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0114 321 7459Here's an overview of how we price our work and why:
The common question is how do accountants price there work and the simple answer is its complicated.
Some of the frequent gripes about accountants are that:
At Gravitate Accounting we are proud to have a clear and transparent pricing structure which allows you to see all the services we offer and hand pick exactly what you require – like picking off a menu. The aim of this page is to start taking you through the journey of how we price to give you reassurance we are the right accountants for you.
This pricing is based on the value added to your business and moves away from traditional pricing based on time costs. Time based pricing only benefits the accountants- the slower they work the more they get paid. It also puts clients off contacting their accountants weakening the relationship.
As a business we actively encourage you to contact us- the more we can understand your business the more we can add value and support your company grow!
Here are some of the common problems with pricing and what we've done to overcome them.
We offer bespoke pricing for all the work we do which is linked to the size of the business and the services you require.
We use a proposal software called GoProposal which ensures our pricing is consistent across all our clients- our services are set out in detail so you know exactly what you get from the services you have signed up for.
Here is a breakdown of the services we offer:
We are an accountancy practice that offers the traditional accounting services like year-end accounts and tax returns but we don’t shout about these services. The work we love to deliver is the advisory work where we can truly add value to your business and help support your growth!
It is important for us to keep in regular contact with you to keep up to date with the performance of the business and be your financial expert to support you in making business decisions. The last thing you want is to meet your accountant after the year.
As a minimum we request quarterly catch-ups - there is so much that can change in the business landscape in a short period of time so this regular contact ensures we are on top of everything.
Catch-up meetings are charged at £98 + VAT with a client FD and £51 + VAT with a Senior Digital Accountant or Client FC.
Topics we cover in the meeting:
We implement our Pre-Year End Tax Planning Review up to 3 months before your year-end so we can ensure you do everything possible to ensure you are operating as tax efficiently as possible. This includes reviewing current company performance so can:
1. Review allowable expenditure you have and haven't included
2. Consider accelerating expenditure to reduce tax in the current year
3. Consider investments to reduce tax
4. Overview of current salary and dividends
This one-off annual meeting is priced at £216 + VAT but our tax savings far exceed the cost.
This is a big step up on the catch-ups we mention above and in these Strategic Reviews, we will take a deep dive into the business's performance and discuss any areas that we have identified that will benefit from some closer attention, guided by the management reports which will be presented in the meeting and discussed in detail. This focuses on more than just the numbers - we identify key performance indicators that drive the business forward and set targets to achieve desired growth.
The pricing for this service starts at £260 + VAT but in the past, we have extended these details based on clients requirements.
With the ever-changing tax rates and brackets, there is no longer one fixed way to extracting funds from the business, we will review how you currently extract money from your business and ensure you are doing so in the most efficient manner from your business and personal tax position.
The pricing for this service starts at £132 + VAT.
We believe that every business should have a full-year financial budget to plan where you want to be heading. This gives direction to the owners and the entire team as to what the business is trying to achieve so you are all working in sync. We’ll also create, manage and update a rolling 12-month forecast so you always know what the future financial performance and position of the business looks like, based on what we already know today (committed sales and costs). This is about bringing the future into the present so you can do something about it.
This service can vary significantly from business to business and can be paid monthly or annually depending on the service - our simplest forecasts start at £1,200 + VAT but can easily go into the £5,000 + VAT mark.
Let us free you up to focus on what you specialise in the commercial elements of the business whilst we focus on what we specialise in, the finance function.
Systems will be put in place, including digitising the core accounting functions, so time is freed up for us to add true value to the success of your business by fulfilling the role of an external Finance Director.
By creating bespoke management accounts and bringing in the cashflow forecasts and budgets, together we will be in a perfect position to make informed business decisions.
We will support the growth of the business, from due diligence work and advising on acquisitions, to driving organic growth by providing detailed analysis.
Cash is king to any business and utilising software available can save time chasing individuals and automate the cash collection process allowing you to re-invest your profits earlier.
Our attendance at monthly board meetings will be beneficial to support discussions on the business’s performance and to provide a qualified external opinion on the company’s financial performance.
