Full Throttle

A big year looms for accountancy practitioners, and Advancetrack!

All systems go for 2025

If you thought 2024 was busy for Advancetrack... there’s plenty more where that came from.

THERE’S SO MUCH in store for the accountancy profession in 2025, and Advancetrack intends to stay ahead of the game! So, what can you expect from us?

GBX 2025

Our popular conference reflects the rapidly changing nature of the accountancy world. And we have two new headliners for this year.

But first, we have a new theme for the conference: high-performing teams – what does that mean in the context of your practice, and how do these teams drive a business forward?

To discuss this theme and more, we’re delighted to welcome Dawn Marriott and Jolawn Victor to the stage.

Dawn is a partner at Hg Capital, Europe’s largest investor in software companies. She is also the founding investor of accountancy consolidator Azets, where she was CEO between 2019 to 2021. She is a portfolio chair for Hg, sitting on the boards of Azets, Geomattik, Citation and team blue.

Jolawn is an experienced director of B2B and accounting tech companies. She has held numerous roles with Intuit, including VP & GM of Intuit’s UK business. Jolawn is currently the chief growth officer of payments processor GoCardless. Her previous experience came with General Mills and PepsiCo.

The conference will be held in a new venue this year: The British Library, on 13 May. For more information, take a look at last year’s conference.

THE ACCOUNTING TALENT INDEX 2025

Following on from our groundbreaking research last year into the talent and resources issues that the world of accountancy faces, we will be back in Spring with our next paper. For more information, check out the results of the 2024 Accounting Talent Index.

ASIA-PACIFIC

Led by Craig McKell, our work in the Asia-Pacific region will be driven by momentum – expect more partnerships and visibility from Advancetrack this year.

NORTH AMERICA

Our presence is growing rapidly, and we have a number of extremely exciting announcements in the coming weeks. Stay tuned for more.

PODSOURCING?

Last year saw us step up the game on our team-based pods, building in more capacity and rolling out this developing service to more clients... and so Podsourcing? was born. We expect broader use of our pods in 2025, and we’ll endeavour to provide you with case studies of their usage.

The three things practitioners must step up to in 2025

MTD... processes... resources management... Advancetrack founder and MD Vipul Sheth delves into tech.

THERE ARE CONVERSATIONS that I have with tech providers that seem no different to those I had ten years ago: how do we get practitioners to embrace technology?

I mention this because, as I thought through what would be a good ‘three things’ list for 2025, I’ve found it difficult to come up with anything that I wouldn’t have said a year or, indeed, ten years ago.

So, perhaps I’ll phrase things in a different way.

BE BRAVE

So ‘be brave’ might sound a bit fluffy, vague... but it’s really to get yourself in a mindset that transforming your practice into one that will be on top of its game for the next five years will require some tough decisions and effort; the type of thing that scares practitioners who wonder where that time and resource will come from. It’s possible as I’ve seen practices do it, but there might be brave decisions ahead around who works for you, which tech you use, perhaps even something more drastic...

SCALE TO SURVIVE, AND THRIVE

If your firm is to grow, then you will need to be laser-guided about which clients work with you, what you offer them, and how they work with you. The more clients you have, and the more people work with you, then the increased likelihood that you can manage your resources – outsourcing, mergers... these are the tactics being used by firms big and small to scale up and provide a better service. You may lose clients along the way – and people – but if your plan is good, then they will be the ones that aren’t aligned with you.

INVEST IN TECH AND PEOPLE

The last of my three ‘wishes’ this year is the most closely aligned to my requests of previous articles. And that is because the old chestnut that is MTD must be mentioned. If your clients are to produce several updates a year for HMRC, then a plan needs to be put in place. It can’t be avoided any longer. Again, this will have some pain attached – there will be clients that won’t change what they do and you will have to decide whether the price you charge leaps up, or they are moved on to another firm.

HAVE A VISION

OK, I’ve cheated and added a fourth. But this is more of a conclusion. I envisage, in the coming months and years, that MTD will push even small clients towards digital transactions and automated record-keeping. It may not be perfect, and you will still likely need to help with some cleaning up around the edges. But there will be a point where you will be able to dashboard your client base and gain visibility over their finances.

This will open up opportunities to provide proactive and timely services. Let’s see how things progress over the next 12 months.

Top 50 firm chooses Advancetrack

Multi-office firm takes on Advancetrack’s outsourcing service to mitigate against talent resourcing issues.

ADVANCETRACK? HAS BEEN SELECTED in a competitive process as a long-term outsourcing partner for a multi-partner, multi-office practice.

This top firm conducted a review of all the major outsourcers. Having completed its due diligence, Advancetrack was selected. Some of the firm’s reasons are listed here.

WHY WAS OUTSOURCING IMPORTANT TO THE FUTURE OF THE FIRM?

• To provide additional capacity at certain times of the year.
• Recruitment in the area is difficult so to reduce the number of new staff required in the future.
• To provide a more process-driven approach to exercises such as accounts production.
• To offer trainees and staff more interesting and challenging work.
• To save money as a result of the above.

WHY WAS ADVANCETRACK CHOSEN?

• The fact we were based up the road, in the UK and accessible within an hour or so.
• The fact that having trained with Rabjohns and then worked for other UK practices, we fully understand the type of work that the firm does and the pressures and issues facing it as a firm.
• The simplicity of our Advancetrack system.
• The professional attitude of our staff.

If you’re keen to learn more about our services, book a call today with the Advancetrack team.