The accountant for startups who speaks founder and investor.

Most accountants are built to file last year’s accounts for an established business. They are excellent at looking backwards and almost useless at the questions a founder actually has.

Can my company qualify for SEIS before I raise? Is this work an R&D claim? Should my early hires get options or shares? Will my numbers survive an investor’s due diligence? A backward-looking accountant has no answer, so founders make these calls alone, and the expensive mistakes only surface later.

A specialist accountant for startups works in the present and the near future. We know which decisions at incorporation decide what you can claim in two years, because we have walked founders through it from first share to first term sheet before.

You can incorporate a company online in an afternoon, and plenty of founders do. The problem is not forming the company. It is forming it in a way that quietly closes doors you will want open later.

The share structure you choose, how and when founder shares are issued, and the trade you register all feed into whether you can later claim investor reliefs or grant tax-advantaged options. Get them wrong early and the fix can be costly, or impossible.

We set your limited company up around where you are heading, not just where you are today: a clean cap table, founder shares in place from the start, and the registrations and records an investor will eventually want to see.

It is the least glamorous part of working with a startup accountant, and the part that saves founders the most money down the line.

If your startup is wrestling with a genuine technical problem, where the answer was not obvious to a competent professional in the field, the work behind it may qualify for R&D tax relief. For a young company, that can mean real money back to extend your runway.

It does not have to be people in lab coats. Building something that does not exist yet, solving performance or scaling problems with no off-the-shelf answer, integrating systems in ways nobody has documented; these are the everyday realities of a startup, and they are often where qualifying R&D lives.

The catch is that the relief has tightened, and HMRC now scrutinises claims far harder than it used to. A vague claim, or one that dresses up routine development as innovation, invites questions you do not want during a raise.

We scope the genuinely qualifying activity, separate it cleanly from the routine build, and write the technical narrative HMRC now expects, so your claim holds up rather than triggering an enquiry. We describe how the scheme works for your specific situation in plain English, without you needing to learn the rulebook.

When you raise, an investor will ask for your numbers, and the gap between a clean board pack and a shoebox of receipts can be the gap between a yes and a polite no.

We set up your bookkeeping properly from the start, so every month closes on time and the figures are accurate rather than approximate. That is the foundation everything else sits on.

On top of it we produce management accounts built around the metrics investors care about: how much cash you have, how fast you are spending it, how many months of runway that leaves, and how your recurring revenue and margins are moving. You should know your burn and runway to the month, not guess at them.

We also keep you fluent in your own cap table, so when a round comes you understand exactly how new money and option pools dilute the founders, before you sign anything.

Most early-stage startups pay between £99 and £199 a month, with project work like an SEIS/EIS application or an R&D claim scoped and priced up front so it never appears as a surprise on your statement.

No hourly rates and no January shocks. One fixed fee, a named, qualified accountant who understands raising and runway, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.