I am a CIMA accountant with experience in financial and management accounting, SAP finance consultancy in UK and Europe. My work in last 13 years has been more in IT service management, process optimisation and organisational change management while working for a large oil and gas company in the Middle East.
Now I want to return to UK and would like to set up an accountancy and management consultancy. Given my experience, which of my skills will be most relevant to serve my clients and what type of clients should I seek? Can I survive by just offering management accounting and business consulting or will I need to do compliance work including bookkeeping and tax work also?
Thanks,
Mushtaq
Replies (6)
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Good Experience
You seem to have very good experience and would just concentrate on the more lucrative consultancy with IT/Finance perhaps even with implementation with SAP. If you have a niche skill always best to utilise than becoming jack of all trades.
If you haven't done uk tax work then you may initially struggle. I think to make a good living you will need to offer statutory accounting and Corporation Tax to Limited companies. You will need a practising certificate too. There are lots of accountants that offer these services but many do not have the IT skills that you have which you can exploit to your advantage and there will be a demands for these skills as well.
Support
The best thing you can do is search the cimaglobal site. Lots of directly relevant support there.
Your offerings and clients can come in all shapes and sizes, but obviously you would want to do work that you are competent to carry out with the type of organisation that would value your services.
MIP
I would start by going through the CIMA Member in Practice information on the CIMA website. Completion of this will give your consultancy some additional support and also some kudos. It will also be listed on the CIMA website which will help generate some leads.
I would offer some accounting support also as this will help you generate more interest.
I became a MIP four years ago and I know it can only help.
Jonathan Gaunt of FD Works
I could be mistaken but your background sounds similar to FD Works' founder Jonathan Gaunt. He set up this company and spent time working in the Middle East as an FD for Lloyds.
He can be found on: http://www.fd-works.co.uk/
I know him from his work on AccountingWEB's Xero webinar and he's also speaking at our conference in November.
Hope this helps!
You sound very well qualified and experienced in your field but I would be very wary indeed of offering tax services if it is (at least) 13 years since you did any.
Contracting?
Ideal background as a contractor in SAP/change management consulting if that appeals? Day rates of £450 - £1,000 dependent on experience I would have thought. That's probably your most lucrative option.