1. AAT qualified staff  (a three year course)
2. Full professional indemnity cover
3. Registered with HMRC, Money Laundering Regs, Data Protection Act, Crown Copyright.
4. All small business, tax advice and general accountancy needs served
5. Additional services for Polish businesses and NHS contractors/surgeries.
6. A friendly team offering knowledgable service at reasonable fees

1. November 2006 Staff 1, Clients 1
2. November 2010 Staff 5, Clients - just short of 400

1. Hey, we're quite proud of the short version!  :-)

The idea behind Discountants was that we felt many Chartered accountants concentrate their energies on larger, long established businesses, so there was a demand for a service aimed at the self employed and small businesses. This service could be lower priced than the Chartered sector but still offer a properly AAT qualified and knowledge based service.

There will be a few issues we will defer to our Chartered affiliate and if your turnover is more than £5M you must use Chartered of course. A lot of Chartered practices employ AAT staff like us to do all the actual 'nuts and bolts' (ok, bean counting) behind the scenes anyway, so mostly the difference is only really visible in the prices!

You might have noticed that most accountants won't quote prices on their websites. This is because every client's needs are different, or because they want you already in the introductory meeting before you get the shock! On the other hand, the websites which do quote prices are generally the bucket shops offering ridiculously low fees which can't possibly cover the cost of the work involved. To break the mold a little, we can generalise and say that a self employed tax return is often in the region of £200+vat and if you have a limited company you might expect to pay about £500+vat. In both cases, maybe less, maybe more, in complex cases definitely more I'm afraid. If we judge a competitors quote to be simply too low to provide enough attention to do the work properly, we will decline to match the price. How can it be any other way?

What we also offer is a good humoured and personal, friendly approach which is at the core of the way we work with you. As you are trusting your financial details to your accountant, what we are trying to do is build up a long term business relationship where trust and a detailed understanding of what you do play a crucial part. This is another reason why accountants are a little reluctant to publish fixed prices. You're not just buying numbers, you're developing a relationship which results in the right numbers.

Currently, we are at a very exciting time with new client growth continuing a pace, suitably energised by our sponsorship of the Morning show on Jack FM radio. We also have a big web based project to offer on-line book keeping to our clients and we aim to open a South Bristol office in 2011.

Under construction (the site, not the people)