Although we hate charging for work on an hourly / day rate sometimes it is unavoidable. Our day rate for this service is £880 + VAT and we have worked with businesses from a day a month to 2 days a week.
We also offer a similar service at Financial Controller. At Gravitate Accounting we are all about ensuring the right work is completed at the right level so we offer a manager level support . This service is priced at £528 + VAT per day.
These are generally the services your business requires to remain compliant with the regulations with deadlines set with penalties issued if not hit.
We will support you through this process planning for taxes due way ahead deadlines to ensure you get no surprises.
As a limited company, you are required to prepare statutory accounts and submit these to Companies House annually within 9 months and a day of the year-end and a Corporation Tax Return within 12 months.
Our aim is to get these accounts submitted within 3 months of the year end giving you plenty of time to plan for your tax payment due 6 months after.
We invoice all our fees monthly to help spread the costs over the year and avoid one-off fees for our clients.
The fee is dependent on turnover and size of the business. As an example, our monthly fee for our year-end accounts for VAT registered businesses starts at £122 + VAT but can go up to £363 + VAT per month.
We complete a 3-level review on your VAT return to ensure we recover every bit of VAT due to you. First of all the VAT return will be prepared and reviewed by one of our team. We then use the best software that runs a review of all your transactions and identifies anomalies in your posting, which we complete a further review on. Finally, the return is reviewed at manager level before it is sent out to you to confirm. We then tell you exactly how much to pay and how to pay it making everything simple for you.
Our fees for VAT returns start at £39 + VAT per month and increases based on the size of the company.
This is small but important task. You are required to submit a confirmation statement each year. We keep on top of any changes through the year then 2 weeks prior to the due date we will send round the information to approve and we will chase you to make sure we don’t miss the deadline.
Our fee for this is £9 + VAT per month.
As well as planning how you extract the money from your company we will prepare your personal tax return. For business owners with salary and dividend income our fee to submit a tax return is £21 + VAT per month.
As a business, we want to always offer the best service we can to clients and to continually add value. We found this was hard through payroll so to ensure our clients got the best service and the best price (we were able to offer cheaper pricing) we partnered with Payroll Sorted. They have a systemised method to ensure your payroll runs smoothly and ensure you are aware what to do and when with paying staff, pensions and HMRC.
We continue to own the relationship with you as our client and will ensure any queries are handled.
Our director only payroll starts at £20 + VAT then £6 + VAT per additional payslip.
In the modern day and age, you don’t need an admin member of staff based on site completing your bookkeeping and potentially doing it badly. It’s important that the people completing your bookkeeping are qualified to do so and understand what they are doing by ticking certain boxes.
So what’s the solution? Gravitate Accounting can provide you with the full bookkeeping service that scales up as your business grows.
Using GoProposal we can review the level of transactions that go through your business and provide a full outsource bookkeeping service so you can focus on running your business.
We can complete all of these services on your behalf:
We work with the best software providers and if you are subscribing to the likes of Dext and Pleo we may be able to get you a better price.
We love working with start-up companies. We have been there and done that ourselves and having worked with numerous start-ups over the last few years so we know exactly what they need.
Getting set up
We will set you up a limited company that works for your personal circumstance. We will set you up for payroll and pensions and run this all for you so you have nothing to worry about.
We will set you up on the best accounting software for your business and get you automated from day 1.
We will refer you to a bank that meets your needs so in no time at all you can start growing your business.
Ongoing support
We recommend that start-ups are on top of their company performance or at least are tracking their cashflow, looking forward just to give them that understanding of their plans.
We also have quarterly catch-ups and pre-year-end tax planning meetings planned throughout the year. As a start-up your business changes so quickly so important we are there to support you.
From a compliance perspective you will need year-end accounts and corporation tax returns preparing. Even before you are required to do so, there are benefits to registering for VAT -these include recovering VAT on costs (you may even be in a repayment position early days), appearance of being a bigger business, and gets you in best practice for record keeping.
We will also prepare your personal tax returns for you to help plan the amounts due and when. This full process gives you piece of mind that we are looking after all aspects of your business and allows for touch points to keep you accountable so you can focus on growing your business.
Remember all our service lines are optional - this is just an example of what we would typically see in a start-up.
