Nightmare client has decided to leave me and move on. I cannot tell you how relieved I am. I should have said goodbye myself a lot earlier looking back. She just couldn't accept a lot of my advice, so I was fighting an uphill battle. I wonder what she'll make of the new accountants!
What's the most amazing excuse clients have given you for moving in the past?
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It's worse than that he's dead Jim.
I had a client's wife phone me up and tell me he'd died. He'd actually just gone to Oz for a year and wanted to escape the taxman.
Hotblack
I had a client's wife phone me up and tell me he'd died. He'd actually just gone to Oz for a year and wanted to escape the taxman.
A bit like Hotblack Desiato of Disaster Area; very underused piece of tax planning.
I had a client tell me that he didn’t require my services any longer as he had given up on the 9-5 lifestyle and technology to go live in the wilderness.
How did he tell me? Email.
Leaving
We had a client whose daughter (14 or 15 yo) spent a week on work experience with us. When she'd finished the client told us that she was going to take over all their tax/accountancy/VAT. Clearly our training methods are quite special.
Could have been worse
We had a client whose daughter (14 or 15 yo) spent a week on work experience with us. When she'd finished the client told us that she was going to take over all their tax/accountancy/VAT. Clearly our training methods are quite special.
Could have been worse, she could have decided to set up in practice on her own account.
Moving on .... but sacked just in time...
Following a Saturday Night / Sunday Morning 01:00am text conversation about why the client couldn't claim his saturday night drinking bill against tax, "but my mate says his accountant claims it, you're @@@@" then after an hour he decided i was rubbish accountant who didn't give him enough client care (his sales were £5,345 for the year. HIs fee was £125. And i was talking to him at 1AM on a Sunday morning......
He felt it was too expensive and I should be more attentive and available for him to call whenever he needed me.
I told him that we'd leave it there and I'll resign as his agent, followed by lots of pleading and creeping from him not to drop him.
So I sacked him first thing monday morning and got a letter from him Wednesday saying he'd decided to sack me. Ha. Too late.
When the new accountant wrote to me I advised him, (truthfully) that he had the privilege of being this person's 4th accountant in 17 months.
Report me to ACCA then
Took on new client as favour to good existing client "cos they go skiing together". Old accountant was useless, blah blah. First set of accounts £200k sales and £100k profit, not VAT registered. He said I'm not paying all that tax. Then emails me with a great idea. "We'll pretend the sales included VAT, so when we take the VAT off the profit is much lower" I replied that he'd have to pay the VAT to HMRC too. He emailed back, we'll ignore the VAT and if HMRC pick it up we'll say we thought the old accountant was taking care of it.
I replied "I'm not working for you anymore, and I can't recommend anyone else to work for you either"
His reply " I am going to report you for acting unprofessionally and leaving me in the lurch"
Ha Ha, the girls didn't like him anyway
best one
A personal tax return was charged at £100+vat for a few years
I proposed to increase it to £105+vat..the rise was disgraceful and he was off...
Nightmare client
I had a nightmare client that just did not listen to advice. She recently sacked me just before I was going to sack her. Her main complaint was that I got her into financial difficulties and in trouble with the taxman because I did not pay her tax! She then wrote a complaint letter to my senior partner saying that I acted unprofessionally as I filed her tax returns late (the letter was clearly drafted by her new accountant. I then had to waste my time documenting the date each tax return was prepared and sent to her a the dates reminders were sent to her which clearly demonstrated that it was her fault the accounts were filed late.
A sordid affair.
Years ago in my first job, a client came to us as his former agent had been caught sleeping with his wife.
When it came out I think he turned up and slapped the accountant round a bit and tipped his desk up on top of him, and carried on doing so every time he happened to drive past the guys office for a few years after that.
Needless to say when I was out doing the audit I was always best behaved, as he was clearly not the sort of guy you messed with.
His wife was a bit of a cougar like and used to scare the s*it out of me when she would come in the office if he wasn't around.
Now that's what I call added value!
Years ago in my first job, a client came to us as his former agent had been caught sleeping with his wife
I sacked an electrician Ltd company client this summer because ...the director felt his CIS activities were outside the scope of the CIS scheme and he subsequently de registered behind my back, !!
His DLA was over £60k debit balance for several years
He paid subbies and HMRC when he felt it was appropriate.
He knew it ALL.
I could go on and on and on .......
that was the best dis engagement email I ever wrote.
I had to dis-engage from my brother-in-law last year.
He wanted to do this and that. Didn't want to pay any tax etc.
Got an email of him last month begging me to do his accounts and that it'll be done all above board.
Due to the fact of who he is I couldn't say no. However my quote was extremely high and I haven't heard back from him ;-)
NOTE: Never have family as clients.
Overheads dear boy, overheads
Had a know-it-all client who bought and sold semi-classic cars. Most had 100% markup and yet when I did the accounts they showed a loss. "How can this be?" he said, "the accounts must be wrong, you are a rubbish accountant". We went through a few sales and I pointed out that this car had £1,000 of repairs, many cars had been shipped across England and back on a low loader driven by his employee. The cars were stored in an oversize and over priced heated warehouse. His reply was that the accounts must be wrong as he always went for a 100% markup, round and round went the conversation over several days until we finally fell out!
