Zooconomics is an online accountancy firm. This means that we primarily deal with our customers by sharing cloud based accountancy software and via our online support systems. We think that this is the best way to do accounts for most startups, small businesses and contractors.
The alternative to using an online accountancy firm is to use a traditional high street accountants. Below we have outlined what we feel are the main advantages of using an online accountant rather than a high street one.
Lower Prices – Because of the cloud-based accountancy tools that we use we are able to offer much lower prices than a traditional high street accountant who tend to do everything on paper or using their own accountancy software. We give our clients access to could based accounts software which we can also access. This means that we can directly access the figures you enter, import them directly into our specialist accounts preparation tools to get them ready for submission to the government. This saves hours and hours of needless work which you then don’t have to pay for.
Fixed Prices – most traditional high street accountants will charge you by the hour. This will often include you going to visit them for annual consultations, which you will be charged for, and which most small businesses don’t really need. Instead of charging you by the hour we provide all of our accountancy service on a fixed fee basis. That means that we will tell you how much your accountancy work is going to cost up front so that you know exactly what will be charged. We can also help by spreading the cost of your accounts over the year, so instead of paying one big lump sum when your annual accounts are due you pay a simple monthly amount.
Speed – Because of our use of cloud based accountancy software your accounts and bookkeeping will take up much less of your time. We can link your accountancy software direct to your business bank account so you don’t have to spend hours manually reconciling bank statements. Your software will also allow you to generate invoices and track who has, and has not, paid easily and quickly. As well as being quicker for you the use of cloud based accountancy software means that we can login and see what is going on with your accounts. If we need to we can then pull the figures across into our specialist software to do any more complex analysis or reporting that might be needed. Most traditional accountants cannot do this.
Convenience – You can update your cloud based accountancy software 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from anywhere with an internet connection so you can do your bookkeeping, or record invoices in the evenings or at weekends. If you do run into any problems with the accountancy software then we have a detailed knowledge base including videos to guide you through different tasks. If you really get stuck, or have more general questions about accounts, tax or expenses you can either raise an online support ticket or give us a call.
Fully managed services – a lot of our clients are small businesses, startups and contractors. Rather than spending hours learning about HMRC’s latest rules and procedures they want to focus on running their business. Our accountancy team do this work for them. We provide services such as managed payroll where our clients tell us how much they want to pay themselves each month and we then tell them how much tax they will have to pay, sort out the paperwork and update HMRC in real-time. Having our accounts team handle this kind of processing work frees up hours of our client’s time each month so that they can focus on bring in sales.
Although there is still a place for traditional high street accounts we believe that online accountancy is a much better solution for most startups, small businesses and contractors. The lower cost, quicker service and ability to outsource areas such as payroll make the online accountancy solutions provided by Zooconomics a perfect accountancy solution.