This assumes turnover of £70k - £125k and accounting software is kept up to date.
Your business is already up and running so our offering here will be to ramp up our services to support your growth and start relieving you of aspects of work it is inefficient for you still to be completing whilst also providing you with the information required to continue on your growth path.
We will increase our time with you moving from catch-ups to strategy meetings to give us more focussed time together with identifying issues faced both commercially and financially and tackling them whilst planning for the future.
We will provide you with monthly management accounts so you know exactly how the company is performing and produce KPI’s to track operational performance aswell.
Budgets and forecasts will be key at this level- as your team builds we can track spending in specific business areas and hold individuals accountable to both spending budgets and targets to achieve. Forecasts help track cashflow for the business.
Remember all our service lines are optional- this is just an example of what we would recommend to scale up with big ambitions.
This assumes turnover of £1m-£2m and we will be working with you closely preparing monthly management accounts so the year end accounts will be consistent with the month 12 figures.
At this stage the business has scaled successfully. Management accounts, budgets and forecasts remain integral to the business but at this level we would look to offer our Outsourced Finance Director offering.
You may not require a full time FD costing your business upwards of £100k but we can offer an outsource option that can scale up as your business grows. This puts someone qualified and experienced into your business to support your existing finance team, with a huge focus on strategy and setting policies to enable the business to continue to grow and thrive.
Remember all our service lines are optional- this is just an example of what we would recommend to growing business and the outsource FD time can be from one day a month up to multiple days a week.
This assumes turnover of £4m-£6.5m and we will be working with you closely preparing monthly management accounts so the year end accounts will be consistent with the month 12 figures.
At Gravitate Accounting we pride ourselves on our relationships with clients and do everything we can to ensure we offer the best service possible. We talk about our 5 Star Google Reviews a lot and in order to maintain that level we know we need to continue impressing. We also run regular client feedback sessions to give you chance to improve what we do.
All our team are qualified to do the work they do ensuring quality and accuracy of the work completed.
We commit to providing you with the right staff at the right level. We can provide bookkeepers, client Financial Controllers and client Finance Directors giving you reassurance that you have a full finance function supporting your business growth.
We guarantee regular contact so we are always on top of your business affairs and can always provide the right advice at the right time.
Included in prices for all our clients is tax investigation insurance ensuring that if HMRC were to ever investigate you we can complete the work on your behalf at no cost to you. We have seen cases where this saves £10,000+.
Our final commitment is we partner with Swoop as a funding partner. This will provide you with a update on your credit score and make you aware of the funding available to you as a business, whether that be grants, loans or equity investment.
We want to work with business owners who are keen to understand their numbers and use the financial support to spearhead the growth of their business.
We work hard to offer a great customer experience which includes responding to queries within a couple of days. We will at times need information from clients and we expect them to show us the same respect and be equally responsive.
We ask you to be open to change and adopt the best software in the digital accounting industry to automate your finance function.
Overall we want to work with businesses who trust us to be their financial experts.
The best thing to do is book in a call with us. We are so passionate about the services we offer and the value we can add to your business and we can go through any questions you have whilst finalising your proposal.
The proposal will be finalised and sent to you whilst we are on the call and at this stage you will have all the information required to make the switch to Gravitate Accounting.
Want to discuss in more detail? Book 30 mins in my calendar now
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We actively encourage clients to come to us with queries. 9 times out of 10 we can get a quick answer to solve the issues and there will be NO charge. If it is clear that the request will take significant time investment outside of what we have in our current fee we would quote for a one off project and you would sign off a budget before. If we complete the work within budget we would charge you the reduced amount.
NO! Our pricing ensures our fees are fair and consistent across all our clients.
We invoice all our work monthly to ensure you know exactly what you will be invoiced and what work is covered. We raise our invoices 24th of the month and payment is collected automatically through our GoCardless connection. The benefit here is the amounts are agreed up front and you don’t even have to log into your bank to raise the payment.
A lot of people are stuck with accountants who are adding no value to them and there business and the reason they stay… unsure of the process of switching.All we ask you to do is let your previous accountant know our of courtesy you will be leaving and we will be in touch, then we will deal with all the take on info.Then we need to collect all your personal info and we will be up and running.
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