Sector specialism
Accountants for technology businesses
Software, SaaS and product companies, funded or bootstrapped.
Tech businesses need three things from an accountant, and most get one of them.
R&D relief that survives a compliance check. Share schemes that actually incentivise the people you need to keep. And reporting an investor or acquirer will accept without a three-week clean-up. Each of them is specialist work, and each is done badly often enough that it's worth asking about before you appoint anyone.
R&D relief that stands up
R&D tax relief is the most valuable thing available to a UK software business and the most aggressively mis-sold. HMRC's approach has changed completely: mandatory advance notification for new claimants, a named officer signing the claim, and enquiry rates that have made weak claims genuinely expensive to have made.
The test is whether you sought an advance in science or technology by resolving uncertainty a competent professional couldn't readily resolve. Building a website isn't that. Integrating two APIs usually isn't either. Solving a scaling, latency or algorithmic problem where the approach wasn't known in advance frequently is.
We write claims we'd be comfortable defending, with the technical narrative documented as the work happens rather than reconstructed in arrears. Where a claim doesn't qualify, we say so — which is cheaper than the alternative, and increasingly the difference between a relief and an enquiry.
EMI and equity
EMI is the most tax-efficient way to give employees equity in the UK, and the compliance around it is unforgiving in a very specific way: miss the 92-day notification window after a grant and the options simply aren't EMI options any more. There is no remedy.
- Checking the company and the employees actually qualify before anything is granted
- Valuation agreed with HMRC in advance, so the discount is defensible
- Grant notification filed inside the window
- Annual ERS returns, including the ones people forget in a quiet year
- Exercise and exit modelling, so nobody is surprised by their own tax bill
Reporting that survives due diligence
SaaS revenue recognition is where fast-growing companies most often find their historic numbers don't mean what they thought. Annual contracts billed up front are deferred revenue, not revenue. Set-up fees usually spread. Get it wrong and every growth figure you have quoted is wrong too — which is a bad thing to discover in a data room.
We set the treatment correctly from the start and produce the metrics investors ask for — MRR, churn, deferred revenue, runway — alongside the statutory numbers, so a funding round or a sale is an export rather than a project. Companies heading for a transaction usually move on to Opus Counsel or, if the destination is a sale, exit planning.