Andy Jackson FRSA

Boom! Shut up and do it!

Selling to a buyer who merges five practices into one back office changes what clients experience within a year, even if the fee stays the same. I ask owners what kind of continuity matters to them before I describe how I work.

Before I ask an owner what they want for their firm, I ask how they feel about stepping back. Owners who have settled that question make decisions faster at every later stage.

Transferring a practising certificate and firm registration to a new principal takes weeks with the professional bodies. That clock needs to start long before completion, while terms are still being agreed.

A clean claims history on professional indemnity insurance tells me as much about a practice's risk controls as its fee list does. I ask for five years of claims data alongside the current premium figure.

A firm that has not reviewed client fees in three years is sitting on a gap between the work done and the invoice sent. I ask when fees were last reviewed before I ask what they currently are.

January is the worst month to start a sale conversation with an accountant, because the filing deadline eats the whole diary. I plan first conversations around a firm's quiet months, after tax season and before the summer rush.

Buyers pay for recurring fees, documented processes and staff who stay. All three can be improved in the two years before a sale, and all three are in the owner's hands.

A client base skewed toward owners in their sixties and seventies carries a fee cliff a few years out, as those businesses wind down or sell themselves. I ask for the age profile of the top fifty clients before I ask about the industry mix.

A practice built heavily around one sector carries that sector's risk on its own balance sheet. When construction clients struggled through a downturn, the accountants who served only construction clients felt it first.

Optivo is a fractional chief operating officer at £4,000 + VAT a month with a three-month minimum. It exists for businesses where the founder is the operations department and knows it.

A pattern of WIP written off at each year end tells me jobs are being underscoped at the start. I ask for three years of write-off figures because a single bad year can hide inside an average.

Two partners on the same partnership agreement can carry different workloads, and only one of them might know it. I ask about hours and client lists for each partner separately before I look at the firm total.

A private company's valuation is a negotiated number, agreed at one moment between two parties. Public share prices update every second. The difference in cadence is most of what makes private markets feel calmer than they are.

A practice spread across four different bookkeeping systems adds months to a handover. I ask sellers what software their clients use before I ask what their clients pay.

A practice that has let its AML registration lapse or its HMRC supervision slip is telling me something about how the rest of the business is run. I check compliance status on the firm itself before I look at a single client file.

Owners who sell at the right time started the conversation three years before they wanted to leave. The practice has time to be tidied, the fees to be renewed and the buyer to be chosen.

I read a seller's aged debt report before the fee list. Invoices unpaid for three months or more come off the price, so I ask for the report in the first week.

A fee book with one client worth a fifth of total billings carries a risk that only shows up after completion, when that client decides to leave. I ask sellers how spread their fees are across clients before I ask how big the total is.

Work done in a Muckin seat is reviewed by our own UK practice before it reaches the client. The seat does the production; the review stays here.

The operating rhythm that holds is a short weekly meeting with the same few numbers every time. The numbers change slowly; the habit of looking is what changes the business.