Our mission at My Accountancy Place is to help our ambitious clients understand their business and to help them embed profitability into their growth plans. And that’s particularly apparent with the fast-growth creative agencies we work with.
Mark Stringer, MD at AHOY, is one client where we’ve built a brilliant working relationship with an agency that sees the true value of the varied mix of accounting, tax advice and business consulting that we offer to clients.
AHOY – an Integrated Digital Agency
AHOY is an integrated digital, branding and marketing agency based in Manchester. They’ve developed two great niches for themselves, working with up-and-coming brands in the food and drink, and the fashion sectors.
Their integrated approach means the brands they work with get a complete ‘end-to-end’ delivery for their campaigns, from initial design work through marketing strategy and end execution and delivery of a campaign, as Mark himself explains:
“What sets us apart from other agencies is probably our execution. We’ve proven that our work is successful and we’ve got clients that keep coming back – I think we’re up to 22 awards at the moment, so we’re really, really proud of that!”
And it’s this holistic ‘start-to-finish’ approach to digital that’s helped them appeal to the right clients and put some serious growth into the agency.
How We Started Working with AHOY
We’ve been working with Mark, and the rest of the AHOY team, for over a year now. But the initial contact came from a classic marketing staple: the direct email.
Mark has been thinking about moving AHOY over to Xero online accounting software for a while, and when he saw we were Xero Partners that was enough to make him pick up the phone to arrange a meeting – although he wasn’t yet convinced that My Accountancy Place were ready to replace his existing accountant, as he says:
“We went to the meeting and the idea was to try and suck up as much information as we possibly could, and give that back to my accountant and then, finally, get my accountant to move over to Xero. I think there’s a big fear of wanting to switch accountants: you never really want to change.
But what actually happened was that we found the guys at My Accountancy Place knew a hell of a lot. We’d been asking about R&D tax credits and our accountant had said ‘I don’t think they apply to you’. The truth was that they did, we just needed to find the right expertise.”
And this is the point that we really opened Mark’s eyes to what My Accountancy Place can do. We got an R&D specialist on board to look into AHOY’s potential claim for a credit and found that they definitely DID qualify for those benefits.
By helping AHOY to claim their credit, we immediately stopped them from missing out on a huge financial benefit for the agency. And that was the turning point for our working relationship (and one of the big reasons for Mark deciding to move AHOY’s accounts over to us as well).
Xero and the Benefits of the Cloud
The other reason for AHOY coming to us was Xero, and the fact we knew the software inside out (not something his previous accountant could claim).
We’re a Xero Gold Partner and use their cloud accounting software as the financial foundation for all our client work. And it’s definitely not a case of ‘tech for tech’s sake’ – working with clients in the cloud through Xero completely changes the client/accountant dynamic, something that Mark wholeheartedly agrees with:
“The reason we switched over to Xero was because it’s a cloud-based system. It’s also designed for non-financial people. That means that when you’re looking through the system that it doesn’t feel so alien to you – you don’t need to know all the ins and out of it and you don’t need much training.
But with any business, the main thing you want to do is make sure you’re looking through your KPIs and making sure you’re keeping an eye on all your stats. Because there’s a dynamic feed in from your bank, within 24 hours all that information is up to date. You’re getting a lot of feedback that you wouldn’t be able to get until a month, maybe two months, down the line. So it’s invaluable in a business, especially a growing business where every month makes the difference.”
Improving the Way We Work with Our Creative Clients
It’s the real-time, current view of your agency numbers that makes Xero such an incredibly useful tool – and the mainstay of all our accounting work. But it’s not just about having a live bank feed: where Xero really helps us is in the actual process of collaborating with clients and helping them deal with any issues quickly.
With Xero being cloud software, we can access a client’s numbers at any time, from any location – and that helps us take our creative agency clients’ expectations of business advise to a whole new level. For AHOY, working with us through Xero has given them a real edge:
“If we’ve got any queries whatsoever, we can call up and speak to Paul or Martyn and talk through things live – in real-time. You do feel like they’re working as an extension of the business, rather than as a separate entity that’s not really caring.
Because they specialist in the creative and digital sector, it actually means I’m a lot more comfortable in asking questions about certain things and feeling that they know what they’re talking about. I think that’s a massive benefit. I sleep more comfortably at night because I know we’re getting a little bit extra from that type of accounting”
Talk to Us About Getting Creative
Working with AHOY has been an amazing example of how talking to a creative agency, and understanding their needs, helps us to transform their financial management. It’s a partnership we can see growing over time – and nothing makes us happier than seeing our creative clients growing and hitting their goals.
If you’re an agency or creative business that’s looking to take your finances to the next level, please do come and talk to us. Get in touch to arrange a chat with the My Accountancy Place team and a hands-on demo of Xero online accounting.
