When Leigh joined his wife Sarah in her practice, he was shocked by the ‘spreadsheet monster’. This was not the lifestyle business they’d dreamt of when leaving the corporate world. Cue: Technology and automation.

It’s still early days in AM’s acquisition by Bright and we could tell you ‘the future’s bright’ until the cows come home. Instead, we sat down with a practice that works with both AM and BrightPay, to see it from their perspective.  

Meet Leigh, Sarah, Rufflette and Merlin

Leigh met Sarah when he was the chief information officer for a public company and Sarah, the financial controller and internal accountant. They enjoyed working together so much, they got married and set up on their own. 

IT All Figures is a play on words that promotes Leigh’s passion for technology and Sarah’s accountancy prowess.

The rest of the team – Rufflette Long Paws and Merlin Curly Tail (AKA Merv, Get Off The Sofa) – joined us on our call.

Hitting their limit, discovering AM – and growing once more

“We decided we wanted a ‘lifestyle’ business,” says Leigh. “And this is exactly why we wanted a software package. It was becoming spreadsheets, deadlines, stress and hassle.” 

I’ve given Leigh tasks along the way and it’s become a monster: Spreadsheet after spreadsheet. He was like, “What are you doing?!” Continue reading...

Vicki Boddice started her career at one of the Big Four firms. After struggling with her mental health, she escaped the industry – seemingly forever. Until, that is, her new business venture led her back to accountancy. On her terms.

When we interview our users, their lives are so interesting, that we don’t have much room to talk about AM. So here’s Part One of our chat with Vicki Boddice: her story pre-AccountancyManager. 

Check out Part Two, to see how Vicki’s getting on with AM.

Life at the large firms

Vicki has been in finance for ‘17-ish’ years now. “My dad’s an accountant, but if you’d told me I’d end up doing the same, I’d have said “No, never going to happen.” It’s just one of those things I got into and really enjoyed.”

“I started with one of the Big Four back in the early noughties,” she tells us. “I got on well, kept moving up the ladder, as you do. Then worked for a few other of the larger firms continuing to progress.” 

“I couldn’t open an email. I couldn’t answer the phone. I couldn’t do anything without having genuine panic attacks.”

Then 2020 came around, which wasn’t fun for anyone. “At that point, I was managing a team of about five people and doing that remotely, whilst also doing all the actual work and lots… and lots of things.” Continue reading...

When we were chatting to Claire Rulton, owner of Addison Accounts, we kept getting déjà vu. Not from another case study, but from our recent best practice advice for getting started and introducing AccountancyManager to your team. 

Claire Rulton took an unusual route into accountancy, working in management accounting for the Duke of Bedford – who owns Woburn Safari Park. “I’d have meetings with an elephant eating its lunch in the background,” she remembers. 

Claire then transitioned into teaching accountancy for AAT at local colleges, before starting up her own business in 2015.

“I had the intention of being full-time within three years. It took just eight months. It got bigger than I expected too quickly and I didn’t have the processes in place. So I stayed with about 80 clients… until recently.”

‘Welcome to Addison Accounts… Don’t touch my spreadsheet.’

In September 2021, Claire took her practice up a notch and started building a team. “I thought, ‘right, I’m not going to be scared anymore or have this imposter syndrome’. I recruited somebody to do social media and somebody to do bookkeeping.”

“I used Excel to manage my tasks, multiple tabs, lots of formulas… but that doesn’t work when you have other people trying to manage that process and doing jobs for you. I was very much a control freak, I didn’t want anyone to touch my spreadsheet.” Continue reading...

For Khiya Kara, founder of Kara Bookkeeping Specialists, owning a practice isn’t about money or quantity of clients, but the relationships. Just one year in, KBS is a great example of a practice never being too new or too small to utterly love AccountancyManager.

Khiya launched her practice last year, having worked in various finance roles for around 10 years. “I’d hit my limit. I had to get out of working for other people.” 

“The goal has always been to run my own bookkeeping and finance business, I finally did it at the start of lockdown”.

There were a number of reasons for Khiya’s leap. “I kept hitting that glass ceiling. It was driving me mad. I wanted to do it for myself, I wanted to be free of the office, and I wanted to also work with people that I’m passionate about helping.”

“I’ve got a client who calls me and we’ll talk business but she’s putting her kids in the bath, and it’s normal.”

“My clients are predominantly women – often women of colour – who are running their own businesses. I work with a lot of single mums. They’re really time-poor and don’t have a lot of flexibility in income, but they have the passion, the drive and the skills to do what they want. My services aren’t entirely aimed at them, but they’re a big part of my audience and the people I like to help.” Continue reading...

Jordan Jewitt isn’t shy about using the odd swear word. In fact, it’s become part of his official tone of voice. Catering to the construction industry, Jordan has plenty of other unique approaches too. Not least in his use of AccountancyManager…

We always tell our users: ‘AM is your bricks, cement and tools. The masterpiece you create will be unique to your practice.’ (In so many words.) Jordan Jewitt, owner of For The Trade in County Durham, has certainly taken this idea to heart.

Using AccountancyManager, he is carefully mapping out every process across the business – in preparation for opening many more offices. Some of these processes are new, even to us…

A brand built with construction in mind 

Jordan set up For The Trade on his own, in April 2021. By November, he was up to five staff members. “At the beginning, I was just trying to get enough work, but within two months I realised that wasn’t going to be a problem anymore. We were taking on that many clients.”

“With the loyalty that exists within the construction industry, I was getting recommendations really quick.”

– A brave call to action on For The Trade’s website

“Early doors, I had a lot of success in the construction industry, so it made sense to go down that route. That meant we could be more tongue in cheek and ‘out there’ with the brand. We wanted to bring a little bit of humour and real human relationships into it.” Continue reading...

StriveX is owned by soon-to-be husband and wife, Rachel and James. They met at a Top 100 firm and are now striving to right the wrongs they experienced there. We talk: totally transparent pay, hoodies with awesome puns and, of course, AccountancyManager.

James incorporated StriveX in 2017 and worked alone for the first 18 months, while Rachel began her MBA. Today, StriveX has two offices, over 350 clients and a team of (almost) nine. 

“This time last year it was just me and James with 50 clients. Now we have 357 clients and our 9th member of staff is about to start.”

“We met at a top 100 firm,” begins Rachel. “Working there was amazing, but people were frustrated about pay not being transparent or consistent. So, if you had a degree, even if it was in geography, you’d get paid a couple of £1000 more.”

“We both trained as trainees and did the £3-an-hour hustle – that’s something we really don’t want anyone to have to experience!”

“There were frustrations from the clients too. They were dealing with a different person in a different department every time. They felt like they didn’t have one point of contact and they were repeating themselves.”

The StriveX promise: Transparent, consistent pay and one point of contact

“James and I sat down and analysed what was going wrong in the big firms that have scaled quickly and how we could reverse engineer it. Things like staff wellbeing and paying staff. We pay staff 8% more than the going rate of that role, not the trainee version of that role.” Continue reading...

Amanda Lang runs Maccass & Lang from her home in Bonnybridge, near Falkirk. She’s a one-person-band with no plans to expand. In fact, Amanda’s ‘not in it for the money’, just to help her clients – and go on the odd holiday. 

That doesn’t mean Amanda isn’t constantly growing and evolving her business in other ways. 

She’s been busy preparing for MTD, ‘trying every software on the market’ and introducing her clients to technology. She’s won an award, completed Self Assessment by October and made her own YouTube video for AccountancyManager… 

Meet the unstoppable, Amanda Lang.

Going into business with mum

Amanda got into accountancy when she was 18. “My mum has been an accountant since about ‘85 and her client base was growing to a point that she needed some bookkeeping help. So with me not knowing what direction I wanted to go, I thought, ‘Right, well, I’ll come on board and give you a hand.’ Then never really left.” 

“I don’t have staff, I don’t have premises, I’m quite happy to do it all, keep it small and work for myself.”

“I did an HNC in accountancy, then went on to do AAT. I’ve now got FMAAT, so I’ve got full membership status.” Amanda’s mum, now in her 70s, is enjoying a well-deserved retirement while Amanda runs the business.  Continue reading...

Francesca and Charlotte met at a networking event in 2018, where they bonded over a shared passion for cloud accounting. Three years later, Future Cloud is a fast-growing firm of eight – with AM at its heart.

For this week’s AM in Practice, we travelled (in real life) to the offices of Future Cloud, with a video camera in tow. Future Cloud has used AccountancyManager right from the word go. See how we’ve helped speed up onboarding, support rapid growth and give clients a seamless digital experience. 

Watch our full case study video by clicking the button below!

Growing a new business – as new friends 

Charlotte: Fran and I worked at the same firm but in different offices. We met at an event, got chatting and found that we had a similar business idea. We discovered we both love Xero and cloud accounting – and it went from there.

“I started listing in my head exactly how I’d want our firm to be: Digital, forward-thinking, proactive.” – Francesca

Francesca: “I’ve seen businesses that don’t do well and it comes from the bookkeeping. Many businesses wait until the year end – which I think is crazy – then nine months after that, they’ll do something about it. It’s too little, too late. We’re passionate about the advisory bit, helping businesses know what’s happening in their business and make future decisions from there. Continue reading...

This edition of AM in Practice takes us to exotic locations like Saudi Arabia, Kenya and Exeter. Join us as we quiz Anita Cocks, owner of Tax and Financial, about her fascinating back story and experience using AccountancyManager.  

Anita’s father worked in bomb disposal for the British Armed Forces, so she grew up globe-trotting. “I went to about 13 different schools. I’ve lived in Saudi, America, Switzerland…I did my IGCSEs in Saudi, during the Gulf War.”

“I grew up abroad and I was determined to be back abroad. Accountancy was a great way of being able to do that.”

Anita originally studied horse management. “I soon realised that to make any money in the horse industry, you have to be exceptional – and had a rethink. I did really well in the accountancy module and had a real love for it. So I decided that was the career path I was going to take.”

“Kenya’s an amazing place. One time I was late to work because there were giraffes in the road and I couldn’t get past.” 

Anita got her qualification with the International Association of Bookkeepers and went on to do her ACCA. “While I was doing that, I was offered a job in Kenya. So at 20, off I went. I was a financial controller for the second largest telecommunications company in East Africa. I’d work in Kenya for three weeks, in Uganda for one week.” Continue reading...

EP Tax has used AccountancyManager for three years. In that time the team has multiplied and the clientbase has gone through the roof. We caught up with practice manager Dom to find out how they’re getting on. 

Dominique is the practice manager at EP Tax, she joined in 2018, the same year the practice launched. “Anna started the firm and I was her first employee. I started off just doing six hours a week around university. Now three years later, I’m the practice manager. It was just the two of us in a two-man office and now there are nine of us.” 

“We’ve moved offices three times… this one is a lot bigger so hopefully we’ll be in this one for longer!”

“It’s amazing to work here. People come in with their kids and they can have a biscuit on the sofa while we talk. We want people to be chilled out so it’s a really relaxed office, it’s fun, it’s friendly. It’s a really good place to work.”

A quick glance at the EP Tax website shows that the brand reflects this approach. “We wanted to let our clients know ‘yes, we will absolutely smash their work. But we’ve also got that relaxed side as well’. 

“Our brand isn’t stuffy, because that’s not our personalities.”

The clients of EP Tax are mainly Limited Companies and Sole Traders. Dom gives hairdressers as one example and the locally based military too. “We’ve got lots of military near us and because they’re in work accommodation, they normally buy their own properties and rent them out. So that’s where a lot of our clients come from.” Continue reading...