Unfortunately, company secretarial services are not exempt from VAT, so you will have to charge tax on your outsourced secretarial offers.
This can make your life more difficult with the extra VAT filing and, more worryingly, will push up the price clients pay you to support their company.
Therefore, you need to know how to explain to your clients the value of company secretarial services and how you’ll save them money in the long run.
If you don’t offer company secretarial services, you should consider doing so. The advantages of such a service for accounting firms are immense.
But first, for the benefit of those new to this unique service, what actually is company secretarial?
What are company secretarial services?
Company secretarial services are not the traditional work of a secretary, as the name suggests. Instead it refers to the administrative function within a company that ensures good corporate governance and compliance.
Company secretarial is essential if companies want to adhere to the legally binding Companies Act 2006. A company secretary will maintain statutory records, for instance, including those detailing meetings between shareholders and engagements with Government authorities.
They also report to Companies House with notices on changes to a company’s structure or management.
What’s more, they run the main communication channels in the company. So they’ll arrange meetings of the shareholders and directors, and keep the minutes for those meetings.
Why accounting firms should offer company secretarial services
The uninitiated might think company secretarial is just a series of administrative tasks their client can get on with themselves.
A lot of companies think just like that and assume they’ll be fine. More often than not, though, they quickly run into trouble.
That’s why it’s so important for businesses to invest in company secretarial services and just one of the reasons why accounting firms should offer it.
It’s a service that is quickly becoming more and more valuable for many of your clients, who’ll be willing to part with their cash, plus VAT, if you successfully persuade them of the benefits.
Try to highlight all the time they’ll save and stress they’ll avoid if they outsource their duties over to you.
There really is no room for mistakes in the world of corporate law and regulation, so also explain how, with an experienced secretary who has the right tools and knowledge, they’ll never have to worry about fines or other punishments for inadvertently breaking the requirements of the Companies Act.
Software for company secretarial services
A key advantage of a dedicated company secretarial service is that an accountancy firm is more likely to have the tools necessary to turn something that is stressful for their clients to a streamlined process.
One of these tools is specialist software, which you yourself need to invest in. It’ll transform your secretarial offering from something that might resemble an afterthought to a leading service that brings a significant amount of money into your firm.
But any old software won’t do. It could be outdated or hastily put together, resulting in a poor working experience for you and less than satisfactory results for your clients.
Capium Cosec, on the other hand, makes fulfilling the role of a client’s company secretary quick and complete by providing all the routine filing and change documentation in little more than a few clicks of a mouse.
As these changes need to be logged for routine yearly filing anyway, there is hardly any overhead in the offering, and all the documents are automatically retained in our Cosec onboard cloud library.
Whether you’re starting a company secretarial service or trying to improve yours, get in touch with Capium today for a tutorial on our intuitive software.
