Staff and Contractors

Our firm may utilise different employees and/or contractors to carry out our engagement with you. Our employees and contractors have signed agreements in place with us which preclude them from accepting employment or contracting directly with a client.

You should always feel free to raise directly with us any questions or concerns that may arise in relation to the persons we assign to our engagement with you.

Additionally, from time to time, we and our third party contractors may engage external IT service providers (including “cloud computing” providers such as Xero / MYOB / QBO etc.) in the performance of services under our engagement with you and your entities. You hereby authorise us and our third-party contractors to disclose information relating to your and your entities’ affairs to all such external IT service providers as we or our third-party contractors may see fit.

Commencement of work / Client Engagement

We utilise an engagement letter to assist in defining the parameters of our appointment. An engagement letter serves to define your expectations when dealing with our firm and assists us in ensuring that we meet those needs. We believe that engagement letters represent best practice in setting the boundaries of our business relationship. This agreement is the basis of our ongoing relationship and will remain in place for the full term of this agreement or when a new agreement is entered into.Unless a limited engagement period has been agreed to by both parties, our engagement will be taken to continue indefinitely until either party terminates the engagement.
We will not deal with earlier periods unless you specifically ask us to do so and we agree.

Termination of Services

It is agreed that should either party wish to terminate the services provided by About Bookkeeping, that the party wishing to terminate shall give the other a minimum of 1 months’ notice.
This period of time is necessary to enable the collection and submission of any paperwork and for the handover of files to the next bookkeeper/person that will be taking on the bookkeeping role, to ensure a smooth transition for the client.

Invoicing Policy

You will be invoiced for your bookkeeping services on a monthly basis on the first of each and every calendar month. If you elected to pay through our online payment service, your bank account or credit card will be automatically debited on the 1st of the month. If you will be paying by invoice, trading terms are 7 days’ net, so all monthly payments are due by the 8th of month.

Our trading terms are communicated on all our invoices.

Client Responsibility

Further, it will be your responsibility to ensure the completeness and accuracy of the records and information supplied and to provide explanations on any items questioned in the course of the engagement. This is necessary to ensure the accuracy of the financial information compiled.

In order for About Bookkeeping to complete this engagement efficiently, we will require unrestricted access to the following source documents concerning your business:

* Copies of basic documents reflecting your financial transactions, including: cheque stubs, summaries of any cash receipts and sales (both cash, eftpos, charge or any other methods of payment), bank statements, accounts payable including all receipts and invoices and supplier information, any accounts receivable including customer information, and documentary support of any property or asset purchases, trades, sales or other settlements.

Terms of Service Cost

Any further work required that is not included in your selected plan and service package, can be quoted to you prior to the commencement of additional work with a change of service agreement, or can be completed on an adhoc basis per hour (+ GST).

Charges are calculated in blocks of 15 minutes. Charges may also apply for the time taken for collection of source documents from the Client, if so arranged.

Additional charges may be passed on for any expenses incurred for stationery and filing supplies if these items are required – which is unlikely in todays cloud accounting suites. Other additional charges may include tolls, parking fees and postage or courier charges. These charges will only be charged at the same rate at which About Bookkeeping has outlaid, there are no mark-ups on out of pocket Expense items.

Your agreed plan rates will remain in place for the entirety of the agreement. If About Bookkeeping has an increase in our hourly rates, your fixed plans will not be affected until the next review period.

The bookkeeping plans are entered into on the agreement that bank feeds have been set up and activated allowing About Bookkeeping up to date data on a daily basis.

It is agreed that you will provide any source documents on a regular basis (minimum period of monthly, unless agreed otherwise). Arrangements can be made for pick-up of paperwork and a collected day can be scheduled.
Any unforeseen work out of scope of plan within a billing month will be charged on an hourly basis.

Bookkeeping Matters Not Covered:

We will not be responsible for the accuracy of information entered prior to the commencement of our engagement. Sometimes, our ability to perform our services will be hindered by the inaccuracy or incompleteness of information prior to the commencement of our engagement, with some common examples being:

• Bank accounts, credit cards or loan accounts that have been unreconciled for a period of time;
• Bank accounts, credit cards or loan accounts that harbour erroneous unreconciled deposits and payments;
• Debtor, creditor and inventory subsidiary ledgers that have not been agreed to the general ledger for a period of time;
• Outstanding business activity Statements that require lodgement;
• GST and PAYG control accounts in the general ledger which harbour unexplained opening balances;
• Chart of accounts that have been poorly structured.

If we identify any such issues, we will discuss these with you. Broadly speaking, we can adopt two approaches:

1. Leave the issue for your tax agent to deal with. (Where the issue relates to problematic general ledger or subsidiary ledger balances, this usually entails transferring problem amounts to a ‘suspense’ account); or
2. Investigate and resolve the issue for you.

If you choose the second option, we will be only too pleased to assist; however, our time in resolving the issues will be fully and separately charged as independent assignments in their own right.