Hello, I am in a bit of a quandary! My organisation has a Quickfile power user subscription (XL) and we get invoiced directly by Quickfile for the annual £45 + VAT in May of each year. We have external accountants who are affinity agents for us and they surprised us earlier this year by invoicing us for the power user subscription as well, initially for the 2020 year and subsequently for 2021. They had never done that before. This confused me given we pay Quickfile directly and always have (from before 2020) and so I would not expect to have to pay twice? I enquired with our accountants and they say that Quickfile invoices them for the power user subscription and they naturally then pass on to us to reimburse them. We have been informed by them that we should not need to pay the subscription ourselves as we are on their QF affinity account. Unfortunately the accountants how now escalated to a debt collection agency despite me asking for a conversation to work together to resolve (not exactly brilliant customer service!) and so I am a bit stuck given that I don’t particularly want to pay for a subscription we have already paid for, especially as if we do that will then set an expectation for the future, but I clearly cannot ignore the outstanding invoices from them.
In terms of the situation as set out above, is this all correct re us not being charged directly (ie we should only pay the £45 +VAT once each year and that should come from our accountants as our affinity agent) and if so, is someone at Quickfile able to either (i) withdraw the invoicing of our accountants so they don’t pass on to us or (ii) refund what we have paid directly and change our settings so that we don’t get charged again directly? Note that the charging periods are different and so that would need to be worked through (QF direct invoice is May to May and from accountants covers 2020 and 2021 calendar years).
Hi,
your account within quickfile and affinity (your accountant) are two completely different things.
You are charged for your account and your accountant is charged for his/her affinity account. You have an annual fee of £45 +VAT and your accountant is charges 9.59 pence per day to manage your account. He/She is only charged for the days his/her account is connected to your account.
Here is the quickfile affinity price calculator: https://www.quickfile.co.uk/home/affinitypricing
As @rhc mentioned the power user subscription and Affinity costs are different. It may be that the accountants have decided that they are going to charge you a similar fee for you to be linked to their Affinity. But they won’t be getting charged for your Subscription as well as you paying it yourself, they will just be charged the fee for linking.
They are partially correct in that if you are linked to their affinity account then you don’t require a Power User Subscription to have access to your account as you are covered by the link in relation to the size however if you don’t have a Power User Subscription you won’t get all of the additional features that come with it.
I hope this makes sense? If you can let me know your QuickFile account number details in a private message - send to @QFSupport then we can have a look at the subscription you have paid
Thank you both for the info, it does help slightly, I will follow up with QFSupport separately to clarify the particulars re our account. Much appreciated you taking the time to reply.