Chloe Britnell
Chloe Britnell is a partner at PJCO Chartered Certified Accountants
I finished my undergraduate degree in English Literature & Film in 2017 – something completely unrelated to accounting! When I was finishing my A Levels, I didn’t really know what I wanted to do next and a degree in two things I enjoy sounded like a good option, but in retrospect I was probably just delaying the inevitable. My parents both work in finance and they met working at an accounting firm, so really I just rebelled against the numbers in my blood until I was 21.
I joined PJCO as an accounting trainee and pretty much from the minute I started, I knew I had made the right decision. It all just clicked and made sense. I remember back to putting receipts in date order for my Mum when I was small on school holidays, and now I understand not only did it keep me out of her hair but it wasn’t a completely pointless task… If only Receipt Capture apps were a thing then!
The ACCA trainee programme at PJCO offers trainees responsibility quite early on – from day one you are answering the phone and meeting clients, and as soon as you’ve picked up the basics you are conducting QuickBooks training and advising clients. As I had no prior experience in the industry (or at least outside of some very basic bookkeeping) I completed by ACCA qualification with PJCO in three years, but the whole time I was thinking about the next step. It wasn’t long before I was speaking to the partners and telling them that I wanted to be a partner. I’m sure that Peter and Kayvan were both pretty surprised that someone could be so certain so quickly, but thankfully they trusted my judgement and saw the potential in me to allow me the chance to give it a fair go.
Our recruitment process isn’t focussed on prior knowledge but more on whether candidates can talk to people. We like to take on people who have worked in the retail sector or hospitality because we know they are likely to have more ability to speak to people; a lot can be said for having had experience with clients and customers and the transferrable skills they offer. Client contact from day one is vital to the fast development of our team – otherwise they can end up technically fantastic but anxious about speaking to clients. If they qualify without having spoken to a client, then they won’t know how to translate what they’ve learnt into English that a business owner can understand.
Our client base is mainly SMEs, with a dedicated department working with landlords and Buy-to-Let, but the majority of our team works with SMEs with 1-50 employees, helping them with their business growth. This just makes our communication skills with the team even more vital, as a lot of our clients are either start-ups or entrepreneurs who need guidance to keep on the right side of HMRC and maximising their return on time and investment.
After I qualified, I was given more and more responsibility so that I could develop the skills I’d need, and I learnt about running a practice – things like professional indemnity insurance, GDPR, and the financing of the partnership. In November 2023, I became a partner alongside two other ACCA members that had also trained with PJCO – Abbie Lisney and Sophie Allaway.
The partnership structure that I’ve entered at PJCO is highly unusual but it’s a win-win for me. I’ve been offered an opportunity to accelerate my career quicker than I would have been able to at another practice – and realistically without this opportunity, perhaps I would have looked elsewhere to find a partnership opportunity. At the same time, the way this partnership has been structured where I’m earning equity over time has meant that I didn’t have to part with funds to enter the partnership - which at the age of 27 would have had an impact on my ability to buy a house, get married and all those things if I’d needed to save to buy into a partnership.
Since becoming a partner, the first challenge I’ve faced is that transition between colleague to boss. We’ve learnt a lot from this process and one of the takeaways was that whilst the partners had spent a lot of time with Abbie, Sophie and I to help us through the process, they hadn’t spent enough time with the rest of the team explaining why we were doing what we were doing, and the changes that Abbie, Sophie and I would be implementing. The biggest challenge in the transition was making sure the team didn’t feel that there were three new people coming in to tell them what to do.
Going forward, I think my challenge is going to be finding that work life balance. There are things I want to achieve in my personal life as well as in my career so finding that balance is going to be a challenge. I also haven’t yet made the transition to working on the practice rather than in the practice enough, so I need to find the balance between client interactions and team interactions. I am so passionate about developing the team and allowing them the opportunities that Peter and Kayvan have offered me. Not only do I want to ‘pass on the baton’ but this will be fundamental in allowing me the work life balance that I want to achieve.
The cost of financing has been a massive challenge for our clients with interest rates having gone up. We have partnerships with brokers who we refer clients too regularly to discuss growth plans or investment opportunities. We have seen a decline in leveraging finance for growth due to the rising cost of that, and an even sharper decline in new landlords into the Buy-to-Let space. The Renters (Reform) Bill and the reduction in the capital gains allowance have also had a big impact on that sector.
Aside from this, I think the biggest challenge facing the industry, is the growth and speed of technology developments, making it incredibly hard for us to benchmark and choose the best apps for our practice’s app stack. There are so many competitors in each space, so you have to decipher which is the best option for you. It’s incredibly time consuming to train your clients, your team, and research the options available. The real issue isn’t here though, it’s the uncertainty behind your ‘best of breed’ choices, with never-ending updates and developments which may make your previous decisions out dated very quickly. It’s definitely a hot topic at the moment, but we are currently trying to navigate the Receipt Capture space to find the most cost-effective option after Dext’s dramatic price rises. Sometimes it feels like you have to weigh up which is the best software for you on a month to month basis - and no one has the time to do that. Ultimately it impacts on our productivity as it all takes time. Streamlining is difficult when you’re chopping and changing your app stack.
PJCO is the only practice I’ve ever worked in so it's been important for me to build up my network externally so that I can get different perspectives. Last year I joined the QuickBooks Council to help them with product development, but I have also made connections with lots of different accountants on the Council which has been invaluable when discussing our app stack. It has been great to see a transformation in the profession where people are sharing ideas – at the end of the day we’re all serving the same market and trying to help SMEs survive and grow. We all have the same end goal, and working together is the only way that we can all achieve this.