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Winning an accountancy award isn’t just about the trophy—it’s about credibility, industry recognition, and growing your client base. But is it worth the time and the effort? PJCO Chartered Certified Accountants has been nominated for and won multiple awards. In this podcast, its Managing Partner Peter Jarman talks about the process that he and his team go through when deciding whether to enter an award. Winning awards has directly resulted in sizeable revenue for the practice from new clients, but the process of determining whether to enter an award can be just as important as entering. For more support on entering awards, have a look at our hub at https://bit.ly/enteringawards This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

This podcast has been created from the session that Alastair Barlow (founder and former CEO of flindr) and Bhimal Hira (partner at Prysm Financial) presented at the 2025 Festival of Accounting & Bookkeeping in Birmingham, UK about their experiences exiting their practices. In it, they talk through the essential components of exploring exit options, assessing your company’s financial health, and understanding the due diligence process. This podcast complements our hub - Shaping Your Practice Exit – which provides food for thought on how to transition from being a practice owner and considers some of the possible routes, as well as offering insights from both buyers and sellers of practices. For more information about exiting your practice, have a look at our hub at bit.ly/sype. This podcast is hosted by ZenCast.fm

In the final episode of the series, Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about their experiences at Accountex 2024 and their key takeaways - the advent of AI but how it can never replace accountants, and how you shouldn’t get sucked into any software without doing your research first. They also mop up all the areas they promised to re-visit in earlier episodes such as their hourly operational costs, re-visiting business plans, certain pieces of software, and planned recruitment – as well as new developments like re-branding. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub at https://bit.ly/startyourpracticejourney.

In the penultimate episode of the series, Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about collaborating with staff, clients and other accountants. A support network of other accountants is important for referring work you don’t have capacity or expertise for, but also so that you can have assurance that every practice has similar pain points. Then there’s networking with other industries and with other accountants. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub at https://bit.ly/startyourpracticejourney. You’ll find information about building your practice community on the hub at https://bit.ly/networkingandcommunity

Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about what productivity means to them, how staff are key to your productivity, and the different KPIs you can use. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our https://bit.ly/startyourpracticejourney.

In this episode, Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about taking on staff – at what point it becomes necessary, whether to recruit an admin role or an accountant role first, how outsourcing can help, using HR consultants, and planning for future recruitment. Who’d have thought that Pilates classes are a great place to recruit…. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub.

Amy & James look at the risk of pricing too low when you first start up, different pricing models, pricing strategy, proposal software, price increases, and the advent of value pricing. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub. You’ll find a great video by Carl Reader of d&t about pricing models and unbilled work on the hub, as well as videos by the team at Gravitate Accounting about fee quotations, and Calvin Cooper of CRC Accountancy about valuing what you’re delivering to clients.

What’s the best way to get your new accountancy practice out there? Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about marketing your practice using social media as well as more traditional routes to market their practices, the importance of SEO for your website, and how it isn’t a case of one size fits all. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub You’ll find our marketing podcast series with PracticeWeb in the hub alongside two videos by Ashley Leeds - the 15-Minute Guy - about how practice owners can make the most of their LinkedIn profiles to attract clients.

In this episode of the series, Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about the add-ons to bookkeeping software that they use, debate CRM versus Excel, and talk about how you manage anti-money laundering requirements. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub You can find ACCA’s AML resources on our technical advisory website

In the first of two episodes about software, Amy and James look at whether you get the clients or the software first, the different types of bookkeeping, accounts & tax production and proposal software, CRM, and how the software needs of your practice will evolve over time. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub

In the second episode of the series, Amy Hancock and James Goulsbra talk about practice structure, practice names, the ideal client and deciding on the services you’ll offer when you’re first setting up. This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub

In the opening episode of our new series, ACCA members Amy Hancock of Hancock & Hastings Ltd, and James Goulsbra of Garrett Adam Accountants Ltd talk about how they came to start their practices. Find out about the services they offer, the use of specialists, and where they expect to be in five years’ time.This podcast series complements our hub Creating Tomorrow’s Practice Today – a hub covering regulation, tips from other members and ACCA partners, and how you can build your community. There’s even a checklist that you can use to check your progress. You can check out our hub

It’s no secret that the macroeconomic environment has an impact on small businesses. Supply chain disruptions, staff shortages and rising overheads all come as a result from the global events of the last 3 years.And whilst we all hear the global news and economic updates, it can be easy to forget this has a very real-life impact locally as well as globally. With 61% of the UK’s employees from small businesses, these challenges will affect the majority of the population directly.Join this discussion with Paul Surtees, CEO and Co-Founder of Capitalise as we delve into what current challenges are being faced, how you can spot risks ahead and indeed learn the lessons that previous recessions have taught us.If more small businesses not only survive this economic period but thrive and end up stronger, this can only be a good thing for the wider business economy – see how you can support small businesses.

In this series, we explore the big issues impacting business and the accountancy profession as we navigate economic downturn. This time we are focusing on the role of advisory. With the increase in the complexity of the world in which businesses are operating, coupled with client’s ever-changing needs, forecasting has become increasingly challenging. This challenge is amplified by the significant and swift changes brought on by the socio-political unrest in Ukraine and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing accounting and financial reporting advice, scenario planning, and storytelling offers a unique relationship between client and adviser; to become their trusted go-to person. But how do you start the process of offering advisory services? In this podcast we chat with Cheryl Sharp of Pink Pig Financials as we explore her journey into advisory. From her motivations to ensure her clients are fully educated on their businesses performance to how she practically implemented the service. For a service that is needed more than ever to help businesses survive and thrive during a recession, we look at the practical steps for you to take to add this to your suite of services. Covering how to get started, how to price the offering and how it has changed Cheryl’s practice forever!

In this series, we explore the big issues impacting business and the accountancy profession as we navigate economic downturn. This time we are focusing on the role of advisory. With the increase in the complexity of the world in which businesses are operating, coupled with client’s ever-changing needs, forecasting has become increasingly challenging. This challenge is amplified by the significant and swift changes brought on by the socio-political unrest in Ukraine and the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. Providing accounting and financial reporting advice, scenario planning, and storytelling offers a unique relationship between client and adviser; to become their trusted go-to person. As you offer them advice in your advisory services you will be engaging in conversations with them more often, and these topics are likely to be more impactful too!In this podcast we explore why advisory services are needed more than ever in order to help businesses survive and thrive during a recession, how you could go about adding advisory to your suite of services and how accountants really are best placed to fulfil this role.