The office at Marchbank House
We occupy the whole of the second floor: an open working area, two meeting rooms, a records room and a small kitchen that generates more discussion than any other part of the building. Reception is on the ground floor and there is lift access throughout.
Clients are welcome without an appointment, though you will get more out of the visit with one, since the person you want may be out at another client's premises. Visitor parking is free for three hours and signed from the approach road. Full directions are on the contact page.
Training and recruitment
We take on one or two trainees every couple of years and support them through their professional examinations with paid study leave, funded tuition and a mentor drawn from the managers. Eleven people have qualified with us since 2009, of whom six are still here and three others we still hear from.
It is a slow and expensive way to build a team. The alternative — recruiting qualified staff from other firms every time we grow — produces a practice where nobody has been anywhere long enough to remember a client's history, which is precisely the thing we sell.
How we meet clients now
Roughly half of our client meetings happen by video, with the ledgers shared on screen so that both sides are looking at the same figures rather than describing them to each other. Quarterly reviews run to about an hour; year-end sign-off meetings can occupy most of a morning.
It suits most people, and it saves the clients who are ninety minutes away a half-day round trip four times a year. It does need a decent connection at your end. There is a full explanation, including what bandwidth to expect, on the video meetings page.
Continuity and cover
Every client has a named deputy as well as a named manager, and both attend the annual meeting where that is practical. Holiday cover is arranged in advance and written into the summer timetable that goes out each May, so you know before it happens who you will be speaking to and when.
Seven of the fourteen people here have been with the practice more than eight years. Two have been here more than fifteen. That continuity is worth more to clients than almost anything else we could offer, and we protect it accordingly.
Our client list, in rough proportions
About sixty per cent of our clients are limited companies, twenty-five per cent sole traders and partnerships, and the balance is made up of family investment companies, small charities, clubs and a handful of individuals whose affairs are complicated enough to need attention on their own.
By turnover, most sit between £150,000 and £6 million. We have a few smaller and a few larger. We would be a poor choice for a business turning over £40 million, and we would say so at the first meeting rather than take the work and struggle with it.
Records, paper and the filing room
We still keep a physical records room, because a meaningful number of clients still arrive with a box, and because some documents genuinely ought to exist on paper. Everything that comes in is logged, scanned into the client file, and either returned to you or held until you ask for it.
Original documents are returned as a matter of course once we have finished with them — usually within a fortnight of the accounts being finalised — and we ask you to keep them, because they are yours and because you are the person who will need them if anybody asks.
Professional standards
We work to the ethical standards expected of a professional accountancy practice: integrity, objectivity, professional competence and due care, confidentiality, and professional behaviour. Files are subject to an internal review cycle and to periodic external review.
We hold professional indemnity insurance, details of which are available on request, and we are required to verify the identity of clients and their owners before beginning work. Our complaints procedure is set out in the footer of every page and in your engagement letter.