Andrew's LinkedIn profile

It’s hard to believe that I started my accountancy career over 40 years ago when I was just 16. Like quite a lot of people, I didn’t have any specific career ambitions at that age and fell into accountancy more by luck and opportunity than desire. Who’d have thought then that I’d still be here!

After taking O Levels and achieving fairly moderate results, I then had to move schools to do my A levels, but I didn’t enjoy it there. Two hours of pure maths on a Monday morning did it for me – I used to walk the 4 miles home after that when I should have been in other lessons. The school gave me an ultimatum and I left after half a term.

My mum had a small business and spoke to her accountant whose practice was looking for people. It was Grant Thornton – or Thornton Baker as it was then – I went for an interview, and they took me on as a trainee.

I predominantly worked out of their Banbury office but occasionally worked from their satellite Chipping Norton office. In those days, Chipping Norton was nothing like the fashionable place it is now and neither was the work. No computers, everything done on analysis pads and A3 trial balances, adding machines with spools of paper for your workings and timesheets on a Kalamazoo system. We used to have a typing pool who used to type up accounts and one of my jobs as a junior was to sit and read across the finished version to make sure they agreed to the hand written version. Tax returns were hand filled and were either posted or walked round to the local tax office, where you’d know the names of the Inspectors and could actually call them and speak with them.

For some reason, the work sparked something in me, despite some of the highlights including undertaking solicitor audit work manually checking ledger cards for days on end whilst drinking chicken soup from a vending machine, being stuck in building site cabins auditing with no heating and learning the difference between livestock and deadstock on the countless farms we acted for. 

Pay as a young trainee was poor. So much so that I took a part time job in a village pub 3 nights a week even though I wasn’t strictly allowed to! I used to work all day, nip home, get changed and then go and work in the pub in the evening, often not getting home until the small hours before getting some sleep and heading to my day job again. 

I managed to keep that job under my hat until one of the Partners moved to the village. I took that as a hint that maybe I should quit the pub whilst the going was still good.

I stayed with Thornton Baker for five years and passed my AAT exams. In those days, options to study the ICAEW route were generally limited to graduates and so I expressed a desire to study for my ACCA exams but was told that was something that they could not support. I really enjoyed that job and was disappointed to leave but it proved to be a significant stepping stone for me.

At the age of 21, almost on a whim, I was interviewed for a role in a small Surrey practice and was successful in landing that job. Between Christmas and New Year, I moved all of my worldly goods in my car and moved into a cottage in Surrey where I was significantly outnumbered by mice and had to run the gauntlet of the craziest landlady you could ever meet.

From Thornton Baker, with 30 staff and all its processes and structure, the move to a smaller firm above a shop in a Surrey high street was a bit of a culture shock but I thrived on the contact with clients and the freedom I was given to develop. I qualified with ACCA and after four years and then was on the move again as that practice was sold to a larger outfit in the next town and I didn’t really feel that move was for me.

In 1992 secured my first management role with another Surrey firm where I became a Partner in 1996. That practice has evolved into what is now CSL Partnership Ltd.

Throughout my time in practice, I’ve always dealt with SMEs and personal tax clients and that has now turned into a selling point – when potential clients come to talk to me, I’ve got 40 years of experience dealing with people just like them. There’s not much I haven’t seen before but it always amazes me that I still learn something new, almost on a weekly basis.

In 2023, I formulated a plan to take some extended leave, having never had more that two weeks off in one go in the past 40 years. I realise how fortunate I am to be able to do this and was away from the office for just over 5 weeks – it was good to see that the office can run without me for an extended period of time as I have a senior management team that are more than capable of looking after the clients and I was happy to leave them in charge whilst I was away – it also gave the team a bit of a feel for what it’s like when I’m not around. I emailed all my clients in advance and re-assured them that it wasn’t a pre-retirement email – that my aim is to get to 50 years in practice and then see where we go from there. 

I mentioned earlier some of the changes in working life since I started. The world has become more demanding with the advent of emails, instant communication and instant access and it makes managing time and boundaries ever more important. Given how demanding the world has become, working for yourself makes a big difference. You live and breathe the business – you are one and the same - which can be both good and bad, but you can control what’s going on around you to a large degree. I’m also pretty good at switching off when I need to. 

As I see it, there are significant challenges facing the accountancy profession in practice, resourcing being one of them.

If you’ve got a team of good, settled team, make sure you keep it that way – it is very difficult to find staff these days. I’ve had some success stories with recruitment and some that didn’t work out. It’s as much about attitudes of people as to whether they’ll be the right fit for the practice as it is about technical abilities. The way I would interact with the partner at Thornton Baker is nothing like how my staff interact with me because life is totally different now and you have to move with the times. One of my clients has always said you should hire on ability and fire on attitude and he’s right. Attitude is everything these days – if you haven’t quite got the ability then that can be trained and nurtured, but if you haven’t got the right attitude then that’s very hard to put right. I’m comfortable that everybody in my team has the right attitude and I think I’ve got the right attitude to employing them. We’re relatively relaxed but there are definite boundaries. I am the boss and they know that, but I’ll always do what I can to accommodate them in their lives. 

I’ve seen good and bad economic times over the past 40 years. Particularly difficult were the early 90s when interest rates went to 15% overnight and the late 2000s but I think that the current climate is one of the most challenging times for small businesses. Factors such as war in Ukraine and other global situations, tax policy, inflation, interest rates and a lack of consumer confidence are all contributing to a very tough market and many of my clients are finding it hard at the moment – harder than they have possibly ever found it. 

I do feel we are a highly taxed nation at the moment and I think that stifles entrepreneurship and growth. The recent increases in corporation tax have been particularly painful for many.

When I look back at my career to date, I have thoroughly enjoyed it and I would recommend it to anybody. If you can get into small practice and stay for long enough to get the real relationships with people, it is really rewarding, and I count a lot of my clients as good friends as well as clients. I’d like to think I’ve made a real difference over that time, and I’d do it all again – I’ve really enjoyed it and look forward to at least another 10 years.