Three things to check before anything else
Which body regulates them. "Accountant" is unprotected. ICAEW, ACCA and AAT membership all mean insurance, standards and a complaints route. No membership means none of those, whatever the website says.
Whether they are registered auditors. Only relevant if you will cross the audit threshold, but if you might, appointing a non-audit firm now means changing firms later at exactly the busiest moment.
Who does the work. At a large group you are buying process and bench depth. At a small practice you are buying a named person. Both are legitimate; only one of them will answer the phone in August.
What you should be paying for
Compliance is the floor: statutory accounts, the corporation tax return, VAT, payroll, confirmation statements. Every firm here does it and it is close to a commodity.
The value is in the judgment on top: how profit comes out of the company, what the R&D position genuinely is, whether the company structure still fits, what a sale would look like. If your accountant only contacts you when a deadline is near, you are paying advisory rates for a filing service.
Red flags
- No named regulator anywhere on the site, or a logo without a firm number.
- Fees that arrive as a surprise after the work rather than agreed in writing before it.
- A software subscription in the practice's name rather than yours. Your ledger should not be hostage to the relationship.
- R&D claims pitched as a percentage of the refund by a firm that does not do your accounts.
- No mention of who covers your work when your contact is on leave.
When you do not need one yet
If you are a sole trader below the VAT threshold with simple income and few expenses, a self assessment is genuinely doable yourself, and bookkeeping software plus an hour of paid advice once a year is a better use of the money.
The point to hire is when the answer to a question starts costing more than the question, typically at incorporation, at VAT registration, at the first employee, or at the first property. If you are weighing incorporation, our guides on company structure and on what accountants charge go into the numbers.
