Shockingly poor service - left us in debt to HMRC and lied about SMP reclaim
Shockingly poor service, avoid using Cooper Financials or their sister company SME Financial Solutions Ltd.
We are a non-profit community interest company based in the UK providing mental health counselling for our community, and used Cooper Financials as our accountant/bookkeeper from November 2023. Initially they were brilliant, however after 12 months there was a change in staff and the service we received changed dramatically.
They failed to track out PAYE liabilities and we got hit with a surprise bill for £1,600 which ended up with a debt recovery service, which Cooper Financials/SME failed to track or warn us about, and tried instead to pass responsibility unto HMRC despite them running our payroll.
They then gave us completely false information about reclaiming for statutory maternity pay, and then after saying they would process this for us, kept giving us excuses about why the reclaim had not been received only for us to contact HMRC ourselves and the request had never been submitted. They never gave us an answer when challenged and stopped responding to our emails and calls altogether, leaving us in a horrific situation in debt and unable to afford to pay SMP.
After we cancelled our service subscription in January then then managed to never cancel our payments to them, so we still got charged for February, March and April! And still no response!
We will be complaining to the Financial Ombudsman. Avoid.
Reply from SME Financial Solutions
Thanks for the feedback. Any input from our clients, whether positive or negative, is always helpful in understanding how they see our service.
To address your specific points:
Bank statements
- As you will recall, you described your chosen banking partner as “total rubbish” and said their website was “horrific.” This resulted in significant delays in receiving your bank statements, which impacted the timeline of our work. We followed up regularly and suggested changing banks to help streamline the process. We understand this change has now been made.
Our learning. In the future, when a client does not provide us with timely bank statements, we will clarify that we cannot provide accurate and timely advice.
HMRC
- We did indeed carry out the tasks as stated with HMRC. We also made many calls to HMRC to try to progress your claim. As anyone who has dealt with HMRC in the recent past will know, if you phone HMRC on three separate occasions, each time requesting information on the same issue, you will likely get three different responses. In addition, any call to HMRC can easily involve 1 hour or more on hold
Our learning. To provide great visibility to our clients each time we contact HMRC, we will create a file note to send to the client. This will include both the juration of the call and the advice received from HMRC
Cash flow issues
- Your lack of revenue causes your cash flow issue. A bookkeeper helps maintain accurate records, but cannot create a cash flow issue.
Cash flow issues can be complex and often benefit from planning. Planning can make a big difference.
Our learning. We will offer our Cash Forecasting service when clients are short of cash. This would allow us to help you predict in advance any cash issues
Subscription Feb and March
- You are correct that both February and March subscriptions were paid to us. We had asked you to cancel the subscription, but you did not. As you are aware, both subscriptions were returned to you. The dates they were returned to you are as follows:
February subscription: 18th February
March subscription: 22nd March
Please check your records. We will be happy to send confirmation of the transfer if you need it.
Our learning: We will also cancel our own subscriptions in addition to asking clients to cancel them.
Subscription for April
- We did not receive this. Please double-check your records. If you did send it, please provide confirmation of the bank transfer, and we will investigate.
We regret that your experience did not meet expectations and thank you again for your feedback. We take all concerns seriously and are actively using this as an opportunity to improve how we support our clients.