I'm a partner with Burton Sweet, chartered accountants & business advisers, and run the Shepton Mallet office down in beautiful Somerset. Despite the name, Shepton Mallet is actually the home of Glastonbury Festival! I trained in audit and corporate tax with Grant Thornton and came to my current position in 1991 via small local practices and a stint with a training consortium.
I have the distinction of being one of the original members of the AccountingWEB editorial team, having been a freelance writer here for a year or so before John Stockdyk joined!
We had a set of accounts rejected recently for exactly the same reason, signatory's name missing. In our case the signature wasn't legible at all - indeed I had to ask the Board who had signed the balance sheet and even they weren't sure!!
I have also had audited accounts rejected recently because we had the wrong wording for the signing auditor's name.
Looks like CH are looking very closely at obvious procedural stuff at the moment.
I think Adrian Pearson has summed up what I would have said.
I would just add that as far as the "expensive accountants are a ripoff" jobes go, it's not compulsory to have an accountant (as I tell some of my clients). I think we can assume that clients are happy to pay the level of fee they are paying, otherwise they would walk anyway.
It's amazing how often juniors omit it! If they are any good the bank postings will be OK, it's all the adjustments after that where it tends to go pear shaped.
It looks like an OK CRM tool if you're a standalone PC user, but (correct me if I'm wrong) I don't believe it works with Exchange so we have never used it here.
I was disappoined to scroll down this debate and find that everyone has completely missed the point here! If you only think about the Kindle and e-book readers as gadgets you will completely miss what's happening here. As far as Amazon is concerned, the Kindle really isn't anything to do with the device itself, it's all about how they disctribute books, and how increasingly the iPod generation want to buy them.
The Kindle is a pretty good stab at a reader using current technology (I personally think the iPad is better), but as everyone has observed neither quite match the reader experience of having a well-thumbed book. The makers know that - and I suspect they don't care!
What IS clever about the Kindle is that you can have a built-in 3G card - which costs you nothing - so you can browse Amazon online, from anywhere, choose a book and download it instantly. Stuck in a station or airport with nothing to read? On a long journey and you have finished your book? The Kindle gives you an instant fix. The iPad does the same, but you have to pay for the 3G connection (or use Wi-Fi).
The Times app on the iPad is another example of how content can be delivered to these devices anywhere, any time. Magazine subscriptions are going to be the next big thing on the iPad in 2011 once Apple sorts out its pricing structure. Then you'll be able to get magazines in full colour delivered direct to your reader device, they'll just be there when you switch it on.
So forget how clunky the reader devices are at the moment and look at how this is changing how printed material is sold and distributed. I think the next year could be very interesting.
I wish I only had a couple of boxes waiting for collection - I reckon we have close on 50 here! We have even had some ex-clients' paperwork over 7 years old that we shredded after issuing the appropriate Recorded Delivery warning letters!
After posting back the smaller packages and returning whatever we can by hand we are still left with too many boxes of stuff. The trouble is that we often send the draft accounts to clients and finalise them by phone/email, then next year we forget to return last years records when they bring in the next lot, and it just snowballs from there.
We have now circulated a list of records to be returned to the professional team and encouraged them to call by these clients en route and return these old papers. I know we have 6 bankers boxes of records for a company I drive past twice a day, I just need to put them in the boot and call in. In fact, I'm making a point of doing so, and find that it's quite a good PR exercise - call in, return the records, have a chat and maybe a coffee. It turns a chore into an excuse to say hello and make the client feel that we care!
In answer to the specific question, we don't charge for storage and don't recharge the postage to clients for returning their paperwork.
I'm with Sue on this. Keep it simple, pay him a dividend and let him keep all the property stuff outside the company.
Involving the company has huge potential to come back and bite him later, it makes property dealing very difficult in future. What if he decides to move back into the previous house and let the new one, etc etc?
I'm afraid it's no comfort, but this almost seems to be the norm these days. I don't know why there's still a page on the SA return for the taxpayer to nominate someone else to receive refunds when HMRC seems to ignore this request in 99% of cases.
I have a client who negotiates complex share losses with HMRC and has always been paid out of the tax repayments, which have always been sent to him in the past. He is probably going to go bust this year as a result of HMRC sending virtually all of the repayments direct to the taxpayers who, as you have discovered, are remarkably reluctant to pay fees if the agreement was for them to have been deducted at source from the tax rebate.
We use the Digita tax products and have been looking at their accounts too. They are priced around the same as the other big players if you're a larger firm, but I know Digita also has a large and loyal following among sole practitioners too, so they must have a fairly flexible pricing structure.
They have the advantage that all their products work fine as standalone, or if you want to mix and match with other suppliers, but they can also be integrated as an overall pracice suite, so you get the best of both worlds.
I think we all share Chris's concern, at least in private!
Microsoft has tried several time to break into the UK SME accounting market and discovered that it's too small and is already tied up by the current market leaders. The SaaS providers have done a good job in the last year or two to break down the likes of Sage and QuickBooks, but there is no doubt that there are too many of them to survive in the long term. Who will fall by the wayside? I have no idea. KashFlow has a great presence in the SME arena generally and looks likely to be around for the long haul. Xero is already an established major player in New Zealand and Australia, so although it's relatively new in the UK it has a strong pedigree down under. There are no guarantees, but I think either of these is as safe a bet as you can get.
We have clients using both Xero and KashFlow, but we prefer Xero for two main reasons:
a) the bank feed is unique, if you bank with HSBC you never need to enter bank transactions manually again. Xero are promising feeds from the other banks soon (Gary - got a date yet?). All software will do this once the UK abolished cheques, but that's a few years down the line.
b) Xero is just a more elegant solution, it looks nice and client like using it.
