Managing partners in leading Accountancy & Business Advisory practices discuss activity, in-demand service lines, and the business outlook

ACTIVITY

Two things have driven growth for us in the past year.

The first is new clients with overseas parent companies coming to us for O’Neill Foley to act as component auditors reporting to larger firms in Denmark, Sweden, France and the UK.

This is a new space for us.

Secondly, we’ve had new clients coming to us as they have outgrown smaller accountancy practices or the smaller practices haven’t been able to meet international reporting requirements and group reporting deadlines which tend to be much tighter.

In terms of service lines, we have seen growth in audit, payroll, compliance and company secretarial services.

Our owner-manager clients also turn to us for advice on strategy, acquisitions and financing new projects.

With five partners and 55 employees, so far we have been able to retain the resources close enough to what we need to keep up with the work we have, which has come to us without pursuing it.

DEVELOPMENTS

We have changed our software provider for payroll to enhance that service.

This ongoing project involves about 400 payrolls being moved over to the new software.

There are elements of AI available in this package, in terms of taking information digitally and automating the process so that, in time, payroll becomes more of a review process for our people.

AI is an ongoing process with us.

We are bringing our clients on a journey with it.

As a long-established firm, in business over 60 years, our clients are at different stages in of the business life cycle.

Some won’t be rushing into adopting AI and it might be the next generation of ownership to take these businesses more into the digital era.