Accounting Fees Question

I am a professional property investor. All our investments are structured in unit trust formats. Basically, each individual invetment proerty is "owned" under a unit trust and all net income is then distributed back to my family trust.

My question is, how much would it cost to prepare the annual financial report and quarterly BAS lodgement for a very simple unit trust that soly used to collect rent.

The unit trust is collecting monthly rents and has one or two expenses a month. Therefore, there is really not much preofessional work involved.

I am currently paying a top 10 accounting firm to do all the works. It charges me $6000 every year for its work. $6000 fee is only covered 1 unit trust.

So my questions are:

- What is a reasonable fee for this sort of service?
- What is the benefit of having a top tier firm to prepare you financial report if you are just a private operator?
- Should I just use a small accoutning office to do the work and save almost $4500 in fee every year.

thanks for your feedbacks.

 

I am a Chartered Accountant, the fee certainly sounds excessive however many clients perceive their work as "simple" and it is not the case. It is difficult to ascertain a fair fee to this extent.

Very large firms often have high fees, there are plenty of smaller firms with excellent accountants that charge reasonable rates - shop around but don't shop on price alone - if you pay peanuts you'll get a monkey.

 

Thanks PJCA,

Yes, I agreed with your opinion regarding to my definition of "simple". It is uinfair to compare an apple with a orange.

I am in the process of tendering our accounting works with number of firms so I can get a more compatitive rate. I provide a copy of the company's financial statement to all the tendering firms. So they could have a thorough idea about the amount of works involved.

Can you recommend some good medium size accoutning firm in Melbourne?