Ask Us

We endeavour to return all phone calls within 24 hours and request that you provide the person handling your initial enquiry with as much information as possible about the nature of your call. They will determine if another member of our team can assist with your enquiry. If for some reason your call cannot be returned, another team member will contact you about this.

However, keep in mind that when calling, it is pointless speaking to a Partner to make an appointment to do your tax the Partner will just have to put you back to the Secretary who has the diary.

Basically three reasons

• There is a lot more work this year. Example: could be an extra lease or turnover / activity has gone up, extra things you required us to do. Capital gains tax calculation, sale or purchase of a business, or purchase a new investment property.
• Increase in our charge out rates as our labour costs are going up every year.
• Due to missing information. If information is missing the Accountant doing your work will leave the job, pick up a new job and won’t come back until the current job is complete. The more often a job is put down and picked up the more time is added to the job.

It is in our interest to complete a job quickly so we can get onto completing the next job. This way we earn the same amount of money and have a lot more happy clients.

It has now been over a decade since the GST was introduced and each quarter since its introduction, we find ourselves telephoning clients to remind them to bring in the information to do the BAS / IAS.

We ask you to take responsibility for providing us the information we will require to do your BAS / IAS by the 10 th day of the month following the end of each quarter.

This will avoid any delays and possible late lodgement penalties the ATO may impose if the work is not finished on time.

Just like its impossible to quote a building job over the phone without looking at the plans, or value jewellery over the phone, it’s not possible to know how long any accounting work might take.

Two sets of books for the same business can take twice as long for one set as for the other depending on how the books are presented. Please work with us to try to minimise the time, hence the cost. Ask one of our client services team for a more efficient way of presenting your books to us. The more you do the less it will cost. Make sure everything is there. Should the Accountant preparing your work have to pick up and put down your work waiting for missing information the more it will cost and the longer it will take.

It’s more economical to you. For example, it would be silly to use a surgeon to stitch a minor cut when a G.P can do it at a much lower cost. The surgeon cannot do it any better than a GP – it’s overkill to have a surgeon do it. The Partners of Prudent Partners have their personal tax returns prepared by our team.

Don’t forget our team are doing this daily and when you do something daily one becomes very quick and efficient.

All of our team have University Degrees and undergo ongoing CPE (Continuous Professional Education).

Not all of our team have the experience to answer investment, strategic, structural, tax planning questions. That is NOT their role. The partners look after answers to those questions. You may like to direct your questions in the first instance to a client services team member. If they are unsure of the answer they will either find out or a partner will call you back with the answer.

However if you are unhappy with our client services team please, by all means, discuss this with one of the partners. It’s difficult to match people perfectly and we can get it wrong sometimes. So speak out if you are unhappy with anything at all and we will try to correct it.

If you are unsure of an answer given to you by a client manager please do not hesitate to confirm the answer with one of the Partners.

Don’t forget our business is to sell time. If the task takes less than 5 minutes (like a phone call) then it’s done for free. More than 5 minutes it’s charged (including phone calls). We only have 7.5 hours per day to sell. If we give it away for free we would not be in business and be able to offer our services.

Whenever we request an answer to a question from our solicitors (at $380/hour) they send us an invoice based on the time spent. For example, it’s not unusual for us to receive an invoice for $95.00 for a 15 minute phone conversation. This is standard practice. We understand that if we want their time we have to pay for it.

We are only human and from time to time errors can occur despite our best efforts to prevent this from happening.

Be reassured that if an error occurs on your file that was our doing we will fix them at no cost or further inconvenience to you.

All Accountants charge by time. The longer it takes to prepare your Return the dearer it’s going to be. Some businesses sell food, Real Estate Agents get paid commissions, and Accountants sell TIME. The more presentable you submit your accounts, the quicker we get it done, and the more cost effective it is. We only have 7.5 hours per day to sell and we would not be in business if we gave our product away.

An appropriately qualified team member will process all the information you provide and will produce a draft set of accounts. He/she then goes to the Partner responsible who then discusses the Tax Planning. It’s this tax planning session that could save you thousands in tax. The partner spends quality time and the team member spends quantity time. The team member than finalises the accounts according to the Partners instructions. Sometimes you may be called upon to discuss various problems or look at options. This process is similar to the surgeon and the nurse or the mechanic and the apprentice or the solicitor and the article clerk. These processes are designed to minimise the costs to you.