Outsourcing Accountancy

 I used to work for a firm whose mission statement was “Working for us should be fun! If it does not make money it is not fun.” That seemed like a pretty good mission statement to me (and actually they lived up to it pretty well – we had some awesome times and a lot of laughter). Today in the office we had more laughter than the average accountant would have in a lifetime. 

I never forget phoning up an accountant once in early Feb to be greeted by the comment "that's it - next year I am going increase the fee by 20% for anyone who brings there books and records in late."   I sympathise!

A few years ago I was md of a large financial advisory firm (we had 190 advisers). One of our competitors had a problem with the pension review. The idea of the pension review (for those of you old enough to remember such things) was that where an adviser an advised a client to take out a personal pension they had to report back to the fsa that there was no occupational scheme available. If there was (or there had been advice to opt out of a company pension scheme) the adviser had to go through a defined process to see if there had been any loss to the client.<

Hi all - here we go the first blog post.  Let me give you a bit of background.  I run a small accountancy practice here in Witney and occasionally publish stuff under the name Witney accountants for reasons I will deal with in a later blog.  Well I have had a fascinating time being an accountant - have built two accountancy practices and helped two others build a couple of businesses (taking one from £3M to £9M turnover) so in essence I am a serial entrepreneur.