Practice Group runs back office, advisory, operations and finance support for accountancy firms. These services suit owners who are years from an exit, thinking about stepping back, or wanting to run a more profitable firm.
Owners often first contact Practice Group because they are thinking about selling, and a sale is only one of the ways we work with them. We are an operator-led group: we run practices, deliver compliance and back office work, and help owners improve their firms every day. These services are available whether or not you ever sell.
Handing us the production work frees your team for higher-value work. Through our own delivery business, Buzz, we run bookkeeping, accounts preparation, corporation and personal tax, VAT, payroll and company secretarial — white-label, in your name, to your standard. Review and sign-off stay with you, and your clients deal only with your firm. It relieves a stretched team, protects margin, and creates the capacity to grow or move into advisory work.
More on our bookkeeping & back office → · and the full guide to outsourcing your back office.
Moving into advisory work takes time that a team busy with compliance does not have. We run your compliance back office in the background, so your best people can spend their time leading advisory relationships. You keep the client relationship and the advice, and we do the delivery work. A firm with advisory income is also worth more when it sells.
More on advisory support → · guides on compliance to advisory and pricing advisory.
Succession planning is for owners who plan to sell or step back in a few years and want a written plan now. You spend half a day working with us and keep the plan that comes out of it. The plan sets out what the practice is worth now, what is holding that number down, what would raise it, and what to do in the next ninety days. It covers every route out, including handing over internally and winding down.
Optivo gives founder-led firms senior operating support on a monthly retainer, at a lower cost than a full-time hire. The aim is a more profitable practice that depends less on its founder. You get weekly working sessions, a monthly operating review covering workflow, capacity, pricing and delivery, and a live operating plan that your team owns.
Fiscora uses your firm's own numbers to guide decisions on profitability by service line and client, pricing and fee recovery, cashflow, drawings, and the small set of KPIs that show how the firm is performing. It's led by Peter Allen, a career finance director and practice founder. Good financial information also supports the firm's value if you ever sell.
More on Fiscora → · the guide to firm KPIs.
The software we use to find and buy practices is now a product in its own right. Acquisition Engine holds data on every UK accountancy, audit and tax practice, more than 48,000 firms. It scores them against your buying brief, and manages the list of target firms you are working on, the approach letters, a shared deal room for documents and an offer model. It was built by our technology partner Chivvy, and we were its first user.
All of our delivery runs through Buzz, the in-house delivery business that Practice Group owns and built. Our teams work from four locations. Each piece of work goes to the team best placed to do it, and it always comes back in your name, to a single standard:
If you want to sell, we buy accountancy practices directly.
On a call we can talk through selling, stepping back, freeing capacity or running a tighter firm, and agree which service fits.
Book a confidential call
Andy Jackson, co-founder