Our price is based upon the assumption that nothing out of the ordinary has occurred during the nominated financial year and that your records are in good order. If an unanticipated need arises, we agree to perform this work at a mutually agreed upon price before the service is provided.**
**Hourly Rate Pricing Our tax deductible fees are based on the time required to complete your work plus any direct out of pocket expenses. The hourly rates vary depending upon the level of experience of the team member involved.
Our current hourly rates are, Partner – $275, Senior Accountant – $198, Accountant – $132 (inclusive of GST). These rates are reviewed annually and may increase over time.
The actual fees and rates charged by us reflect the seniority, expertise and experience of the persons involved, as well as factors such as the time frame in which our services are to be carried out, the particular nature of our services and the complexity and risks of the matter. Our Invoices contain full details of the services performed.**
**Hourly Rate PricingOur payment terms are: Payment due in full no later than 14 days from issue of Invoice. If the amount payable on the Invoice is not paid within 30 days of the date of that Invoice, then interest will be payable by you on the total unpaid amount calculated 30 days from the date of the Invoice until the actual date of payment at the rate of 24% per annum calculated daily. Payment in full must be made before we lodge your Tax Returns with the ATO.**
We have attached our Engagement Terms. This document outlines in detail the basis for the services we will provide.
We trust that this approach will offer you peace of mind, so no surprises at the end of the job and a fixed fee that you can budget for. If you have any questions or changes to include in this proposal, please contact our office on (02) 8605 9798.
I/We acknowledge that I/we:
These are the Terms of Engagement (“Terms”) between Mantis Partners (“We”) and You. This Agreement is constituted by these Terms and any other later document that we advise you becomes part of or varies this Agreement. These Terms confirm our understanding of the nature and the limitations of the services we will provide.
We will provide the services listed in the attached Fee Proposal dated 1 July 2020 which will be conducted in accordance with the relevant professional and ethical standards issued by the Accounting Professional & Ethical Standards Board Limited (APESB). The extent of our procedures will be limited exclusively for this purpose only. Thus, no audit or review will be performed and, accordingly, no assurance will be expressed. Our engagement cannot be relied upon to disclose irregularities including fraud, other illegal acts and errors that may exist. However, we will inform you of any such matters that come to our attention.
Our professional services are conducted and if applicable to the attached Fee Proposal, Annual Financial Statements will be prepared for distribution to the relevant specific organisation or party for the purpose specified in the report or as agreed. We disclaim any assumption of responsibility for any reliance on our professional services to any party other than as specified or agreed, and for the purpose which it was prepared. Where appropriate, our report will contain a disclaimer to this effect.
Our advice will cover income tax and Goods and Services Tax. It will not cover any other taxes such as stamp duty, land tax, or payroll tax. The scope of our engagement will be limited to the performance of the services listed above.
We may involve third party contractors or outsourced service providers in providing various aspects of your accounting work. These services may include:
Acceptance of our services in conjunction with this engagement document indicates your acceptance of the use of outsourced services as described above. Where the outsourced service requires that the disclosure of personal information to an overseas recipient, a consequence of your consent is that we, your accountants, will be required to take reasonable steps to ensure that Australian Privacy Principles are complied with by the overseas recipients of the Personal Information.
We use Xero (a cloud accounting system), Xero Practice Manager (a cloud practice management system), Xero Tax (a cloud tax return preparation system), Class Super (a cloud based super fund accounting and administration system), Office 365 (a cloud email and calendar system), Box and Dropbox (cloud document management systems), Karbon (a cloud workflow system), NowInfinity (a cloud company record management system), Midwinter (a cloud financial planning system), MyProsperity (a cloud personal wealth portal) and DocuSign (a cloud electronic signature system). These cloud computing systems store files on remote servers operated by third parties, including the use of hosting providers in the United States of America and in Singapore.
There is the ability for you to act as the Subscriber for Xero Business Edition subscriptions and to “invite” us into that subscription as an “invited user”, rather than having us act as the Subscriber to that subscription. Xero has different user roles, and in particular the Subscriber to a Xero subscription has the ability to control access rights to a Xero subscription.
If we are the Subscriber for your Xero Business Edition, we will always give you full access to your Xero subscription, including if the business relationship between us terminates or if there is a dispute between us. If you transfer your business to a new accountant, you will need to provide us with the name and email address of your chosen new Xero Subscriber for us to transfer your Xero subscription. We are bound by the Xero Partner Code of Conduct. This Code contains dispute resolution procedures and how your access to the Xero subscription will be maintained in the event of a dispute (including relating to non-payment of our fees) between us and you.
