FAQs
What is special about the Thames Bridge team ?
We strive to be an easy to work with, approachable, and friendly team.
Our simple structure allows easy client contact with anyone in the team, including the owner.
Our clients enjoy quick responses to questions, and priority if there is a need to bring work forward, or provide information to third parties such as bankers, or mortgage advisors.
We aim to provide clear, jargon free, explanations of anything we do.
We aim to look beyond the transactions, and to gain an understanding the client’s business. This enables to pass on relevant advice or ideas, that we come across from working with similar businesses, or from our ongoing training.
What value does the Chartered Accountant status provide ?
The Institute of Chartered Accountants England & Wales (ICAEW) is the premier professional body in the United Kingdom. As a member firm we are required to :
Meet a high level of professional and ethical standards in all that we do
Maintain complete confidentiality over clients affairs, and adhere to the General Data Protection Rules.
Provide clear descriptions of the services we are engaging for, and the costs involved
Carry adequate Professional Indemnity Insurance
Meet rigorous standards of ongoing education and development
Should a client choose to change accountants, act in a professional manner. and support the client and new accountant with any handover activity and information
How easy it is to change accountants?
Switching accountants is usually easy, and can be done any point in the year.
When you switch to Thames Bridge, we will request you to notify your existing accountant, and provide them with our contact details. From that point on, we will manage the transition, ensure that the handover is seamless, gather the necessary information from the previous accountants, and notify HMRC and Company House of the change.
What information is needed to receive a quote and advice?
Firstly, to get a feel of the amount of work involved, we’d need a very brief review of your books and records. Additionally, we’d need a copy of your last financial accounts prepared by your current accountant to provide relevant advice. If there’s anything you need help with and think it’s relevant for us to know, please contact us.
How do your fees work ?
Our fee structure is designed to be easy to understand and work with, with no year end surprise charges, or extras.
When we first meet with you, we will go through a checklist of the various types of support that you require, and we will use our pricing model to establish the fee.
Once we have agreed a fee, this will generally remain fixed, unless we jointly agree to change the scope of work. The only time we will charge additional fees is for work that is not in the agreed scope, and this would be priced and agreed separately.
All of our fees include reasonable levels of free day to day support, and insured cover for the costs of any work we need to do should you be subject to HMRC challenges, or compliance checks
We divide the annual fee into 12 monthly instalments, and invoice you accordingly. We ask that payments are set up as standing orders with your bank.
Our aim is to price below the larger firms, but above the cheap end of the market. At this level we can ensure that clients get the benefit of personal quality time, and up to date knowledge and expertise.
Can you provide Management Accounting ?
The short answer is yes !
The systems and processes we use have the capability to capture your data in a way that supports management accounting information, in addition to financial (year end accounts and tax) totals.
As every business is different, this would require some discussion, so we can understand exactly what is required. In many cases, the client may have to adjust the way they feed information to us.
How do you transfer paperwork and information?
We strive to be a paperless office and process, so we encourage clients to send us documents and scanned images via email, Dropbox, or Mobile phone photos/Whatsapp etc.
If paper is the easiest, it can be dropped of or posted, and we sometimes collect. In most cases we then scan the documents, and hold them on our system in digital form.
Why should I get you to do the bookkeeping when I or one of my staff can do it?
This is a question most of us ask, about any service we are paying for.
It is true that with time and effort, most of us can learn to do multiple things, such as set up and fix our own computers, deal with staff issues, do bookkeeping, create and manage our websites etc.
However – every hour spent on these tasks is time away from the business and customers, so it is often better to pay the expert (who can usually do the job in significantly less time, and with better quality) and have more quality time to do what you do best.
That said – we have many clients who do all or part of their bookkeeping. With our cloudbased software, and multi user access, a good compromise is often for the client to manage their customer invoicing/payments, and for us to do the supplier bill processing, and bank reconciliations, vat etc.