My accountant rang me to advise that he had completed my tax return on my SMSF and we made an appointment to go over it in the following week.
I screwed him down on price last year from $2000 to $1375. He did mention that the price would be reviewed annually and discussed following the completion of next years return.
I had a phone call from his office saying he was unavailable until the following week so I re-scheduled an appointment until then.
The following day I received a questionnaire by email from a marketing company regarding my accounting services and kindly requested me to spend 2 minutes to answer some very important questions.
I decided to assist and replied by giving them a performance rating from 1 – 10 as they requested.
The first few questions were quite general then they asked me if my accounting firm that I had engaged was one of the 10 firms listed on their sheet, and if so tick the box next to it. It was, so I placed a tick next to the firm I had engaged.
The next set of questions were related to quality of service, accuracy of accounting, friendliness of staff, would I refer them to a friend, was I happy with the price that I was being charged and did I consider the charges to be too excessive for the work done.
I had answered the questions and marked highly (7 - 9) as I was happy with the firm.
Then all of a sudden I thought I might be playing into the accounting firms hand as this information I was providing could be used to set the following year’s price for their accounting services to me if they were privy to my answers.
I went back through all the questions and remarked them down to a (4 – 6) and submitted it.
The following week I met with my accountant and following discussions concerning my SMSF he advised me that they had considered their pricing arrangement and they has considered raising their pricing but were willing to stick to the $1365 for the next years return.
Coincidence or not or am I just reading into things??
