After out last weekly meeting, we've decided that we no longer take on DIY clients and are desiging a system for onboarding new and some existing clients onto our ecosystem from start to finish. We are so finished with DIY clients and everyone in the office was delighted with the decision. We spend so much time hand holding and sort out the complete dogs dinners that clients prepare that it is economically unfeasable.
Does anyone else have a policy on their DIY clients or do you, like we did, take the clients rubbish and try to correct it?
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If you mean clients who do their own bookkeeping etc, yes I am thinking I might also go that way (or only where they employ a salaried bookkeeper).
So sick of "quick questions" from clients who don't want to pay us to do their bookkeeping but demand super quick replies when they don't know how to do something it' sbeen stressing me out
Im actually thinking of ditching one this year. Luckily I only have 1 DIY client that falls in to your explanation.
its a two man band, with their relative doing the book keeping, every year things are massively wrong, like you say, half the reconciliation or bank statements are missing leading to completely incorrect balance sheets etc.
And each year so far, when I question the "book keeper" on certain things, she likes to pass the buck over to the two partners, when I explain that if it is her who does the book keeping then it is her whom needs to answer the questions, it falls on death ears.
So I think this year, will be the last.
We either have clients who use "approved" bookkeeping methods, or ex-clients.
if clients wont after the first year switch to our methods for year two there is rarely a third year.
I have no intention of ditching d-i-y clients. All you have to do is quote them a fee that makes the time spent worthwhile. There should be no such thing as an unprofitable client: there are merely clients where the fee is too low. Just put it up, and say take it or leave it.
Our clients do their own bookkeeping on FreeAgent...but other than that, I agree. Ie we used to have a cheaper package where clients did their own payroll/VAT/personal tax, theoretically with no input from us.
When clients did ask Qs about those things, reality is we have to answer, but they'd begrudge paying for it. Where they didn't, sometimes they'd make a hash of it, which we'd then have to sort out (again, they'd begrudge paying for it).
So we either oversee everything (and hence accept reasonable responsibility for everything), or we don't want to get involved.
Some of our best clients are DIY clients, their bookkeeping is excellent the accounts are a doddle to do. They are nice fee earners.
We do have some who's bookkeeping is terrible and they are always asking questions, but they pay more for this. Those clients that do not listen to advice and book keeping continues to be terrible are given significant fee increases (after a warning that fees will increase if they dont improve their record keeping). If they go, nothing lost, if they stay, then at least your being paid well to put up with the rubbish and the endless advice.
As long as clients are paying the correct amount of fees for the service you provide, I think you are loosing out by banning all DIY clients.
We have some DIY clients who are fantastic, to the point were I'm thinking why do you need us at all?
Others are bad, in part down to not knowing what to do, and I feel in part down to the software, despite what the adverts say, you still need to have a basic competence to use it, and if you don't know how to do bookkeeping, you wont be able to use the software effectively.
The software also makes a difference in how easy it can be to fix the clients mess, some is straightforward to unravel, others are not, Personally we find QB to be horrendous to sort out if its gone wrong.
I don't think ditching a client is necessarily the only way to go, there are opportunities to explain to the client their shortcomings and increase the year end fees or to take on the bookkeeping yourself, orto get some training in for the client - make the client feel loved, you are doing it for their benefit and they'll get on board