By agreeing to this engagement and accepting these services you acknowledge and agree that your personal information may be stored overseas.
This engagement will start when you sign and return to our office the attached Authority to Proceed and make the specified upfront payment as listed on the attached Fee Proposal.
In conducting this engagement, information acquired by us during the engagement, including information relating to your affairs whether it belongs to you or not or is provided by you or not, is subject to strict confidentiality requirements. That information will not be disclosed by us to other parties except as required or allowed for by law, or with your express consent.
The recent changes to Section 225 (and 360) of APES 110 on Responding to Non-Compliance with Laws and Regulations (NOCLAR) requires us to report a non-compliance with laws and regulations or acts or omission or commission, intentional or unintentional by a client or by those charged with Governance, by management or by other individuals working for or under the direction of a client which are contrary to the prevailing laws or regulations. If we decide that the disclosure of NOCLAR to the appropriate authority is the correct course of action, then such a disclosure will not be considered a breach of confidentiality under our code of ethics.
We wish to draw your attention to our firm’s system of quality control which has been established and maintained in accordance with the relevant APESB standard. Thus, our files may be subject to review as part of the quality control review program of the Institute of Public Accountants, which monitors compliance with professional standards by its members. We advise you that by accepting our engagement you acknowledge that, if requested, our files relating to this engagement will be made available under this program. Should this occur, we will advise you.
We may collect Personal Information about your representatives, your clients and others when we provide services to you. If we do, you agree to work with us to ensure that we both meet the obligations that we each may have under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (as amended) (Privacy Act). The obligations may include notifying the relevant person to whom the personal information relates who we are and how we propose to use their personal information. Where you have collected personal information, you confirm that you have collected the personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act, that you are entitled to provide this personal information to us and that we may use and disclose the personal information for the purpose/s we provide our services to you. We will handle personal information in accordance with the Privacy Act.
This terms of engagement authorises us to prepare payroll related inputs and their process for calculating and paying your employees, as well as preparing your taxation and superannuation obligations.
You authorise us to:
You (as the employer) acknowledge and accept responsibility for:
You are required by law to keep full and accurate records relating to your tax affairs.
It is your obligation to provide us with all information that you reasonably expect will be necessary to allow us to perform work specified under this engagement within a timely manner or as requested. This includes providing accurate and complete responses to questions asked of you by us within 10 working days. Inaccurate, incomplete or late information could have a material effect on our services and/or our conclusions and may result in additional fees.
You are also required to advise us on a timely basis if there are any changes to your circumstances that may be relevant to the performance of our services. Specifically, if any subsequent event results in the information you provided to us being inaccurate, incomplete or misleading, then you are obliged to advise us as soon as possible. We take no responsibility to the extent that our advice is inaccurate, incomplete or misleading because it is based on inaccurate, incomplete or misleading information being provided to us.
By accepting the terms in this Agreement, you will be taken to have agreed that the performance of our services is dependent on the performance of your obligations relating to disclosure and record keeping.
The Taxation Administration Act 1953 contains specific provisions that may provide you with “safe harbours” from administrative penalties for incorrect or late lodgement of returns if, amongst other things, you give us “all relevant taxation information” in a timely manner. Accordingly, it is to your advantage that all relevant information is disclosed to us as any failure by you to provide this information may affect your ability to rely on the “safe harbour” provisions and will be taken into account in determining the extent to which we have discharged our obligations to you.
You are also required to advise us if you become aware of any conflict of interest or potential conflict of interest. Generally, a conflict of interest is any event which may result in us becoming unable to remain objective in the performance of our services to you. Some examples of events which could give rise to a conflict of interest or potential conflict of interest during this engagement are changes to your business circumstances, events affecting your family (e.g. death and/or marriage breakdown) or a legal action commencing against you.
In relation to your financial records, you will specifically be responsible for:
Please note that if you do not provide us your financial information properly reconciled and, in the format, requested by us, any up-front or Fixed Quotes we have provided to you will not be applicable and the cost of our services will be higher.
