How do I know if my accountant is actually any good?

Judge the things you can observe rather than the qualifications on the wall. Do replies arrive within a couple of days, and do they address the specific detail you raised? Do you hear from them when nothing is due? Were you told about a deadline or a threshold before it mattered, or after? Have you ever been given advice you did not ask for that saved you money? A firm can be technically excellent and still serve you badly if the work only ever happens in the fortnight before a filing date. Competence and attentiveness are separate things, and most people are short of the second one.

Is it worth switching accountants just over slow replies?

Frequently yes, because slow replies are rarely the only symptom. The same structural cause — too many clients per person, work passed to whoever is free — usually produces the other two complaints as well: advice that is generic, and deadlines that arrive without warning. The real cost is not the irritation, it is the decisions you postpone or make blind because you could not get an answer in time. If you have raised it once and nothing changed, that is your data point. Switching is administratively far lighter than most people assume, and it does not have to happen at your year end.

What does a dedicated accountant actually do differently?

Concretely: they know your VAT scheme without looking it up, they notice when your rolling turnover approaches the £90,000 registration threshold, they flag the corporation tax payment date that falls nine months and one day after your year end rather than assuming you know it, and they tell you when your director's loan account is drifting. They also ask about the business rather than only the records. Most of the value is not technical brilliance — it is somebody familiar enough with your file that an anomaly looks like an anomaly to them, and close enough to you to mention it before it becomes expensive.

Will I get a different person every time at a small firm?

Smaller does not automatically mean better, but the structural problem is different. Large firms tend to fail on continuity because work is allocated by capacity; small firms tend to fail on capacity itself, with one person carrying too many clients and everything slowing at year end. The question to ask either way is how many clients the person looking after you handles, and what the arrangement is when they are away. A firm that answers that comfortably has thought about it. A firm that deflects the question has usually not, and you will discover the answer in August.

Does changing accountants mean starting from scratch?

No. The incoming firm writes to the outgoing one for professional clearance and the handover records — trial balance, tax computations, capital allowance pools, payroll history — and a reputable firm hands those over without argument. You are not required to have the conversation yourself. Your software comes with you, or is migrated. What you should plan is the timing: switching shortly after a year end is considerably easier than switching a few weeks before a filing deadline, when records are mid-flight. Beyond confirming you want to proceed and approving the new engagement letter, there is little for you to do.

What a dedicated accountant should mean

Almost every accountancy website promises a dedicated accountant. It is one of those phrases that has been repeated so often it has stopped carrying any information. So it is worth asking plainly: what should it mean, and how would you know whether you are actually getting it?

Here are four tests you can apply to your current firm this week, and a worked example of what it costs when the answer is no.

It should not mean a ticket number

The clearest sign that a dedicated accountant is not dedicated is that every query goes into a shared inbox and comes back from whoever is free that day. You re-explain your business from scratch each time, because the person replying has never opened your file before. That is a queue with your name loosely attached to it.

Genuinely dedicated means a named person who already knows how your business is structured, what normally happens to your numbers, and what you tend to ask about. You should never have to open a conversation with a summary of your own company.

Test one: does the reply show they know your business?

Send a question with a specific detail in it — something about your VAT scheme, or a particular customer, or a cost that only appears in your accounts. If the answer comes back generic enough that it would apply to any business of roughly your size, you have your answer. Templated replies are not a sin in themselves; templated replies to specific questions are.

Test two: do you hear from them between deadlines?

Reactive is the default failure mode. An accountant who only ever answers what you raise is giving you half the value of the relationship, because the expensive mistakes are the ones you did not know to ask about.

Proactive has actual dates attached to it. A firm that is watching your file should be flagging things like these before they bite:

Your Companies House accounts deadline — nine months after the financial year end for a private company — with enough notice to gather records rather than a fortnight of panic.
Corporation tax payable nine months and one day after the year end, which is before the return itself is due, and catches out people who assume the two dates are the same.
Your VAT position, if turnover is climbing towards the £90,000 registration threshold on a rolling twelve months.
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, which began on 6 April 2026 for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000 in 2024-25, and extends to those over £30,000 on 6 April 2027.
The confirmation statement, and the fact that your director's loan account is drifting.

None of that requires genius. It requires somebody looking at your file when nothing is due.

Test three: how long does a reply take, and do you have to chase?

Slow replies rarely arrive as a single dramatic failure. They accumulate. A question that takes a week. Advice that raises more questions than it settles. Having to follow up twice before anything moves. Each is forgivable on its own; two years of them is why people eventually move firm.

A reasonable standard is a same-working-day acknowledgement and a substantive answer within a couple of days, with anything genuinely complex given a date by which it will land. The businesses that stay with an underperforming accountant longest are usually the ones who assume this is simply what having an accountant is like.

Test four: could you name them?

The bluntest test of the lot. Say the name of the person who looks after your account, out loud. If you cannot, or if it is a different name in every email chain, the word dedicated is doing no work in your engagement letter.

What reactive costs — a worked example

The scenario below is illustrative, but every figure in it is the real published rate.

A limited company with a 31 March 2026 year end has a decent trading year. Turnover crosses £90,000 on a rolling twelve-month basis in July 2025. Nobody notices, because nobody looks at the numbers between one year end and the next. The accountant sees the year when the records arrive in the following February.

The VAT. Registration should have taken effect from 1 September 2025. HMRC treats sales made after that date as VAT-inclusive whether or not VAT was charged to the customer. On £70,000 of standard-rated sales in the missed period that is £70,000 × 1/6 = £11,666 of output VAT owed, out of margin, from money already spent. Input VAT on purchases in the same period comes back off that, and a failure-to-notify penalty is added on top.
The accounts. Records arriving in February leave little room before the 31 December 2026 Companies House deadline in principle, but a firm already behind files on 14 January 2027. That is a £150 penalty for being up to a month late. Late two years running and it doubles.
The corporation tax. Due 1 January 2027, calculated from accounts that were not finished. Late payment interest runs from that date regardless of when the return is filed.

Add it up and the VAT alone dwarfs any plausible difference in accountancy fees. Nothing in that sequence required specialist expertise — it required somebody looking at a rolling turnover figure once a quarter.

Why firms end up not delivering it

Rarely malice, usually structure. A firm built around throughput assigns new clients wherever there is capacity, passes work to whoever is least busy that week, and lets continuity depend on nobody leaving. Add staff turnover and the named contact on your engagement letter is a person who left eighteen months ago.

The result, from where you sit, is identical either way: nobody who really knows your business, and a slower, thinner answer every time you ask.

What to ask before you sign with anyone

Who specifically will look after my account, and what happens when they are on holiday or leave?
What is your normal response time to an email, and what is your escalation if that slips?
What will you contact me about when nothing is due?
What is inside the fixed fee, and — more importantly — what is outside it?
How many clients does the person looking after me handle?

Ask those five on any prospective firm's first call. The answers, and how comfortably they come, tell you more than any website.

Where we come in

Closing that gap is the reason Buzz exists in the shape it does: a named accountant who knows your business, straightforward answers without the jargon, and someone reachable when you need them — whether you are a sole trader or running a limited company. You can see who you would actually be dealing with on our team page, and what sits inside a fixed monthly fee on our accountancy packages page.

If the tests above did not go well, our page on switching accountants without the hassle covers what changing over actually involves. It is simpler than most people expect, and we handle the handover.

What a “dedicated accountant” should actually mean