topic, will continue to keep calling unless deterred by fees, whereas other clients will only call for advice when it is really needed. I include telephone support as part of my monthly fees, but draw the line when this is abused. For instance, providing copies of payslips, when they have been provided to the client monthly, would be chargeable as you are not providing support, you are overcoming their poor administration. If you don't charge, they will put no value on correcting their poor administration.
Ray
Common sense spoken by Michael56J above
One problem I do have with the whole fixed fee thing is that you sometimes spend more time on agreeing the fixed fee than on doing the work.
Particularly you seem to get some clients who like negotiating and just want to take up your time in some sort of bartering exercise. I find that whole thing disheartening, as it means that something designed to make life easier for everybody just ends up as being another trial.
send a bill
Send a bill for slightly less than the amount quoted "for advice in connection with registering your change of address with various official bodies" and a covereing letter explaining that whilst you did not do it you did advise on it