The UK’s brightest and best accounting firms gathered in London on Thursday evening to learn who had won AccountingWEB’s coveted Accounting Excellence Awards.
Countdown number-cruncher Rachel Riley returned to host for a second year in a row, and winners included newcomers to the Accounting Excellence family such as PayKeeper and Infinity Partnership, as well as previous nominees including The Accountancy Cloud and Kreston Reeves.
Now in their eighth year, the awards are bigger than ever with hundreds of firms duking it out over 10 categories. The blue ribbon Small Practice award was as highly contested as ever, while other areas such as Specialist Team demonstrated the growth of niche firms or teams with some outstanding entries.
New to this year’s event was the Finance Team of the Year award, with employment engagement platform Perkbox taking home the inaugural prize.
Speaking at the ceremony Claire Bennison, from awards partner ACCA UK, commented that changes in technology “are undoubtedly creating a fast-paced landscape, one that’s full of opportunity for accountants who adopt an innovative approach. I am delighted to see some of these accountants recognised at these awards this evening.”
Faye Scio, head of marketing from MyFirmsApp, headline sponsor of the awards, told AccountingWEB that the awards were “a chance to celebrate and showcase the best of accountancy, and it’s been great to be involved from the ground up. We would like to take this opportunity to congratulate every firm represented here tonight – it truly is a celebration of some fantastic achievements.”
Winners of the Software Excellence Awards were also announced, with a record 13,000 votes cast by the profession for their favourite tools and platforms – full details available here.
Look out for further coverage in the weeks and months ahead as the winners share the secrets of their success and AccountingWEB presents more detailed findings on trends within the profession.
The award winners announced were:
Headline sponsor: MyFirmsApp
Practice category sponsor: Sage
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Small Practice of the Year (click on award title for more detailed write-up)
Supported by the ICPA
Winner: Infinity Partnership
Shortlisted: The Accountancy Cloud, Fitton and Co, Inca Accountants, the numbercrunchers, Spicer and Co
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Supported by Xero
Winner: Green and Co
Shortlisted: Dunkley’s Chartered Accountants, Nordens, Seymour Taylor
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Supported by IRIS
Winner: Kreston Reeves
Shortlisted: Duncan and Toplis, Grunberg and Co Chartered Accountants, Whitley Stimpson Ltd
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Supported by T-Tech
Winner: Jeffreys Henry LLP
Shortlisted: Nordens, Rouse Partners, Rowleys Medical Accountants
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Supported by Sage
Winner: Darren Fell – Crunch
Shortlisted: Adrian Markey - Adrian Markey Ltd, Nigel Adams - Ad Valorem Accountancy Services Ltd, Warren Munson – Inspire
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Supported by Thomson Reuters
Winner: The Accountancy Cloud
Shortlisted: flinder, Mazuma Money, Nordens, Soaring Falcon Accountancy
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Supported by Cashplus
Winner: PayKeeper
Shortlisted: flinder, Giffords Chartered Accountants, Hoffman & Cohen, J Williams & Co Ltd, SIAL Healthcare Accountants
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Client Service Firm of the Year
Winner: The Accountancy Office
Shortlisted: Avery Martin Accountants, Green & Co, Mazuma Money
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Supported by FreeAgent
Winner: MHA Monahans
Shortlisted: DNS Associates, Mercer & Hole, Nordens
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Supported by HRZone
Winner: Perkbox
Shortlisted: Creative England, Dr Will's
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About Accounting WEB
Contributions from the AccountingWEB.co.uk editorial team.
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Well done to all those who paid handsomely to market their firm in this way.
Time is the major cost.
Putting a decent award submission together takes thinking about.
If a firm wants to try and win an award, then why not?
"Putting a decent award submission together takes thinking about."
Not really, it can be outsourced.
Why not indeed.
It suits Sift to make some serious money, and it suits the firms to help them splash over their website to advertise their firm.
Everyone is a winner!
Dont be such a cynic. We need these companies to help with our businesses.
I would be interested to know how the nominees were judged and winners chosen. Several years ago when I was asked to get involved it was, as indicated above, a case of blowing your own trumpet, setting out procedures, working practices etc etc with no evidence of actualities or results. I also seem to remember "best client service" type awards were made without asking the clients what they thought.
Hopefully things have changed?
The word excellence would suggest clients get a good service. It took me all of two minutes to confirm suspicions that some of these award winners have very poor reviews from clients. If awards should goto companies who make profits based on treating clients as commodities instead of providing great service then the award is pointless.
We rely on the judges to give us an honest appraisal of those firms, I sincerely hope that they have done a thorough job, it’s concerning that you say some of those firms have poor reviews from clients that are visible to any member of the public but are being considered as excellent, although to be fair we all have bad clients and fall-outs sometimes.
What I simply can’t begin to understand is that there are no financials or comments on the profitability of those firms, why on earth would I want to copy (or learn from) one of these winners if they’re making a measly profit, or even losses. What credibility is there that we can trust? We’re accountants, we love numbers,but we’re not given any.
I understand that not everyone wants their financials analysed but if you put yourself forwards for these awards then that’s the price of doing so.
Agreed - financial performance should be taken into consideration.
I know someone who writes the entries for firms for these and similar awards. Once you have entered one then you can tailor the entry for the others. No the judges don’t ask clients, they look at testimonials, social media and other evidence.