Re: Shouldn't Interest Rates be Increased?

On 17 Jan, 12:14, Ronald Raygun <no.s...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
PeterSaxton wrote:
On 17 Jan, 10:37, Ronald Raygun <no.s...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Indeed, they wouldn't all need to go bust as such.  In a downturn
many business owners will find themselves with more time on their
hands and no way to spend it productively because they can't get
as many customers as they used to.  If they are also looking to
cut costs, they might decide that they can prepare their accounts
themselves, now that they have time to spare.  They only employed
an accountant before because in the time it would have taken them
to DIY, they could have earned more in their own line of business
than their accountant cost them.

That's interesting because one of my clients tried that. He ended up
paying me more to correct his errors.

Of course not every business owner's numeracy skills are up to the job,
and preparing accounts involves other stuff besides basic numeracy, so
I accept that there will be quite a few who, when they try, will make a
hash of it.  But others, particularly having seen and learnt from the
excellent work you've done for them, will have developed an understanding
of what is required and will be able to apply the same principles to
different actual numbers, and if they follow all the marvellous guidance
available from those nice HMRC leaflets, will be able to get it right.

I have two clients who studied accounting and it's interesting that
while they may get 95% of stuff right the 5% that's incorrect makes
the rest of the effort worthless.

Some clients have bookkeepers and I only have to do a few adjustments
and prepare statutory accounts and tax which given my accounts
production and tax software is great.

The rest of my accounts clients will either give me bank statements
with documentation or keep spreadsheets for sales invoices, bank
receipts, bank payments and business expenditure paid personally.

I love your confidence in clients getting it right. One client told me
he was considering changing to the flat rate scheme. I asked him
various questions and based on his answers I explained it would be to
his advantage. Another client, who has a business relationship with
the first client, discussed the flat rate scheme with the first client
and rather than discussing it with me just told me he had changed to
the flat rate scheme. I explained that the bookkeeping was totally
different so I went to see him to explain it and it turned out he
would end up paying a lot more VAT. One panicked phone call to HMRC
later and they'd agreed to cancel his flat rate application. Although
both clients are graphic designers one is mainly dealing with web work
and the other deals more with printers and other materials suppliers.
You'll find there's a lot more to this accounting stuff than people
think. Watching somebody else for a few hours or reviewing working
papers won't get you anywhere to what's needed.
.

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