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Chartered Certified Accountants · Poole, Dorset

Making sense of it all…

Plain speaking accountants talking your language. Affordable accounts, tax and payroll for owner managed businesses and individuals across Dorset.

  • Plain speaking, jargon-free advice
  • Direct access to a qualified accountant
  • Cloud accounting: Xero, QuickBooks & Sage

Services

End of year accounts? Tax returns? There’s a bit more to it than that.

Whether you are a sole trader, partnership, limited company or thinking of setting up for the first time, we get to know you and your business so we can become a valuable member of your team.

Accounts

The accumulating fortune …

What’s included
  • Monthly/quarterly management accounts
  • Year end accounts for all types of organisations
  • Abridged accounts for business sales

Book-keeping and accounting

The uninteresting bits which need proper attention …

What’s included
  • Setting up of in-house systems and procedures
  • Computerisation — QuickBooks, Sage, Xero, etc. Cloud based or otherwise
  • VAT returns — how & when
  • Construction Industry Scheme payments to subcontractors & returns

Company secretarial

More administration for limited companies …

What’s included
  • Company formation
  • Registered office and service address hosting
  • Maintenance of company statutory registers
  • Share issues and transfers
  • Online filing of Compliance Statements
  • Maintenance of Companies House record

Enquiries and compliance inspections support

Get it right at the outset and sleep at night …

What’s included
  • Self assessment enquiries
  • Corporation tax enquiries
  • PAYE compliance inspections
  • Subcontractor status reviews
  • VAT inspections

National Insurance

Apparently it's not a tax …

What’s included
  • Class 1 — employees and employers
  • Class 2 — flat rate for self employed
  • Class 3 — voluntary contributions (yes, some pay these!)
  • Class 4 — additional "not a tax" on business profits

Payroll

If you have employees or you are a limited company …

What’s included
  • Set-up, timing deadlines and processing planning compliant with RTI
  • PAYE & NI deductions and payment to HMRC
  • Workplace pensions for staff
  • Year end routines — employee P14/P60 preparation & filing
  • Online filing
  • Employee benefits in kind — Class 1a NI

Start-up planning and organisation

So, you want to work for yourself …

What’s included
  • Business structure — sole trader, partnership, limited liability company or limited company
  • Limited company shareholdings
  • Husband & wife involvement
  • Registration with HM Revenue & Customs
  • VAT registration — timing, procedure and administration
  • National Insurance applications
  • Construction Industry Scheme registrations and certificate applications
  • IR35 pitfalls for small service companies

Taxation — businesses

What's the damage and can we limit it …?

What’s included
  • Calculation of taxable profits
  • Loss reliefs
  • Capital allowances
  • Salary, dividends and other ways to extract profits
  • Partnership Self Assessment returns
  • Calculation of partners' shares of taxable profits for individual returns
  • Company tax returns
  • Calculation of corporation tax liabilities and timing
  • Capital gains tax and Entrepreneurs relief for business assets
  • Taxation of capital gains and indexation for limited companies
  • IR35 administration for small service companies
  • Keeping clear of IR35 problems

Taxation — individuals

What's the damage and can we limit it …?

What’s included
  • Planning for income and gains
  • Residence and non-residence advice
  • Property income statements
  • Self assessment returns
  • Liabilities — calculation of amounts and timing
  • Capital gains tax for non-business assets
  • Inheritance tax planning

Other

There’s more???

What’s included
  • Trusts
  • Company cars or mileage
  • Mortgage etc references (for existing clients only)
  • A shoulder to cry on

About us

Plain speaking accountants, since 1991

The history of Brett Pittwood dates back to 1991, when Michael Brett and Brian Pittwood left much larger firms to set up their own respective practices. They came together with the incorporation of the company in 1998, with a view to establishing a plain speaking and affordable accountancy and taxation service for owner managed businesses and private individuals.

Many firms talk of servicing the needs of owner managed businesses, but fewer provide affordable services in this market place. We are happy to deal with companies at the larger end of our spectrum of clients, but we are also involved with very many much smaller businesses owned and run by ordinary people.

