advice on small business accounts

I'd be grateful if someone could give me some advice.

A friend of mine is a sole trader. He does around 20 jobs a year (each taking about 3 days in total), often for foreign clients. He employs an accountant to look after the financial side of things costing him £300 per month.

Things haven't been going well recently, work has been slow and he's looking to cut his overheads. One place where he could do this would be handling the accounts himself, thereby saving himself about £5k per year. Is this a sensible idea? Just how difficult would it be to handle the accounts himself, and is there any legal requirement involved? Do you need to be a qualified accountant to satisfy the needs of the inland revenue?

It just doesn't seem rate that the accountant is being paid a regular fee even when no work is coming in, and £5k per year seems quite a high amount when the business only pulls in around £20k

Many thanks in advance ;)

That's a *very* expensive accountant it seems to me. My accountant charges me around £700/year for doing my Ltd. company's accounts.

I absolutely agree! If [s]he's only doing 20 jobs per year the accounts should be *very* simple to run.

He is paying his accountant way too much IMO. I pay mine one third of that for many times his turnover. I would not recommend he moves to doing all the accounts himself, I tried it for a couple of years and even with a qualified accountant friend helping out it was enormously stressful. In addition, a good accountant will know how to 'adjust' the accounts to maximise his income. Have a look at this company's website, they're a very good small business accountant: