We turn work down most weeks. Not because we are precious about it, but because an accountant who is wrong for you costs you more than one who is expensive.
So here is exactly who we work with, and who we do not.
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Who we work with
- Sector. Construction, and only construction. Contractors, subcontractors and the trades that work on site.
- Turnover. Roughly £500,000 to £5 million a year.
- Structure. Mostly limited companies. Some established sole traders and partnerships heading that way.
- Where. Our office is in Cannock, Staffordshire. We work with clients across the UK on cloud accounting, and see the local ones face to face.
The typical client pays subcontractors, files CIS every month, deals with the VAT reverse charge on most invoices, and cannot currently tell you which jobs made money.
Who we are not for
Four groups, and we would rather say so now than on the second call.
Businesses outside construction. We do not do restaurants, e-commerce, agencies or anything else. It is not snobbery. It is that being genuinely good at one thing means being no use at the others.
Property developers. A different tax world and a different set of problems. We work with the firms doing the building, not the ones commissioning it.
Brand new start-ups with no trading history. Come back when you have twelve months behind you and we will have something useful to say.
Anyone who wants filing and nothing else. If what you want is the cheapest set of accounts filed on time, there are firms who will do that well for less than we charge. We are not one of them, and you would be paying for advice you do not want.
What you get if you are a fit
CIS handled monthly, on time, with the materials split right. VAT treated correctly, including the reverse charge and the 5% rate people miss. Job level numbers you can actually read while the job is still running. Accounts filed before the deadline rather than on it.
And someone who answers. Most people who move to us do it because their last accountant went quiet for three weeks at a time.
The turnover band, and why it exists
Below about £500,000 you usually do not have enough moving parts to justify what we charge. A good general accountant will serve you well and cost you less.
Above £5 million the work changes shape again. Group structures, bonding and surety, and a finance function in-house that needs supporting rather than replacing. We do that work, and it is a different conversation from the one on this page.
The band is where we are demonstrably better value than the alternative. Outside it, we might not be.
If you are not sure
Ring us and ask. If you are not a fit we will say so on the first call and, where we can, point you at someone who is.
Have a look at what we actually do, the 45 trades we work with, or book a call.
Choosing an accountant
Four questions people ask us before they get in touch, answered honestly rather than as a sales pitch.
- What kind of accountant does a construction company need?
- Do I need a specialist, or will a normal accountant do?
- Specialist or general practice, compared
- How much does a construction accountant cost?
- When should a construction business change accountants?
Free markup and margin calculator
Add 20% to your costs and you keep 16.7%, not 20%. Our markup and margin calculator prices a construction job properly and shows what the gap is worth across a year of turnover.
One pattern we see a lot is a contractor with a large subcontract base whose CIS admin has outgrown the office. There is a page on that: contractors with many subcontractors.