Why haysmacintyre?
Working with growing companies across their business lifecycle is what we do best. Our specialised team understands their evolving needs and has the breadth of expertise to advise across a range of services, from growth stage, through maturity and on to an exit event and beyond. We work with more than 300 clients, across the different stages of their lifecycle, including early-stage scale-ups, fast-growing and often venture-backed businesses, mid-market private equity backed companies, and international listed groups. Understanding each of these markets gives us experience and knowledge which we find is invaluable to our clients.
We help you avoid any pitfalls, exploit opportunities and improve your commercial success. As specialists in your field, we can bring forward our experience of working with similar businesses and apply this knowledge to offer a tailored, pragmatic approach; we are accustomed to dealing with the challenges that business within the sector face.
Our clients come to us not only for our sector expertise and knowledge, but first-class service, and our pragmatic and approachable style. We want all our clients to feel they can pick up the phone, or pop by our office at any time, with our role being that of a trusted advisor and expert business partner, able to offer any support or queries you may have.
Clients within the CMT sector often have complex group structures and international components, requiring an extra level of expertise and local knowledge. haysmacintyre is proud to have co-founded MSI, a global alliance of complementary business services (accountants and lawyers), allowing us to confidently recommend or work closely with professionals across the most dynamic markets in the world, providing a seamless, joined-up approach, ensuring your business gets the local expertise and services you require.
One of the key areas where we pride ourselves on providing value-add for our clients, comes from the introductions we can make. We have invested in entrepreneurs and their businesses, scaling venture-backed businesses, mid-market private equity-backed business, and listed corporates through our various sponsorship partners. This not only allows our own team to further their skills and understanding of the people behind them, but also give us an opportunity to introduce our clients to these partnerships or relevant individuals and businesses in the sector, facilitating valuable connections and conversations that can help make a life-long impact on their business.
Our services
We specialise in advising fast-growth, entrepreneurial businesses and as such we understand their needs and have the breadth of expertise to advise across the range of services they require. We support our clients throughout their business lifecycle, through the various phases, providing a range of services as they change and become more complex, including supporting future change.
Basic compliance
Full company secretarial support
The rules and procedures surrounding maintenance of your statutory books and various Companies House filings can seem daunting.
We have a dedicated company secretarial team who provide full support services, including compliance and governance. We can carry out statutory tasks and ensure your company operates within the law. We can help with any compliance and governance work, from assisting with board and shareholder meetings, to preparing the paperwork for changes in officers and members. Delegating this work frees up your time to focus on your core business.
Outsourced accountancy services
All businesses need to maintain up-to-date financial information and records to meet statutory requirements and allow management to make informed decisions.
Hiring and setting up an internal finance team can be a huge drain on resources at a time when investment should be focused on developing your business.
Using haysmacintyre’s business support team, provides business owners with a cost and time effective solution. Our services are tailored and can grow with you without the need for significant investment in people and the most recent accounting software. Having a flexible solution to your growing finance needs is something that we have found our clients value most about our service as they scale – and appointing an already established finance team using the best software solutions, means you can immediately take advantage of our forecasting services, allowing you to make better business decisions.
EIS and SEIS
S(EIS) is a UK government scheme aimed to help high-risk start-up companies raise finance by offering tax relief to investors who purchase new shares in these companies. It is common for creative, media and technology businesses to be eligible for (S)EIS, although this isn’t always the case.
To make your business more attractive to potential investors it is important to provide investors comfort that investment in your company will qualify for (S)EIS tax reliefs.
This is done through obtaining Advance Assurance from HMRC. Advance Assurance gives you and your investors a provisional indication from HMRC whether tax reliefs may be available.
haysmacintyre can help in assisting in the preparation of the Advance Assurance application, ensuring that all relevant information and documents are present and submitted in line with HMRC’s guidance.
Whilst EIS is not eligible for listed companies, it should be noted that this doesn’t include the AIM market which is a quoted (as opposed to listed) market. We are regularly advising AIM companies pre, during or post listing on their EIS eligibility, as well as supporting scale-up companies through their earlier rounds of investment.
Whilst many creative, media and technology businesses are eligible for (S)EIS, it’s worth a conversation to highlight any potential red flags at an early stage.
Forecasting & Cashflow management
Forecasting
Financial modelling is at the crux of many business decisions, whether it is applied to assessing strategic goals, raising finance, investing in capex and resource or planning for the businesses’ strategic and working capital needs in the future.
haysmacintyre’s Transaction Advisory Services (TAS) team have extensive experience forecasting scenarios using models that enable you to understand the opportunities, as well as the risks and potential pinch points, in your business.
Cashflow management
As a business founder, cashflow management can often occupy all your headspace and prevent you from concentrating on growing your business.
We have a wealth of experience supporting businesses with cashflow management and can put systems in place, enabling you to focus on your business.
