An accounting, taxation and compliance practice runs on deadlines that do not move. Articled trainees, seniors and partners share a heavy calendar, and the people system must survive the filing weeks.
Not sure what you need? Tell us about your business in six short steps and we will come to the first meeting prepared.
Share your requirementsAn accounting, taxation and compliance practice keeps books, prepares returns, handles filings and advises on tax and company law matters for small and mid-sized clients. Partners hold the client relationships and sign off. Managers and seniors review. Semi-qualified staff, article trainees and accounts assistants do the daily bookkeeping, reconciliations, data entry and preparation of returns. Work is tied to statutory due dates that cluster around month ends, quarter ends and year ends, so some weeks are quiet and others run late into the night. Clients send documents late and expect the same date to hold. Trainees are in the office to learn and to carry the load, and many leave once qualified. The practice holds confidential information on every client. Related reading: HR for professional services. Staff who stay become the memory of each client file, and when they go, that memory goes with them.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in accounting, taxation and compliance practices. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
A few days before each due date the practice works late, and the people who bear it are the juniors.
Article trainees prepare returns and reconcile accounts, and the learning depends on which senior they sit beside.
Missing vouchers and late bank statements push the work into the last days, and the team is blamed.
Trainees and assistants move to larger firms or industry once they have a certificate, and the practice starts again.
Which client pays late, which has a special arrangement and where the papers are kept lives with one person.
Managers sign off tight on time, and errors surface only after a notice, when the cost is high.
Client data sits on shared drives and personal phones, and nobody has set rules.
Late nights are expected, with no tracking, no time off in return and rising resentment.
Start with the topics that matter most here: HR Strategy and Workforce Planning; Learning and Development; Retention and Attrition Management. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for professional services, not in general.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a accounting, taxation and compliance practices business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A calendar of due dates against staff, with leave blocked in the busiest weeks and extra hands arranged ahead.
A calendar of due dates against staff, with leave blocked in the busiest weeks and extra hands arranged ahead. Plan extra hands through the recruitment process.
A rotation across bookkeeping, tax, audit support and compliance, with a mentor and monthly review.
A rotation across bookkeeping, tax, audit support and compliance, with a mentor and monthly review. See the learning process.
A one-page note for each client with contacts, special terms, due dates and document locations, kept in the documentation process.
A one-page note for each client with contacts, special terms, due dates and document locations, kept in the documentation process.
A simple time sheet in busy weeks and a rule for compensatory rest or recognition.
A simple time sheet in busy weeks and a rule for compensatory rest or recognition. See the attendance and shift process.
Who may open what, how files are shared and what happens on exit, reviewed by a qualified professional.
Who may open what, how files are shared and what happens on exit, reviewed by a qualified professional.
Named steps, skills and review points, so staff see a future beyond the first qualification.
Named steps, skills and review points, so staff see a future beyond the first qualification.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
A rotation, mentor and review plan for article trainees and assistants.
Leave blocks, hours records and time back around filing peaks.
Client sheets, confidentiality rules and role descriptions kept in one place.
Recognition and a visible path that keep qualified staff from leaving.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in professional services, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Why associates and managers leave consulting, accounting, legal and advisory firms, and how to ask about progression, workload and partners at exit.
6 min readRead article
How a D2C founder can decide which digital marketing work to hire for, which to buy from an agency, and which to split, with a worksheet and a five step plan.
6 min readRead article
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead article
What really keeps mobile app and web developers in a small firm: stay conversations, growth paths, fair release rules and a risk sheet an owner can use this month.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Plan the calendar early, block leave, ask clients for papers sooner and agree time back after the peak. Track hours so the load is seen.
Give a rotation with named mentors, real tasks of rising difficulty and a monthly review. Trainees who learn well stay and help later.
Keep a client sheet for each account, make a second person familiar with every client and update the sheet after each filing.
Offer a visible role, fair pay against the market and a real say in client work. Ask what they want in the next two years before they leave.
Access by client, no client papers on personal devices without rules, and clear terms on exit. Take advice from a qualified professional on professional obligations.
We would look at the compliance calendar, the trainee learning plan and how client knowledge is recorded. A busy-week plan with time-back rules, or a client sheet set, is a likely opener. Scope, timing and fee are set out in writing afterwards.
All 145 business types in professional services · Find another business type
See all HR topics for professional services, or another industry.
Tell us what is slowing your team down. We’ll help you find a practical way forward, starting with a conversation.
