Welcome aboard, please take your seat.

Carly Woodland, Manager

One of our favourite type of clients are corporate refugees, a term which the partners of Pinkham Blair – David Pinkham and Derek Blair – started using in 2014. These are people which are emerging from larger corporate entities who want to escape the rat race and start up their own business. This can be due to a variety of reasons such as being made redundant from their corporate roles or simply becoming fed up of corporate life and wanting to be their own boss.

When we onboard any client, we have the same procedure for all clients which involves us doing the following:

• Agreeing the scope of the work and the fees for doing this work in advance
• Taking copies of ID and undertaking Anti-Money Laundering (AML) checks to make sure there are no reasons why we should act for them
• Completing all our internal paperwork and allocating the client to a designated partner, manager and accountant so they always have three points of contact within the practice
• Issuing engagement letters which is essentially setting out the services we will provide and the payment terms which have already been agreed
• Requesting handover information from previous accountants. This wouldn’t be relevant with a corporate refugee as we would be their first accountant if they are setting up a new business.
• Set up software and processes

When we onboard a corporate refugee, we will tend to help them with every step of starting up their new business. This usually starts with forming their new company with Companies House which we will do in person or over Zoom with them. Some of the questions can seem quite tricky so we like to make this process as easy as possible for the new client as at this stage, as quite often they may be wondering if they have made the right choice leaving their corporate world and going solo.

Next, if the company wants to run a payroll scheme or register for VAT we will then do this for them so they have everything ready early on. Having a PAYE scheme set up means they can start paying themselves as directors, and a VAT scheme is often preferable as this can make the business appear more established. Not all clients want to do this early on and may want to wait and see how the business performs before they take these steps.

We have a preference for using the accounting software Xero and if the client is happy to do this, we will set up a Xero account to do the bookkeeping and a Dext account to deal with purchase invoices/expenses. If the client wants to use another type of software we will help them set this up too. We will set up bank feeds so the bank transactions flow easily into the software. We will also set up sales invoice templates and talk them through how to raise sales invoices on Xero. We also give Xero training to every client so that they can reconcile the transactions on Xero. We suggest doing this daily or weekly as we like to review our clients figures very regularly with our regular Xero reviews. This is very beneficial to clients so they can see how their new business is performing and also for us so we can regularly review their figures.

There are usually a great deal of questions at this early stage from the client in relation to the finances of the business and how to use Xero. They also tend to have questions in other areas too such as business strategy, marketing, and HR. The client is used to having other people within the corporate business they work in to perform all these functions, or to liaise with in decision making. When they start flying solo it can be quite overwhelming to suddenly have to wear all these hats for the different roles they need to fulfil as part of running a business. We will help them as much as we can in these areas, or sometimes just be a sounding board for various ideas and issues. If we aren’t able to help the client ourselves if it is outside of our remit, we will recommend other professionals who will be able to help. For example, once the business grows and they want to take on staff they will need advice on what to do and we could set up the PAYE scheme, but we would recommend someone to draw up employment contracts as this is outside our scope of expertise.

As the business grows, we form a close professional relationship with our clients and know their businesses very well as we have helped them with the financials and other areas from day one. This helps them succeed as they have some support to get good processes and systems in place from day one. We love seeing our clients grow and succeed over time and being part of that journey with them.