Cashflow affects businesses of all sizes but often in the early years when companies don’t have a dedicated treasury management function. We advise our clients on treasury management and provide them with the tools and tips to manage their cashflow effectively.
Annual Accounts Preparation & Corporation Tax Compliance
Annual Accounts Preparation
As a company, you will need to prepare annual accounts to be filed with the registrar. The end-of-year accounting process can be onerous and time consuming, especially in the early years of your business.
haysmacintyre provide fully qualified chartered accountants to prepare your accounts on specialist software, which ensures all statutory requirements are met. Our team are fully trained on the latest developments in accounting standards and the required disclosures.
Your annual accounts are a public document and it’s important the impression you’re giving to the outside world is professional, accurate and timely. This could be one of the first documents your bank, potential or current investors, customers, suppliers and recruits may look at before making a decision.
Corporation Tax Compliance
UK tax laws are numerous, complicated and constantly changing, which makes managing your tax affairs complex and demanding.
At haysmacintyre, we deliver an efficient Tax Compliance process which often coincides with the annual accounts preparation to minimise the disruption to the founding team and other employees running the business.
Our Tax Compliance service includes:
- Accurate preparation of the tax computations and returns with minimal disruption.
- Time dedicated for innovative thinking, which focuses on ‘how your tax efficiency can be improved’, now and for the future – with us acting as your in-house business tax team.
- Considering group matters to enhance worldwide tax efficiency where appropriate.
- Undertaking R&D claim work at the same time as preparing the remainder of the tax computations and returns.
- The timely preparation of tax journals, deferred tax and accounting disclosure tax notes for the accounts.
- Our commitment to finalise the tax return and computation within 30 days of the board signing the financial statements.
We use the tax compliance process to identify tax planning opportunities and future issues both in the UK and internationally.
Although many growing businesses in the creative, media and technology sectors are loss making, tax planning, opportunity spotting and ensuring compliance is completed efficiently, is an important part of running your business.
For many of our clients, the ‘fear of what they don’t know’ is why they choose to partner with us and have our dedicated expert team working alongside them to ensure they’re maximising opportunities, reducing risk and staying compliant.
R&D tax credits and other creative reliefs
Tax reliefs are a key advisory service at haysmacintyre and are particularly relevant to business in the creative, media and technology sectors. Our experts regularly work with our clients to prepare robust, comprehensive and accurate claims, with our scope being tailored for each client’s needs. This can extend to us preparing the required qualitative report or providing our guidance, templates and undertaking a detailed review if you prefer to prepare the report in-house. Our work also ensures that the maximum but supportable costs are included in a claim, by understanding your creative project processes and the roles of those involved.
haysmacintyre has assisted companies with R&D tax relief claims across a wide range of industries for over 15 years and we have an excellent track record of dealing with HMRC. With recent changes to R&D tax credits, and a significant increase in the enquiry/challenge rate, it’s important to partner with a firm who have a strong track record, have expert knowledge of your sector, and have qualified experts within the business working with you on your claims.
Founders and Directors
Directors’ personal tax
Our private client team advise on personal tax matters, as well as completing personal tax returns. This team works alongside our corporate tax team to ensure advice is tailored to you and your business. This is especially important where personal and business objectives often overlap and need careful consideration. We can advise the board on tax efficient remuneration planning, bearing in mind future plans for the business.
Protecting founder interests
At haysmacintyre, we pride ourselves on the joined-up service clients receive, considering the founding team’s interests alongside those of the business. As a founder of a successful scaling business, protecting your shareholding, voting rights and distribution rights is critical. We work with our clients to ensure the business is structured in a tax efficient manner for the founding team, ensuring reliefs such as Business Asset Disposal Relief are available if there is an exit event in mind.
Inheritance tax
If the total value of your assets (your estate) is worth more than £325,000 then the impact of inheritance tax is certainly something you need to contemplate.
Many entrepreneurs will be aware that the value of their business might be exempt from inheritance tax thanks to business property relief. However, that relief no longer applies once you have sold the company, so you may need to consider tax efficient investments and strategies to protect your estate.
haysmacintyre’s tax team can advise you on the most tax efficient way to protect your assets and pass on your wealth to future generations.
Statutory audit
Aside from conforming to legal requirements, an audit is also a great opportunity to add value to your businesses. An external audit provides an opportunity to:
- Identify weakness in internal controls and implement improvements.
- Improve the quality of management information.
- Provide confidence to shareholders and financers.
- Provide credibility to the financial statements.
In the first year of appointment, we invest time to ensure that we understand our clients and are well placed to advise you on an ongoing basis and provide a personal service.
You will benefit from our audit approach, which is delivered through our specifically tailored audit software, Inflo. This software has been developed to our specification and is based on us obtaining a thorough knowledge of your organisation to help identify key risk areas. It acts as a file sharing audit software, meaning that all audit requests are centralised within the working papers. Inflo includes data analytics which assists in performing a focused, risk-based approach audit.
