What would you charge for Bookkeeping, Vat and year end.

What would you charge for Bookkeeping, Vat and...

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I have been asked by a prospective new client to give him a price for monthly bookkeeping, vat returns , payroll, year end accounts and corporation tax return.

As a Sole Practitioner I don't usually do bookkeeping or payroll, however I have recently lost a couple of prospective clients who needed the "full package" and I am seriously considering taking on this client. If all goes well I'll look at offering bookkeeping services to some of my current clients along with prospective new clients.

I spoke to the client on the phone yesterday, he is popping in today for a quick meeting and I would like to give him some ball park figures for my fees.

The client is the sole director of  the limited company. The business is a café/bar, turnover £240k employing 3 staff and some casuals.From talking to the client there are a lot of cash payments and I get the impression he is not good with paperwork. He would drop all the paperwork off at my office monthly.

I'd be interested to know what others would quote for this work, ball park figures, Fixed fees rather than hourly rates. I am based in the rural North of England.

Replies (3)

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By Howard Marks
17th Dec 2015 09:32

Time spent

Surely you can only offer a fixed fee for this kind of thing once you get a feel for the workload involved?

 

Stick him on a 3 month trial billed by the hour, fixed fee to be put in place thereafter.

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paddle steamer
By DJKL
17th Dec 2015 09:58

Counting transactions to be entered into (?) may be the best way to budget for the data input.

For instance sales figures ,there are presumably up to 365 (or 366 in a busy year), but if these need entered with multiple cash expenditures deducted before agreeing with bank the time to enter each day's figures may increase. Even the most inept client can be trained to fill in z figures onto a daily sheet (your design) and list invoices paid cash from sales and agree net to banking figures, this will make data input so much simpler.

Purchase invoices, have a rough look at last year's files to estimate number and budget how long each will take to input. (I tend to manage non narrative described purchase invoice input at up to 40 invoices per hour including coding the invoices with NL code and PL code before data input- but I need a break after every hour or I go mad)

Review bank statements for  number drawn transactions (hopefully number lodged marries roughly with sales information-365/365)- how  you intend to input bank data will have a bearing?

I suspect you will not be able to charge your normal sorts of rates (per hour-even if you do not bill that way) for data input; either you employ someone for the data input or reduce your notional charge out -I certainly do this but I have none where I do all the data input, I tend to try to teach the clients to do this bit.

On the plus side if you compile the books the accounts preparation ought to be much faster, so time will be saved re this aspect, reviewing the records etc-you will likely be more familiar with the client's business than you really want to be.

Finally you need to invest in a good set of speakers for your computer- data input needs accompanied by music or Radio4 to avoid developing "issues" further down the line.

 

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By Ken Howard
17th Dec 2015 09:59

Similar but a convenience store

I have a similar client, but a convenience store, with 3 p/t staff, lots of cash payments, cash banked from the till, etc.  Likewise, we get a box with daily envelopes containing the till z report for that day, bills paid in cash, etc. along with the bank statements and bank paid invoices.  Overall, lots of transactions to enter, and cash to reconcile, made harder because they also have an in-store cash machine and a top-up e-card system and lottery, so probably worse than a cafe, but similar traits in terms of cash sales, lots of cash purchases and balancing the cash.

Likewise, we do weekly payroll, quarterly VAT returns and year end accounts and corporation tax return.

We currently charge £245 per month, so that's just under £3k per year, and likewise rural North West England.  The fee has steadily gone up over the years as things have got more complicated and time consuming and with weekly RTI etc, not to mention the client doing less himself and the state of records presented to us getting worse.

You REALLY need an example of what he's going to present you with and don't make any long term commitments.  Try to give him an hourly rate for the data entry (book-keeping) side of things and a fixed rate for the RTI, VAT, y/e accounts and CT returns, so you've plenty of wriggle room to increase fees if you end up spending more time on data entry due to incomplete or poor data presented to you.

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