How we work
The operating model, in enough detail to be assessed.
Most outsourcing goes wrong in transition rather than in delivery. Access is rushed, process is undocumented, volume ramps too fast and nobody agrees what “finished” looks like. This is how we avoid that, stage by stage.
The process
Five stages, each with an output you can evaluate
Nothing is committed before you have seen work. Every stage ends with something concrete — a document, a batch of files, a signed-off process — rather than a status update.
How long does it take?
A single service line for a small practice can be live within three to four weeks. A multi-service transition for a larger firm typically runs eight to twelve weeks. We will not compress that to win the work — a rushed transition costs more than a slow one.
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1
Scoping call
Thirty minutes, no deck. We are trying to establish whether your constraint is genuinely capacity, and if so, where it bites hardest.
- Service mix, client base and sector profile
- Peak periods and where deadlines currently slip
- Software estate across ledgers, production, tax and practice management
- Previous outsourcing experience and specifically what went wrong
- An honest view on whether we are the right answer
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2
Written proposal
Within five working days. Everything commercial in writing before you decide anything.
- Recommended scope and the reasoning behind the sequence
- Engagement model, resourcing profile and turnaround commitments
- Pricing, with what is included and what is explicitly excluded
- Draft data processing agreement and security documentation
- Proposed pilot batch and how it will be evaluated
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3
Paid pilot
Real work, priced standalone, with no obligation to continue. This is where you form a view.
- Typically ten to twenty jobs, or one full payroll or VAT cycle
- Delivered to your file standards and templates from the first job
- Full working paper file and completion checklist on every job
- Structured feedback session covering accuracy, presentation and review burden
- Written process notes produced for every client in the batch
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4
Transition
The stage most providers rush. Access, documentation, people and escalation established properly.
- Named user accounts created by you, with role-based permissions and MFA
- Security sign-off completed before any live client data is touched
- Per-client process notes documented and signed off by your team
- Named delivery team introduced, with a single escalation point
- Communication cadence, reporting format and SLA agreed in writing
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5
Steady state and review
Delivery to an agreed rhythm, with capacity planned ahead of peaks rather than reacted to.
- Delivery against agreed turnaround, tracked and reported
- Weekly exception report on anything at risk of slipping
- Formal service review at agreed intervals
- Forward capacity planning before each peak period
- Scope reviewed and re-quoted openly when volumes change
Operating principles
Six things that hold whether it is a quiet month or January
These are the mechanics behind the promise. They are also the questions worth putting to any provider you are comparing us against.
Scope in writing before work starts
Every engagement begins with a written scope: services, volumes, cadence, turnaround, escalation and exclusions. Anything outside it is quoted before it happens.
Preparer and reviewer are never the same person
Second-person review on every file, with a completion checklist naming who prepared, who reviewed and what was checked. The checklist travels with the file.
Process documented per client
Each client gets a process note covering treatments, quirks, preferences and prior-year judgements. It survives staff changes on both sides — which is the point.
Queries batched, evidenced and single-threaded
Structured query lists with evidence attached, raised once per cycle rather than dribbled out. Your team answers a list, not a stream of interruptions.
Exceptions reported before deadlines, not after
A weekly exception report on anything at risk. You should never learn about a slipped job from the client or from HMRC.
Service reviews on a schedule
A formal review at the end of transition and at agreed intervals afterwards, covering quality, turnaround, volumes, commercials and forward capacity.
Quality
What “review-ready” means in practice
The single most common reason firms abandon outsourcing is not inaccuracy. It is that the file cannot be reviewed without being rebuilt.
A job that is technically correct but undocumented still costs your partner an hour to understand. Multiply that across a year and the saving disappears entirely — which is why review burden, not error rate, is the metric we hold ourselves to.
- Lead schedule for every material balance, cross-referenced to the trial balance
- Supporting schedules for every figure a reviewer would reasonably challenge
- Judgements written up and flagged rather than buried in a workbook
- Points-forward note listing everything needing partner attention
- Prior-year comparison with variance explanation on material movements
- Completion checklist naming the preparer, the reviewer and what was checked
When we get it wrong
Rework on our error is not chargeable and does not consume your contracted hours. Beyond that, every material error produces a written root-cause note and a documented change to the process for that client, issued to you. An error that does not change a process will happen again next cycle.
Continuity of people
You get named individuals, not an anonymous pool. Where a team member changes we tell you in advance and run the handover ourselves using the documented process notes. Staff turnover is a supplier problem and should never present as a client problem.
If you leave
You receive a handover pack: all process documentation, current work-in-progress status, file locations and outstanding queries. Access is revoked by you. Nothing is held hostage and there is no data extraction fee — we would rather you left cleanly and came back than left badly and told people about it.
Next step
Let’s find out where your capacity actually hurts.
A 30-minute scoping call, no pitch deck. We look at your service mix, your peak periods and your software, and tell you plainly whether we can help and where we would start.
What to expect
- No obligation and no minimum commitment to talk
- A written proposal within five working days
- A paid pilot before any long-term arrangement