What we do
Our business lines
Everyone has an idea of what an accountant and business adviser does - but we’re willing to bet there’s a whole lot more to it than you might think! To help you decide which pathway you want to follow, get to know some of our business lines below and find out what you can expect to be working on in your first year.
Audit
An audit is an independent, objective exam of the accounts of a business – also called financial statements – which is carried out annually. As auditors, we scrutinise our clients’ accounting records and carry out various tests to provide both our clients and their stakeholders with the assurance that their financial statements are a true and fair reflection of the company’s financial performance over the year. We also support our clients to ensure that they are compliant with the many financial regulations they are subject to, and which are continually changing! Within our Audit team, you will get the inside view of a wide range of clients – from Food & Drink to Technology & Life Sciences, to Energy, Infrastructure & Sustainability and Financial Services.
We also have the following specialist teams within Audit:
Financial Services Audit
Our Financial Services Team focuses on the wealth and asset management sector, including corporate asset managers, private equity and venture capital structures, LSE listed entities (including FTSE250s) and boasts a number of multi-national household names as clients.
Funds Audit
Our Funds Team focuses on a large portfolio of open ended regulated funds split across some of the UK's largest names in the sector. These structures make investment in a portfolio of investments, typically ranging from equities to bonds.
Pensions Audit
Our pensions audit team works with pension schemes across the UK. We work closely with other professional organisations who operate and manage these schemes, manage their investments and look after their members. We are able to do this using our digital audit approach working from our office without the need to travel to the client.
IT Audit
Our IT Audit team enhances the audit service by evaluating client systems and applications. They help shape our audit approach, boost efficiency, and improve audit quality. Utilising specialist tools, they analyse client data for unusual trends and high-risk areas. In addition, our IT Audit specialists offer a range of security, risk and controls services to our clients.
Your qualifications
In Audit, you’ll usually work towards your AAT, ACCA or ICAS qualifications.
Business Advisory
Our Business Advisory team works with clients across all industry sectors and at every stage of the business lifecycle - start up, growth, disposal or succession. Compliance is a core part of what we do - helping clients prepare their accounts and tax returns correctly, and ensuring these are submitted on time to avoid penalties. In addition to those essential services, our goal is to build strong relationships and really understand how our clients’ businesses work, so that we can provide tailored advice to help drive them forward and achieve their ambitions. We want to be a trusted adviser to our clients and add value to their business.
What you’ll do
Your role in Business Advisory will involve preparing management accounts, year-end accounts, VAT returns, and both corporate and private client tax returns. You will become well-acquainted with debits and credits by completing bookkeeping records, and you’ll have plenty of opportunities to interact directly with our clients to learn about their businesses and establish relationships. You will also work with our specialist Digital Advisory team, supporting clients with their cloud accounting software and apps. With the world becoming increasingly digitalised, and the move towards a fully digital tax system, we help clients make the most of what cloud accounting platforms can offer to help them make informed decisions in real time.
Your qualifications
In Business Advisory, you’ll usually work towards your AAT, ACCA, ICAS, ATT or CTA qualifications.
Tax
Our award winning tax team provides tax services to a wide range of clients across the UK and overseas. The complex and diverse nature of tax will keep you on your toes and means that no two days are the same. Contrary to what you might expect, skills in interpretation, reasoning, problem-solving and communication are more important than numeracy, as tax is a mixture of law, regulation and accountancy. Tax is a fast, exciting profession, with regular change generating opportunity. It’s a people business where you will find yourself meeting different challenges, creating opportunities and problem solving for our clients. For this reason, a career in tax combines a rewarding blend of mental challenge, lateral thinking and analysis, with the opportunity to develop into a vast variety of roles and specialisms.
The various teams within tax means we can provide our team with a breadth of expertise as they move through their career, together with gaining sector knowledge along the way. We have vacancies across our tax practice and we’ve summarised below some of the core tax teams that sit within the wider tax department that you can have an opportunity to work within.
Corporate Tax
This involves working with clients including large corporates and multinational groups, owner-managed businesses, as well as advising on transactions.
Private Client Tax
This comprises compliance and advisory work, for individuals, trusts, partnerships, private equity and more and covering areas such as inheritance tax planning.
Specialist Tax
This includes international tax, global mobility, share incentives, employment tax, and tax reliefs for video game and film production, research and development and construction projects.
Financial Services Tax
Our Financial Services Tax team has a portfolio of investment fund clients across the UK as well as overseas.
We help our clients with a wide range of tax issues around the establishment of new investment funds, investment fund transactions and the remuneration of investment fund executives. We also provide tax compliance and investor reporting services.
Your role in the Financial Services Tax team would comprise of both tax compliance work (preparation of tax computations and returns for all of the entities within the investment fund’s structure) as well as tax advisory work (drafting reports on various investment fund matters). Every day will be different, giving you a challenging and exciting experience within the world of tax.
VAT
Have you ever wondered why an “eat in” price can be more than the cost to take away? Why do Subway charge more for a toasted sandwich? Why does the difference between a cake and a biscuit matter? The answer to all of these questions, and much more, is VAT.
“Beyond the everyday world … lies the world of VAT; a kind of fiscal theme park in which factual and legal realities are suspended or inverted.”
As this famous quote from a Court of Appeal Judge suggests, VAT is not like any other tax. It is charged at every point in a transactional chain, unlike a tax on end of year profits, and the decision as to how much VAT should be charged rests with the supplier in every case.
Our VAT advisers are curious and look for opportunities at every turn. Unlike other areas of Tax, we have no recurring work, so we have to build relationships and identify value for our clients to ensure we keep ourselves busy. No one day is like the one before it in VAT, and we are often at the cutting edge of the work we do as a tax practice and a firm. If you like to challenge convention, always ask, “Why?”, and have an entrepreneurial spirit, VAT could be the area of tax for you!
Your qualifications
In Tax, you’ll usually be working towards your ATT, CTA or ICAS qualifications.