We are focused on adopting innovative technology to constantly improve the quality of audit service delivery and share meaningful information beyond a set of financial statements. Using Inflo Collaborate allows both parties to plan ahead and enable audit documentation to be uploaded further in advance of the audit fieldwork, helping to ease the pressure on audit preparation and providing a comprehensive view on the status of open requests. This has been particularly useful to our clients’ finance teams to keep on top of deadlines, and it offers transparency on the status of tasks for both parties. Additionally, there is ample opportunity to review and refine the process, and to build on the success of the audit each year. We also utilise Inflo’s technology for data analytics solutions, which are designed to provide assurance over the integrity of an organisation’s data. This includes our journal entry analyser, Inflo Detect, which enables us to interrogate the integrity of journals recorded in the accounting system.
Our audit team are made up of specialist sector experts. Everyone in the department is affiliated to a sector from day one which means that the whole audit team will be experts in the creative, media and technology sectors, at their respective levels. We understand the challenges that businesses in these sectors face and can support businesses in achieving their strategic goals. We offer a Partner-led service and focus on delivering a ‘no surprise’ approach to our audits.
We encourage our clients to meet with us outside of the audit cycle, to ensure we understand your needs and can be involved with your business as you progress. We consider the audit to be a key time for us to learn about your business and provide recommendations, but we are aware that scaling businesses evolve quickly and so like to be kept up to date with any changes as they happen.
International
Introductions to MSI Global Alliance accountancy and legal firm members
Many of our clients need a wide range of professional advice when conducting international business and we meet this need through MSI Global Alliance, a multidisciplinary international alliance of legal and accounting firms, which we co-founded.
Member firms work closely together to provide integrated multidisciplinary services, local expertise and global reach to a wide variety of clients. This enables us to provide a seamless service in managing the overseas activities of our clients.
International expansion advice
It may be that you’ve established your place in the UK market and are now looking for your next expansion opportunity. If you’ve performed your market research you may have identified a promising location for your product/service overseas, but you may not be quite sure how to access this market.
That’s where we can help. We work with clients to explore international opportunities and are happy to take the lead advisory role in liaising with advisors in our MSI Global Alliance. Often, we act as a clients’ in-house team, appraising the advice provided drawing on our knowledge of establishing international structures and effectively being your ‘interpreters’, making recommendations to allow your board to make an informed decision.
We frequently advise clients on establishing the ‘right’ type of overseas subsidiaries having regard to any unique tax status or requirements of the UK parent company.
Employee share options schemes
As a growing business it is important to incentivise your key employees. One of the most successful ways to motivate and retain these key individuals is through share options.
haysmacintyre have significant experience in helping companies with their employee incentivisation methods, advising on the most appropriate course of action, considering the company’s objectives and strategy. We offer a full service which includes:
- Agreeing HMRC valuation
- Drafting scheme rules and option agreements
- Discussing the tax benefits with eligible employees
We understand the benefits of such schemes and they are enhanced where the scheme is aligned with the objectives of the company.
Corporate structuring
We have a wealth of experience advising UK and international groups on their business structure. It may be that you want to protect certain assets such as property, patents, or IP, or it may be that you want to split-out specific products, services or sales channels into a separate vehicle to be sold as a distinct business unit. Structuring is often associated with international expansion, but there are lots of occasions in a business’s lifecycle when it’s relevant to consider the most tax efficient and commercial structure. It may be that you’re looking to consolidate the group entities post various acquisitions to reduce your compliance burden – this is relatively common in aggregator or buy-and-build businesses in the sector.
VAT review & Employment tax review
VAT review
The haysmacintyre VAT team has a track record of communicating complex requirements in a results-oriented and practical way, without losing sight of the inevitable complexities and areas of uncertainty. They can provide assistance with VAT reviews, highlighting VAT efficiencies, partial exemption calculations, preparation for inspections and inspection visits.
In recent times, we’ve seen various cases specific to technology businesses, and others expanding internationally. The interpretation of VAT legislation can be complex and it’s important to ensure you’re compliant –our Transaction Advisory Support team commonly pick up on VAT issues during a due diligence process, often leading to deals delaying or not completing.
Employment tax review
We have a dedicated employment taxes team who advise on all PAYE and National Insurance related issues. The team works closely with our clients, often undertaking bespoke assignments including:
- Advising on the PAYE and National Insurance issues in respect of benefits in kind.
- Advising on compliance reporting obligations under the business expense payments regime.
- Drafting and updating staff expense and travel expense policies.
- Assisting with HMRC employment status reviews and helping to implement an internal review process.
- Structuring termination payments.
- Advising on National Living and Minimum Wage Regulations.
- Managing HMRC reviews.
