Accountants Journal : UK Accountancy News & Views

I was a little surprised to see this news piece on Reuters over the weekend.

The CBI are reporting that "Jobs, profits and trade at British accountancy, law and recruitment firms declined at record rates in the last three months and are expected to fall faster in the next three as economic woes worsen...".

While we at Just Accountants have seen a slowdown in the volume of companies looking for accountants over the last couple of months, the trend is seasonal and matches what we saw at the same time last year.

However, October - which falls into the quarter being talked about in the piece - was a record month for us.

What it shows, I think, is that there is still business out there for accountants who are prepared to go out and grab it.

I actually spoke about this very issue with a couple of our more established accountancy clients in the last month or so and both suggested that things aren't anywhere near as bad as they seem. Neither firm had really lost clients or experienced a significant slowdown in potential new business.

Again, this makes the CBI report all the more surprising. I'd be very interested in hearing the views of accountants on this, because we're just not seeing the types of things they are suggesting are happening.

We've been having great fun at the office over the last couple of days, what with issuing invoices and the new VAT rate and all.

The thing is - you would have thought it would be quite simple. Create an invoice, calculate VAT at 15%, send the invoice out to the clients.

Unluckily for Just Accountants, the ruling isn't that simple.

So for everyone that has queried their invoice this month and for anyone else who might be reading this and doesn't know, here is the actual rule for invoices this month.

Where goods or services have been provided BEFORE December 1st but have been invoiced on or after December 1st you must:

a) Charge VAT at 17.5% for goods and services provided on or before November 17th.

b) Charge VAT at 15% for goods and services provided after November 17th.

Quite who comes up with these crazy ideas, I don't know and, frankly, don't want to.