Audit returns for a company query about corporate services?

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holidayqueen

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Hi
I am a member of a voluntary body that is involved in running a community service, and to recieve funding we had to form a company limited by gaurentee. We must now file our first return and our accountant has prepared our accounts but says he must sent them else where to be audited. We had a meeting with the guy doing the audit and he says we must now engage a company to do our minutes and to prepare our annual compliance at an extra cost of 300 euro. We have very little funds and our accounts are starting to run up and I think it will be over 3000 euro. This seems excessive to us but it is a requirement of our funding to be a limited company but my query is this corparate service of doing up our minutes necessary or can we do this ourselves. Is there an online template to do this. Are our accountant fees expencive ? As I say we are just running a community service and trying to make ends meet we will have to cut staff hours to come up with this 3000 euro so I want to be able to reduce my accounts bill to as little as possible but still be compliant any advice
 
holidayqueen said:
Hi
I am a member of a voluntary body that is involved in running a community service, and to recieve funding we had to form a company limited by gaurentee. We must now file our first return and our accountant has prepared our accounts but says he must sent them else where to be audited. We had a meeting with the guy doing the audit and he says we must now engage a company to do our minutes and to prepare our annual compliance at an extra cost of 300 euro. We have very little funds and our accounts are starting to run up and I think it will be over 3000 euro. This seems excessive to us but it is a requirement of our funding to be a limited company but my query is this corparate service of doing up our minutes necessary or can we do this ourselves. Is there an online template to do this. Are our accountant fees expencive ? As I say we are just running a community service and trying to make ends meet we will have to cut staff hours to come up with this 3000 euro so I want to be able to reduce my accounts bill to as little as possible but still be compliant any advice
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Just explain est of fee to give better answer

1. Accountant including vat
2. Auditor Including Vat
3. Corporate Service Including vat
4. is their much work involved in the accounts


I assume this would be the second b1 as first b1 goes in with no accounts
 
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accountant inc vat 1000
Audit inc vat 15000
Corporate service 611 to include 399 registars fees including late filing penalties should have been filed first week of june.
Yes it is second b1 and there is not much to accounts all straifht forward income is our funding plus fees recieved expenses are wages and food bill plus rent heat and light nothing complicated. We hace a wage package so we gave print out of all wages to accountant and we have an exel package for expenditure. We do not have a tax liability just a small loss. We were not made aware about late filing penalty even though our accounts went to accountant 3 weeks before filing date. We are only getting them sorted now. Is there anywhere we can cut cost? The thing that annoys me most is that we recieved bill for corporate service before we got any service.
 
holidayqueen said:
accountant inc vat 1000
Audit inc vat 15000
Corporate service 611 to include 399 registars fees including late filing penalties should have been filed first week of june.
Yes it is second b1 and there is not much to accounts all straifht forward income is our funding plus fees recieved expenses are wages and food bill plus rent heat and light nothing complicated. We hace a wage package so we gave print out of all wages to accountant and we have an exel package for expenditure. We do not have a tax liability just a small loss. We were not made aware about late filing penalty even though our accounts went to accountant 3 weeks before filing date. We are only getting them sorted now. Is there anywhere we can cut cost? The thing that annoys me most is that we recieved bill for corporate service before we got any service.
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Could the accountant or auditor not do the corporate service work as should be a basic b1.

The accountant and auditor fee sounds fair enough.

Maybe if you had Accountant/Auditor as one firm the job might be done a bit cheaper( 1 person doing work instead of 2)

The late fees you might be able to appeal to companies office on basis of kind of work you do.
 
Hi there

I assume you mean €1500 for audit fees? I agree with the above poster re corporate service work.

I do not think it is acceptable that you have to pay audit and late filing fees.
You say you gave the books into the accountant 3 weeks before the filing date. Did the accountant tell you that there was not enough time to get them done? If not, I would argue that it is the accountants fault that the accounts have not been submitted and he should pay the audit fees and the late filing fees.

However if the accountant made it clear that there was not enough time to file on time or if there is extra work involved that you are maybe not aware of then the fees may be are justified.
 
Tomorrow said:
Hi there

I assume you mean €1500 for audit fees? I agree with the above poster re corporate service work.

I do not think it is acceptable that you have to pay audit and late filing fees.
You say you gave the books into the accountant 3 weeks before the filing date. Did the accountant tell you that there was not enough time to get them done? If not, I would argue that it is the accountants fault that the accounts have not been submitted and he should pay the audit fees and the late filing fees.

However if the accountant made it clear that there was not enough time to file on time or if there is extra work involved that you are maybe not aware of then the fees may be are justified.
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I would say she would need an audit regardless as company is limited by guarantee(complusory Audit)
 
You never mentioned the t/o or the level of wages paid. Up to 150000 t/o and depending upon how good the books are I would be charging about €1,200 to €1,500 for this job to include accounts, audit and statutory work. Definitely do not need seperate accountant/auditors.
 
Brendan said:
I suspect that in this case the accountant is not a qualified accountant so that is why they need a separate person for the audit.
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I would assume the accountant is qualified with a practice cert but no audit cert.

Also some people in industry who never worked in practice can get a practice cert but not an audit cert. A person who gets an audit cert would have prior experience in a practice after qualification

A lot of accountants now are only getting a practice cert and not an audit cert due to more attention is now on firms with an audit cert and complince and reporting issues.

So many companies are audit exempt now and a lot of accountants can make a living without audit work clients.

In this female case above the company is limited by guarantee- The best approach for her was to get an auditor to do both accounts preparation, audit and company sec work all in the one fee.

Maybe the accountant above should not have accepted the Job as it would have been obvious from the start an audit would be needed. maybe he should have quoted all job in one figure and subcontracted the audit part of the work.
 
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It seems that when I asked the accountant he said he could do it . He did not tell me that he could not do audit so I think we will look for someone who can do both next year. The accounts are very straight forward so would you say that we can get the whole lot done for €1500 audit and all our staff wages are about 85,000 and we do all payments to revenue on p30 ourself and we could the return for our end of year to revenue ourself but just need to do an audit return and b1 form with accountant. T/o is very small € 20,000 would be our fees and all easy to see all monies lodged
 
holidayqueen said:
It seems that when I asked the accountant he said he could do it . He did not tell me that he could not do audit so I think we will look for someone who can do both next year. The accounts are very straight forward so would you say that we can get the whole lot done for €1500 audit and all our staff wages are about 85,000 and we do all payments to revenue on p30 ourself and we could the return for our end of year to revenue ourself but just need to do an audit return and b1 form with accountant. T/o is very small € 20,000 would be our fees and all easy to see all monies lodged
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If you were given impression he could do full job at time- Maybe the accountant should carry some of the cost for the Auditor or ask accountant to get a better deal from auditor .

Try if you can to spread accountant fee/ auditor fee over a six month period maybe to help business cashflow
 
Was there an engagement letter with the accountant. All audit / accountancy assignments should have an engagement letter clearly setting out the responsibilities of both directors and auditors / accountants.

FWIW It is my practice to insist ( in the engagement letter ) on receiving records no later than 3 months after the company year end and that any late filing as a result of not receiving in sufficient time is the sole responsibility of the directors. The result of this is accounts produced in a timely fashion and no compliance issues with CRO or Revenue.
 
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