M&A support
Acquisition due diligence
Should you decide to expand through acquisition, our transaction services team will assist with any financial and tax due diligence support you may require.
In conducting our work, we apply our specialist sector knowledge and our practical experience of working with businesses and importantly the individuals within them. We apply this experience to scope out a detailed approach at the start of each assignment and to engage with the target management team to ensure we extract the most detailed, relevant information for our clients. The areas we normally review and comment on for agreed accounting periods include:
- Working capital and net debt
- Quality of earnings
- Recent management accounts and historical financial trends
- Forecasts
- Financial systems and controls
- Current and historic corporation tax position, including review of R&D claims made in the past
- VAT affairs
- Employment taxes
- Share schemes
- Statutory filings status and shareholder register
These areas are led by experts in the relevant fields reporting into the overall engagement partner and manager, who are responsible for bringing the overall due diligence report together.
Throughout the assignment we communicate with our clients to ensure that they are kept abreast of key developments and any major developments that could potentially influence the deal value or structure.
Exit advice
We regularly work with businesses as they build towards an exit event and provide advice on how to achieve the best exit in each scenario. You might not yet know which exit route you’re likely to take and we can work closely with you to consider the different options, ensuring your personal interests are protected, as well as those of the ongoing business.
Business Asset Disposal Relief is widely considered as one of the most advantageous tax reliefs available and can reduce your tax bill to 10% of the proceeds on an exit event for the first £1m of consideration.
There are other reliefs and structures that are worth considering when planning for an exit event and our business tax team can advise you on optimal structures and all the reliefs available to ensure you maximise any available reliefs.
These are worth considering well in advance of an exit event as reliefs often have required conditions for a period prior to the relief being available.
As well as planning an appropriate structure and how the deal mechanics may work, we also work with businesses to ensure they are well presented for sale. We have vast experience of issues that impact the pace and chances of completing a transaction and can advise you on these areas to ensure you’re presenting the business in the right way in advance of any acquisition due diligence.
Trade sales
Trade sales are the most common exit event for founders and investors in the UK. Often, we are referring to the sale of a company’s shares to a business operating in the same industry, but trade sales take many other forms including the sale of underlying business assets rather than shares.
Often the founding team will be expected to remain in the business for some time after the sale and often the sales price includes some variable element linked to the future performance of the business. Understanding the terms of a trade sale and surrounding yourself with professional advisors who you can trust to interpret the possible outcomes from the range of options available to you is critical.
IPO & Equity Capital Markets (ECM)
IPO
In order to achieve a successful Initial Public Offering (IPO), preparation and planning is vital as it involves significant time and resource commitment from the management team. It is key to involve advisors at the early stages of considering an IPO.
Working alongside other advisors, we provide the role of the reporting accountant, which is one of the core stages during the IPO process. The reporting accountant will perform financial due diligence on behalf of the directors, the Nominated Adviser (NOMAD) and the Financial Advisor/Sponsor, as well as provide certain ‘public’ opinions required as part of the listing or admission process.
During the IPO process we would prepare the following reports:
- Historic Financial Information report
- Long form report
- Financial position and prospect (FPP) procedures
- Working capital review
We have provided the reporting accountant role to over 40 companies across the AIM, standard and AQUIS markets. We are a preferred supplier of IPO services and are currently listed in the Top 10 in the AIM Advisor Ranking Guide.
Having been through the process many times with other businesses, we’re well placed to guide businesses through the IPO, working alongside other advisors to offer pragmatic advice and a commercial approach to the process.
Equity Capital Markets (ECM) transactional support
Where we are not acting as Reporting Accountants on a transaction, we offer IPO or reverse takeover transactional support to enhance the capacity and expertise of the in-house finance team. Having a wealth of experience in the IPO/transaction process allows us to add value early in the process, foresee potential issues and support the company in preparing many of the prerequisite memos, schedules and models which can include:
- Financial position and prospect procedures memo
- Fully integrated working capital model
- IFRS conversion schedules
- IFRS memos
- Historical Financial Information
We pride ourselves on supporting companies through complex transactions in an efficient manner, allowing management to focus on running their business.
IFRS conversion
Many of our clients have outgrown FRS 102 (UK GAAP) and have chosen to transition to IFRS. This is often as a result of international expansion, international investment, or an exit path that may be overseas. Getting through the IFRS conversion process and initial reporting period can be challenging. It is common to underestimate what is involved when converting to new accounting standards, particularly in terms of time and resources.
Conversion to IFRS is much more than a technical accounting issue. IFRS may significantly affect your company’s day-to- day operations or even impact the reported profitability of the business itself.
However, conversion also offers an opportunity to make improvements to your systems and processes for more efficient, timely and meaningful internal and external financial information.
At haysmacintyre, we have a range of specialists to assist your company in effective transition methodology, technical accounting and tax implications.