Whether it is a one-man operation or a multi-million pound turnover company, we are able to “look in” from the outside to help focus. We know it can be a lonely job running a business — after all, we run one ourselves.

Today the firm is owned and run by two directors who came through our own ranks. Mark Robinson and Phil Polden have brought a fresh impetus that keeps the firm moving with the times, developing our modern approach to the business issues clients face today.

1991
Established in Poole
12
Partners and staff
Poole, Dorset
Based at Bourne Gate
ACCA
Chartered Certified

The team

12 partners and staff, an enviable record of continuity

Over half of our team have been with us for at least ten years, and we generally tend not to lose people. Staff members work with the same clients from year to year, so a close working relationship develops — and less time is spent on familiarisation and briefing, which would otherwise add to cost.

Mark Robinson

Director

Mark joined Brett Pittwood in 2002 and worked his way through the ranks to become an Associate Director in 2017, subsequently becoming a full director in early 2019. He heads up many of the cases we have handled for the longest time, and clients appreciate his calm and measured approach.

Mark was educated in Ferndown, where he still lives, doing daily battle with the traffic coming from that direction. He contends that the secret is to pick the route carefully each day, there being several to choose from.

He is a keen and competitive club tennis player and enjoys motor sports (as a spectator) as well as being a bit of a film buff on the quiet. He spends most of his leisure time with his family and likes to visit interesting and out-of-the-way places in Dorset, Hampshire, Devon and Somerset.

Phil Polden

Director

As a Poole resident all his life, Phil has a strong sense of local community and in particular a deep affinity to the Branksome area. His call to accountancy came early, studying the subject at “A” level and then going on to train with Brett Pittwood where he quickly qualified as a Chartered Certified Accountant.

A few years after qualifying, in order to gain further experience, Phil spent two years working in the local office of a “top 10” international firm of accountants where he came across larger clients and broadened his skills generally. On returning to Brett Pittwood in 2017 to take up the position of Associate Director, subsequently full director in early 2019, he has been able to widen the range of services we can offer.

When not at work Phil enjoys family life with his wife and their two young children. A dog and too many chickens to refer to here by name make up the rest of the Polden family. To relax Phil takes himself off to the golf course and strives toward the goal of getting his handicap down to single figures, which always seems just out of reach!

Our roots — Michael Brett and Brian Pittwood

The firm maintains strong links with Mike Brett and Brian Pittwood, who founded the business via their individual practices in the early 1990s. Michael is still formally engaged as a part-time Consultant and Brian is a regular visitor to the office.

On joining forces, the partners recognised that too many accountants are poor communicators. They were keen to ensure that Brett Pittwood would always be known as a firm accessible to its clients — one that would educate its clients to understand more about the financial side of their business and become better owner managers. This philosophy still distinguishes the firm from many of its competitors.

Software specialists across Sage 50, Sage Business Cloud, QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage Payroll and Moneysoft Payroll.

Why choose us

New clients often tell us nobody explained their accounts before

It is refreshing to talk to somebody who is genuinely interested in listening to what you have to say about your business. Here is what sets us apart.

“I never knew who was dealing with my affairs.”

— what we so often hear from new clients switching to us

Communications

We are often complimented on our ability to explain accountancy and taxation matters in laymen’s terms. We dispel the mystique around our profession and never ask you to simply “sign this” without being confident you understand it.

Continuity

We rarely lose staff, so we offer an unparalleled level of continuity. Clients get to know our team, and we encourage the team to get to know the clients they work with, year after year.

Experience

Our directors each have many years’ experience in public practice. Our hand-picked trainees are closely supervised by the “old hands”, so the skills of our seniors carry into the future.

Expertise

Broad general practice experience with real depth in taxation and business services. We support most popular book-keeping systems and our knowledge of company reporting is rarely stretched.

Size

With 12 full and part-time staff we are the optimal size to look after clients all year round. We cover holidays and sickness without leaving the office under-manned — and we are not used to missing deadlines!

Personal service

For all that, we are not too large to have lost sight of our original aim: to provide a genuinely high degree of personal service to every client we look after.

Have we convinced you?

Give us a call

All you have to do is contact us to arrange a meeting and we’ll be in touch.

Get in touch

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