You have certain rights under the taxation laws, including the right to seek a private ruling from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) or to appeal or object against a decision made by the Commissioner. As relevant, we will provide further information to you concerning your rights under the Australian taxation laws while we provide our service to you. You also have certain obligations under the Australian taxation laws, such as the obligation to keep proper records and the obligation to lodge returns by the due date.
We have a duty to act in your best interests. However, the duty to act in your best interests is subject to an overriding obligation to comply with the law even if that may require us to act in a manner that may be contrary to your interests. For example, we could not lodge an Income Tax Return for you that we knew to be false in a material respect.
We also have an obligation to ensure that we manage conflicts of interest as they arise. In this regard, we have arrangements in place to ensure that we manage potential or actual conflicts of interest. The effective operations of these arrangements depend, in part, on you complying with your obligation to disclose any potential conflicts of interest to us (as mentioned previously).
Our advice and/or services will be based on Australian Taxation Laws in force at the date of the provision of the advice and/or services. It is your responsibility to seek updated advice if you intend to rely on our advice at a later stage. We note that Australian Taxation Laws are often subject to frequent change and our advice will not be updated unless specifically requested by you at the time of the change in law or announced change in law.
All original documents obtained from you arising from this engagement will remain your property. However, we reserve the right to make a reasonable number of copies of the original documents for our records.
Our engagement may result in the production of Financial Statements, Income Tax Returns, Super Fund Documents, and other electronic documents or files which will be supplied to you. Ownership of these documents will vest in you. All other documents produced by us in respect of this engagement will remain our property.
We will exercise a legal right of lien over any of your documents in our possession in the event of a dispute between us. We also have established dispute resolution processes, details of which are available on request.
Our liability is limited by a scheme approved under Professional Standards Legislation. Further information on the scheme is available from the Professional Standards Council’s website: http://www.psc.gov.au
In the event that the entity invoiced by us for our services is unable to discharge its liabilities to us, then the entity’s Directors or Trustees agree to personally indemnify us for any such liability.
Where, as part of this engagement, the services of an external consultant or expert are required, an estimated cost and timeframe and involvement will be provided to you for your approval.
In the event of you being in default of your obligation to pay us within the payment terms as listed in the attached Fee Proposal and Authority to Proceed and the overdue invoice(s) are then referred to a debt collection agency and/or law firm for collection and we are charged commission and/or disbursements and/or legal fees, you agree that you will be liable to pay as a liquidated debt to us any commission, disbursements and legal fees payable by us.
Our payment terms are: Either upfront payment is required as listed on the attached Authority to Proceed or Payment due in full for all other engagements 14 days from issue of Invoice. If the amount payable on the Invoice is not paid within 30 days of the date of that Invoice, then interest will be payable by you on the total unpaid amount calculated 30 days from the date of the Invoice until the actual date of payment at the rate of 24% per annum calculated daily.
Payment in full must be made before we lodge your Tax Returns with the ATO.
If you decide to leave Mantis Partners and appoint another accountant, then we will rule off the work-in-progress at that point in time that you notified us of your departure or that your new accountant provides us with an ethical letter, and we will issue a final fee for the balance of work-in-progress at that point. This may be work that you were not made aware of that we were undertaking, however for practical reasons we do not advise clients of every instance that we work on their files, if the work is minor and ancillary to complying with the Australian Taxation Office requirements and other requests that we may have (banks, requests for finance applications, etc.) This does not diminish the fact that the work was undertaken on your behalf and you also have a responsibility to settle this account before any records or information is provided to your new accountant.
The information contained in this website and any of the resources available through it including eBooks, fact sheets and seminars (‘Content’) has been prepared for general information purposes only and is not (and cannot be construed or relied upon as) personal advice. No investment objectives, financial circumstances or needs of any individual have been taken into consideration in the preparation of the Content. Financial products entail risk of loss, may rise and fall, and are impacted by a range of market and economic factors, and you should always obtain professional advice to ensure trading or investing in such products is suitable for your circumstances.
Under no circumstances will any of Mantis Partners, its officers, representatives, associates or agents be liable for any loss or damage, whether direct, incidental or consequential, caused by reliance on or use of the content. This content is restricted to Australian residents and is for the intended recipient only. From time to time, Mantis Partners representatives or associates may hold interests in or transact in companies or products mentioned herein, and may receive fees or other benefits, in connection with the making of any recommendation or facilitating a transaction in such companies or products.
© 2020 Mantis Partners. All rights reserved.
