Frequently asked questions

A one-off setup fee covers reviewing your chart of accounts, connecting bank feeds and clearing any backlog before ongoing monthly work begins. The exact figure depends on how much cleanup the file needs and is confirmed before you commit, not added as a surprise on the first invoice.

No. Bookkeeping and reporting pricing is based on transaction volume and account count, not on which profits tax band your company happens to fall into for the year. The two-tiered rate is a Profits Tax matter handled separately by your practising Hong Kong CPA.

It is usually scoped as part of payroll support rather than the base bookkeeping plan, since it depends on headcount and pay frequency. The exact scope and price are agreed with you before work starts and set out in your engagement letter.

Invoices are issued in Hong Kong dollars, matching how most Hong Kong companies already handle supplier payments. If your business also operates in US dollars or renminbi, we agree the invoicing currency with you directly rather than defaulting to one automatically.

Notice terms are set out in your engagement letter rather than left open-ended. Most engagements run on a rolling basis with a defined notice period, giving both sides time to hand the file over cleanly rather than stopping abruptly mid-month with reconciliations left unfinished.

A genuinely one-off request outside the standard monthly deliverables is scoped and quoted separately before the work starts, so there is no ambiguity about whether it falls inside your existing plan. Most routine lender or investor requests are already covered by standard reporting.

Pricing still follows transaction volume and account count for the Hong Kong entity itself. Consolidating it with related overseas entities, or reformatting reports for a parent company's chart of accounts, is scoped as additional work rather than folded silently into the base fee.

Your data stays inside your own Xero, QuickBooks Online or Zoho Books account, which you own and control independently of us. We access it to do the work, but the underlying file, its hosting and its backups are managed by that software provider, not by Finbryn.

Yes. The PDPO's Data Protection Principles govern how personal data such as employee MPF records is collected, used and secured, and our processes are built to those principles alongside whatever your own accounting software provider already enforces.

Tell us immediately and we help you review recent activity and revoke any access that should not be there, alongside contacting your software provider's own security team. Because we never hold your data outside your own account, containing an issue does not depend on a separate system of ours.

No, your data is used only to deliver the service you have engaged us for. Where a third-party tool such as Dext or A2X is part of the workflow, it processes data as a function of that integration, under its own terms, not as a separate data sale or share.

Only the accountants assigned to your payroll coordination work and the senior principal who reviews it, since MPF and payroll data is treated as more sensitive than general ledger entries and access is scoped accordingly rather than opened to the whole team.

Your file, its history and any working papers we prepared stay with you and transfer intact, since the Xero, QuickBooks Online or Zoho Books account was always in your name. There is nothing on our side that needs to be exported or migrated separately.

Bank and card accounts are reconciled, transactions categorised, accruals booked, and a profit and loss account and balance sheet delivered once a senior principal has reviewed the file, all inside the Xero, QuickBooks Online or Zoho Books account you already run.

You raise it through your usual contact channel with your assigned accounting team, who investigate against the underlying bank statement or invoice and reply once the answer is confirmed rather than guessed, on business days.

Access to your bank feeds, your current accounting software login if one exists, and a rough sense of any known backlog is enough to begin; anything else needed is requested as it comes up rather than demanded all at once up front.

The monthly close continues on schedule, and any additional working papers your practising Hong Kong CPA requests are pulled together as a separate, scoped piece of work rather than disrupting the regular monthly cycle you already rely on.

Yes. Most engagements start whenever a company is ready, with the current month picked up going forward and any prior-period catch-up scoped separately if the books before that point were not already reconciled by anyone.

A consistent accounting team is assigned to your file, so the person who worked on last month's reconciliation is usually the one working through this month's file too, rather than a different person answering each time.

The Xero, QuickBooks Online or Zoho Books file stays exactly where it is, since it is in your name already; switching mainly involves handing over login access and the most recent reconciliation, not migrating to new software.

A backlog is scoped as a catch-up project first, reconciled month by month, so ongoing monthly bookkeeping starts from a trial balance that is actually reliable rather than inheriting whatever gaps the previous provider left behind.

It helps but is not required. Where the outgoing provider is cooperative, a short handover call clears up open questions quickly; where they are not, we can usually work from the file and bank statements alone.

Handled properly, switching should not affect the audit timeline. We flag any gap in the handover early enough that your practising Hong Kong CPA sees a consistent, reconciled file regardless of who kept the books before us.

Once access to the file and bank feeds is granted, the current month is usually reconciled within the normal monthly cycle; any historical catch-up runs on its own separately scoped timeline agreed with you upfront.

Yes. Reviewing one or two recent months as a paid trial before committing to an ongoing engagement is a reasonable way to see the standard of work firsthand before signing a longer engagement letter later on.

Settling any final invoice with your previous provider is between you and them; our engagement starts fresh from the handover date, and we do not get involved in a dispute over work billed before we were engaged.

No. We prepare the computation and supporting schedules from your audited accounts; the BIR51 return itself is signed by a director or the company secretary and lodged by the company or its appointed tax representative.

We prepare figures that show assessable profits against the HK$2 million threshold, but the final application of the 8.25% and 16.5% tiers, and which entity in a group elects them, is confirmed with your practising Hong Kong CPA.

Yes. We check the IRD's provisional assessment against your current-year figures and flag if the estimate looks out of step, though the demand itself is issued directly by the IRD, split across its usual instalment structure.

Yes. A Profits Tax Return with nil or minimal activity still needs supporting figures prepared consistently with prior years, and audited accounts remain required unless the company genuinely qualifies as dormant under the Companies Ordinance.

Profits arising outside Hong Kong may be exempt, but claiming that exemption needs supporting evidence of where the work and decisions actually happened; we help assemble that evidence trail, and your practising Hong Kong CPA confirms the final position.

Employer's Return figures can be prepared alongside Profits Tax support where we already coordinate your payroll journals, since both draw on the same underlying wage and MPF records kept consistently through the year for you.

We prepare each entity's assessable profits clearly enough to compare, but the election itself, since only one connected entity in a group may take the two-tiered rate for a year, is confirmed with your practising Hong Kong CPA.

Extra capacity before profits tax and audit season, without a permanent headcount commitment that sits idle the rest of the year, is usually the driver; a practice scales work up or down with its own busy-season calendar instead.

Only if your practice chooses to tell them. White-label work is prepared under your practice's own name on every client-facing document, so nothing about the arrangement needs to be visible to the client unless you decide otherwise.

Yes. Sending specific files or a defined batch of overflow work during a busy stretch, rather than moving an entire client roster across, is a common way practices first test the arrangement before expanding it.

No. We prepare books, workpapers and schedules that feed into the audit; the statutory audit itself and the BIR51 signature always stay with your own practice's named partners and the credentialed signers you already work with.

Ramp speed depends on how many files and how much history need review; a small batch of files can usually start within a short window, while a larger transfer benefits from a brief planning conversation first.

Yes. Following a practice's own review checklist and existing file structure is preferred over imposing a separate process, since the point is to reduce friction for the practice's own partners at sign-off, not add a new step.

No. A practice can start with a single file to see the standard of work before deciding whether a broader arrangement, such as a dedicated staff pod, makes sense for its own busy-season planning going forward.