My answers
Me too
We had a set of accounts rejected recently for exactly the same reason, signatory's name missing. In our case the signature wasn't legible at all - indeed I had to ask the Board who had signed the balance sheet and even they weren't sure!!
I have also had audited accounts rejected recently because we had the wrong wording for the signing auditor's name.
Looks like CH are looking very closely at obvious procedural stuff at the moment.
Adrian has said it already
I think Adrian Pearson has summed up what I would have said.
I would just add that as far as the "expensive accountants are a ripoff" jobes go, it's not compulsory to have an accountant (as I tell some of my clients). I think we can assume that clients are happy to pay the level of fee they are paying, otherwise they would walk anyway.
The accountancy accrual!
It's amazing how often juniors omit it! If they are any good the bank postings will be OK, it's all the adjustments after that where it tends to go pear shaped.
Not for Exchange
It looks like an OK CRM tool if you're a standalone PC user, but (correct me if I'm wrong) I don't believe it works with Exchange so we have never used it here.
I think you have all missed the point!
I was disappoined to scroll down this debate and find that everyone has completely missed the point here! If you only think about the Kindle and e-book readers as gadgets you will completely miss what's happening here. As far as Amazon is concerned, the Kindle really isn't anything to do with the device itself, it's all about how they disctribute books, and how increasingly the iPod generation want to buy them.
The Kindle is a pretty good stab at a reader using current technology (I personally think the iPad is better), but as everyone has observed neither quite match the reader experience of having a well-thumbed book. The makers know that - and I suspect they don't care!
What IS clever about the Kindle is that you can have a built-in 3G card - which costs you nothing - so you can browse Amazon online, from anywhere, choose a book and download it instantly. Stuck in a station or airport with nothing to read? On a long journey and you have finished your book? The Kindle gives you an instant fix. The iPad does the same, but you have to pay for the 3G connection (or use Wi-Fi).
The Times app on the iPad is another example of how content can be delivered to these devices anywhere, any time. Magazine subscriptions are going to be the next big thing on the iPad in 2011 once Apple sorts out its pricing structure. Then you'll be able to get magazines in full colour delivered direct to your reader device, they'll just be there when you switch it on.
So forget how clunky the reader devices are at the moment and look at how this is changing how printed material is sold and distributed. I think the next year could be very interesting.
Only a couple?
I wish I only had a couple of boxes waiting for collection - I reckon we have close on 50 here! We have even had some ex-clients' paperwork over 7 years old that we shredded after issuing the appropriate Recorded Delivery warning letters!
After posting back the smaller packages and returning whatever we can by hand we are still left with too many boxes of stuff. The trouble is that we often send the draft accounts to clients and finalise them by phone/email, then next year we forget to return last years records when they bring in the next lot, and it just snowballs from there.
We have now circulated a list of records to be returned to the professional team and encouraged them to call by these clients en route and return these old papers. I know we have 6 bankers boxes of records for a company I drive past twice a day, I just need to put them in the boot and call in. In fact, I'm making a point of doing so, and find that it's quite a good PR exercise - call in, return the records, have a chat and maybe a coffee. It turns a chore into an excuse to say hello and make the client feel that we care!
In answer to the specific question, we don't charge for storage and don't recharge the postage to clients for returning their paperwork.
Yes, keep it simple
I'm with Sue on this. Keep it simple, pay him a dividend and let him keep all the property stuff outside the company.
Involving the company has huge potential to come back and bite him later, it makes property dealing very difficult in future. What if he decides to move back into the previous house and let the new one, etc etc?
Seems to happen all the time
I'm afraid it's no comfort, but this almost seems to be the norm these days. I don't know why there's still a page on the SA return for the taxpayer to nominate someone else to receive refunds when HMRC seems to ignore this request in 99% of cases.
I have a client who negotiates complex share losses with HMRC and has always been paid out of the tax repayments, which have always been sent to him in the past. He is probably going to go bust this year as a result of HMRC sending virtually all of the repayments direct to the taxpayers who, as you have discovered, are remarkably reluctant to pay fees if the agreement was for them to have been deducted at source from the tax rebate.
Have a look at Digita
We use the Digita tax products and have been looking at their accounts too. They are priced around the same as the other big players if you're a larger firm, but I know Digita also has a large and loyal following among sole practitioners too, so they must have a fairly flexible pricing structure.
They have the advantage that all their products work fine as standalone, or if you want to mix and match with other suppliers, but they can also be integrated as an overall pracice suite, so you get the best of both worlds.
Xero gets my vote
I think we all share Chris's concern, at least in private!
Microsoft has tried several time to break into the UK SME accounting market and discovered that it's too small and is already tied up by the current market leaders. The SaaS providers have done a good job in the last year or two to break down the likes of Sage and QuickBooks, but there is no doubt that there are too many of them to survive in the long term. Who will fall by the wayside? I have no idea. KashFlow has a great presence in the SME arena generally and looks likely to be around for the long haul. Xero is already an established major player in New Zealand and Australia, so although it's relatively new in the UK it has a strong pedigree down under. There are no guarantees, but I think either of these is as safe a bet as you can get.
We have clients using both Xero and KashFlow, but we prefer Xero for two main reasons:
a) the bank feed is unique, if you bank with HSBC you never need to enter bank transactions manually again. Xero are promising feeds from the other banks soon (Gary - got a date yet?). All software will do this once the UK abolished cheques, but that's a few years down the line.
b) Xero is just a more elegant solution, it looks nice and client like using it.