01
The partner is on the file
Not on the pitch and then absent for three years. The person who wins your work is the person who signs it off, and the person who picks up when you call in October.
ICAEW C009341782London · Nottingham · Bristol
Accounts arehistory.We are paid for what comes next.
A chartered practice for owner-managed businesses. Audit, tax, corporate finance and outsourced finance, with the partner who wins the work still holding the file three years later.
What you are actually buying
Most firms sell you a deadline. We sell you the eleven months before it.
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Fixed fees, agreed first
You are told what it costs before the work begins, and it does not change because a job ran long. If the scope changes, we agree that too, in writing, before we start.
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Plain English, in writing
If an adviser cannot explain a position to you in a paragraph, they do not understand it well enough to put your name to it. Every recommendation arrives written down.
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We say no
To schemes that rely on HMRC not looking, to work we are not the right firm for, and to clients whose numbers we are not comfortable signing. That is what the qualification is for.
Index of services
What we are on the hook for.
Nothing here is a product. The audit team and the tax team sit on the same floor and read the same file, which is why the advice in March matches the accounts in September.
Full description of services- 01Audit & AssuranceA statutory audit should tell you something you did not already know.Registered auditor
- 02Business TaxCompliance is the floor. The work worth paying for happens before the year closes.CT600 · CIS · P11D
- 03Private ClientFor most owners, the company and the family balance sheet are one balance sheet.SA100 · SA800 · IHT400
- 04Outsourced FinanceA finance function without the overhead of building one.Reported by WD10
- 05Corporate FinanceMost owners sell a business once. We have done it several hundred times.Deal team of four
- 06AdvisoryThe forecast matters more than the accounts. The accounts are already history.Modelled quarterly
How an engagement runs
The year, not
the deadline.
01
The first meeting
Ninety minutes, at our cost, with a partner. We read your last two sets of accounts before you arrive. You leave with two or three specific observations whether or not you engage us.
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Scope and fee
A written scope, a fixed annual fee, and the name of the partner and manager who will hold the file. No hourly billing, no charge for a phone call.
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The year, not the deadline
A planning meeting in month one, a review at the half year, and a pre-year-end meeting while there is still time to change the outcome. The compliance work is the by-product.
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Sign-off and after
Accounts signed, returns filed, and a written note of what we would do differently next year. Then the cycle starts again with that note as the agenda.
01
Construction & Property
Contractors, developers, housebuilders
Retentions, long-term contracts, CIS and the VAT domestic reverse charge. We understand why your management accounts and your valuations disagree, and how to present that to a lender.
94Clients02
Professional Practices
Solicitors, architects, surveyors
Solicitors Accounts Rules reporting, partner capital and drawings, work-in-progress recognition and the awkward transition from partnership to incorporation.
61Clients03
Agriculture & Rural
Farms, estates, diversified holdings
Averaging, herd basis, agricultural property relief and the succession conversations most advisers avoid until it is too late to act on them.
58Clients04
Hospitality & Leisure
Restaurants, hotels, operators
Tronc schemes, seasonal working capital, multi-site reporting and the cash flow discipline that keeps a good operator solvent through a bad quarter.
47Clients
The partners, in print.
Notes from the practice, published while there is still time to act on them. No newsletter sign-up wall.
All notesThe transition profits nobody budgeted for
Basis period reform landed quietly. For unincorporated businesses with a non-March year end, the spread of transition profits is still working through, and the cash consequences arrive later than the tax charge.
6 min readR&D claims are being opened, not rejected
The volume of compliance checks has changed the calculus on marginal claims. A claim you can defend is worth more than a larger one you cannot, and the difference is almost always the contemporaneous record.
8 min readWhy thirteen weeks, and not twelve months
Annual budgets fail in the quarter they are needed. A short-horizon rolling cash flow is the only forecast that survives contact with a late debtor, and it takes an afternoon to build properly.
5 min read