He did what!
Another one that caused mirth at a former practice, builder client left saying he'd found some-one else to do the work. Then we get a telephone call from HMRC, could we have a word with our client because it turned out he'd seen the adverts that if you get your return to HMRC before 31 October we'll calculate your tax for you. So he put all his bank statements, invoices and other paper work in a big parcel and posted it to HMRC thinking they'd prepare the accounts too. LOL.
I had one
thought all he had to do was send a spread sheet to....err....Companies house - which he did, asking them to advise how much tax was due.
£375 worth of penalties later he came to me to sort out the mess.
Didn't mind but the previous year I had offered to become his accountant and he declined!
Left me speechless
I had a client who had failed to pay in full for the previous year's tax return. I wrote a final email requesting payment and lo and behold he replied and said he was so sorry about the missed payment. He said he would sort it out and would drop in the information for the current tax return. I was thrilled as I thought he was a lost cause.
He did send in the info but failed to pay the bill for the last return. After several email and phone reminders to me asking me if his tax return was done, I finally had to spell it out on the phone that we weren't going to do the next tax return until the previous one was paid for. Then he got majorly stroppy and said that if he knew he would have to pay, he would have gone elsewhere! (What?) Then he said that I should have been happy that he got in touch again to rekindle the relationship and to give me more work. I was actually speechless. He then said he would think about it and get back to me. He later submitted the return himself.
Sage was cheaper!
We were supplying and supporting payroll software for £50/year and a user send an unpleasant email saying that they were moving to Sage 50 payroll because they'd pay a few £100 once and then never ever have to pay anything again... We were apparently ripping them off with out annual fee. I pointed out that he was wrong because of statutory updates; any given version of Sage payroll wouldn't last more than a couple of years even if they altered tax/NI bands themselves, but he wouldn't have it. A Sage dealer had told him that it was a one time fee.
Another client left because they left a renewal too late, would only pay by cheque, and assumed without asking that we wouldn't take their word for it and renew their licence before the cheque cleared. That was completely incorrect; we always took the client's word if they needed to run a payroll and issued them a licence straight away if they asked, yet it didn't stop the client from sending us a vile email slagging us off for what they imagined our policy to be.
Emails like this always hurt, but it was also satisfying to think that an idiot wasn't using the software any more...
spot on
Don't take on anyone you aren't quite sure about. That would have solved my own problem. Some of most academically gifted people can be utter morons whilst others, with very little brain power, can be adorable.
My rules for myself: As soon as client, previously thought to be kosher, acts oddly/gets stroppy on 2 separate occasions, my hands will do the walking all over my keyboard to type the goodbye email and the disengagement letter. Work out how much work done to date, prepare statement and promptly refund any monies paid in advance.
Any slagging off by client - post details immediately on AccountingWeb. Lots of people here know how it feels and can provide instant cure for depression!
I agree with a lot of this.
Incredible how sometimes really bright ones can be absolute pains, yet the ones who will never really "get" tax and accounts can be a pleasure to deal with. I can think of real life instances. The intellectual Colossus was even praised by a Prof I knew as being the brightest person he'd ever met. Anyway, this intellectual giant ended up doing his own SATR as sole trader. He included a deduction for his own wages. Then got an enquiry. Hahahaha!
Agree with the other point too. I have a very short tolerance these days for clients who start to p*ss me off. The exit rapidly approaches in those cases.
Moving to the coast
Many years ago, we had a client that phoned to say she no longer required our services as she was no longer going to be a taxpayer. As she moving to the coast and wouldn't need to deal with the Inland Revenue ...
VAT and a Doctor
We pondered this for ages - we had a Doctor who continually demanded that his Ltd Co be VAT registered as some of his friends were making money on the Flat Rate VAT Scheme. We investigated extensively and, as his next contract was with a hospital that would not pay VAT, suggested that we wait for some clarity on the issue. Not 'don't do it' but just 'on balance lets not do it yet as your next locum contract was considered VAT exempt by your client'. Not a perfect answer, but at the time as good as we could do, carefully considered and thought through.
He sacked us after we wrote our report (for free, because we were interested in the answers), joined an accountant who would do what they were told, registered for the FRVS and promptly had 6 months of VAT exempt payments. Last I heard he was ignoring the fact that all inputs are treated as VATable if you are on the FRVS.
I wish him well but also wish some of our colleagues were better at saying 'no'
Had a client
Who told me that he had realised that my fees were exorbitant, he had spoken to another accountant who had quoted a much lower fee. Perplexed I was, as usually my charges are a little cheaper than the local competition. 2 years later, found out that the "accountant" was a book keeper, albeit good, had just balanced the books, and had not completed his SA return, she hadn't been asked to and hadn't been paid for it. Who knows where the reminders were going. Anyway, couldn't help feeling a bit smug when he asked for my help, of course I said no!!
Slip
A client let it slip that he had property which he let out but had not declared. He realised what he had done as soon as it left his lips and about a week later transferred to another accountant, claiming that he was restructuring his business as he was 'paying too much tax' . Needless to say the transfer info letter included a note to that effect, and that he probably had not paid enough!