Slow communication, last-minute accounts and difficult handover
Expensive, slow and not the ecommerce accounting support promised
I used eAccounts for my ecommerce business, but my experience was extremely disappointing. The idea of using accountants is to reduce stress, keep everything accurate and ensure deadlines are met, but in my case the service often added stress because key work was slow, last-minute and affected by avoidable issues.
One of the main reasons I chose them was because they presented themselves as ecommerce specialists. I needed proper reference numbers included in my VAT/accounts exports so transactions could be checked and traced properly. This worked at first, but then the service was dropped while fees increased. Other accountants appear able to provide this type of service on Quickbooks at a much lower cost, faster and with fewer errors.
The service also became very inconsistent. Kris the partner quickly delegated everything down to Rhys the manager who took weeks or often months to reply to requests or was just unavailable, Dan would not return calls on key Amazon sales, bookkeeping had had inaccuracies and Rhys acknowledged there should have been fewer errors. Communication was poor throughout. Even when I replied instantly to an email, it would often take at least a week to get a response.
Deadlines also felt badly managed. Accounts can be filed up to 9 months after the year end, which is effectively 21 months after the start of a normal 12-month accounting year, yet work still appeared to be left until the last minute. Looking at the client list many accounts appeared to be filed at the last minute. Its hard to remember what you did 20 months ago.
VAT was the same always done at the 11th hour leaving little time and when a complaint was made we were just told to pay a penalty or correct next month rather than do it on time and get it right first time.
Because of these delays and errors, we had to spend many extra hours checking the accounts and VAT work ourselves, often late into the evenings, to ensure everything was accurate, double checked and fully compliant. This is the opposite of what I expected from a specialist accountant.
Their office hours of 9am to 5pm seem to be followed very strictly. You should not expect emails or support outside those hours, even when urgent accounting deadlines are involved whereas other accountants ive worked with all worked outside these hours especially on imminent deadlines.
The handover to my new accountants also took far too long and is still incomplete, including AutoEntry data that has not yet been handed over.
Overall, I would not recommend eAccounts for an ecommerce business that needs accurate, timely and traceable bookkeeping unless you want to be doing a lot of extra work yourself. They may present themselves as ecommerce specialists, but my experience was slow responses, last-minute filing, avoidable errors, rising fees and poor handover support. We worked hard to double check everything and ensure full compliance, but the process created far more admin, chasing and stress than it saved.
