Outsourcing for UK
accountancy practices.

Service model

• Recurring monthly or quarterly work, such as bookkeeping, reconciliations and VAT preparation workings
• Year-end batches of draft accounts and supporting working papers
• Clearing a backlog of overdue or catch-up files
• Additional capacity around busy periods, such as year end or the Self Assessment season

These are ways an engagement can be arranged, not fixed packages. TaxSpex works as an extension of your practice's production team. Your firm decides which work to allocate, and each engagement sets out the tasks, the files involved and the point at which work comes back to you for review. We do not take on your clients or deal with them as our own.

Where agreed, preparation is carried out in your own templates and working paper formats, or to a checklist or file structure that you provide. TaxSpex works with Xero, QuickBooks and Zoho Books; if your firm uses other software, we confirm at the outset whether the work can be done in it.

Queries are routed through your firm. If information is missing or a point needs the client's answer, we raise it with your nominated contact, who decides whether and how to put it to the client. When the work is prepared, it is returned to your firm for review. Your reviewer raises points, we make the agreed corrections, and your firm returns the finished work to its client.

The tasks in scope, how work is handed over and how queries are logged are agreed at the start and recorded for the engagement. The arrangement can be adjusted as you see how the work fits your team.

What your firm keeps

• The client relationship and ownership of the client
• Engagement letters and terms with your clients
• Final professional judgement on accounting treatments, tax positions and disclosures
• Final review and sign-off of each file
• Obtaining client approval of accounts and returns
• Filing with HMRC and Companies House, made by your firm
• The fees your firm charges its clients
• Your firm's branding and client communication, unless the engagement provides for direct contact

Preparation support adds capacity to your team. It does not change who your client is or who is responsible for the work they receive. Unless a different lawful arrangement is expressly agreed, each of the responsibilities above stays with your firm.

TaxSpex prepares the work your firm allocates and answers to your firm for it. Under this model we do not give advice to your clients, agree fees with them or file on their behalf. Your clients continue to deal with your firm, and TaxSpex does not contact them unless you arrange it. Your firm decides what it tells clients about its use of outsourced support, in line with its own professional and data protection obligations.

Keeping these responsibilities with your firm is deliberate. Your review process, quality standards and professional obligations stay where they already sit, and the preparation work fits into them rather than around them.

Security and data handling

• The access needed for the engagement is agreed and set out in the contract
• Where agreed, access to software and files is granted by your firm through its own systems and user permissions, so your firm controls it and can revoke it
• Records are exchanged only through channels agreed in writing
• TaxSpex does not ask for, and should never be sent, HMRC online services or Government Gateway credentials, or Companies House authentication codes
• The enquiry form on this site is for an initial conversation only and must not be used to send client records or personal financial information

Client records are shared only once the arrangements for handling them are in place. Before any client data is shared, your firm and TaxSpex agree the contracting entities, where the staff working on your files are located, confidentiality, processor terms, any subprocessors, how long records are kept, and any safeguards required for international transfers under UK data protection law. Work is delivered from Pakistan, which is outside the UK, so the transfer position is part of that discussion from the start.

The specific security arrangements for an engagement, including how records are accessed, where they are held and how they are returned or deleted when the work ends, are set out in the contract. If your firm has its own supplier due diligence process or security questionnaire, share it with us at the start so it can be covered before the engagement is agreed.

Start with a pilot

• The quality of the prepared work against your review standards
• How queries and missing information are communicated
• How returned files fit your review process, templates and software
• Whether the handover arrangements work for your team

Before allocating a larger share of work, your firm may want to see how outsourced preparation fits your team. A pilot lets you do that with a small, defined batch of work, so you can assess the points above before deciding what to allocate next.

The scope, duration, fee and success measures for a pilot are agreed in writing for each engagement, together with the delivery arrangements described above. None of these is fixed in advance, because the right batch, timescale and measure of success depend on the work and on your practice.

At the end of the pilot, your firm decides whether to continue, change the scope or stop. If you continue, the engagement can move on to recurring work, a year-end batch or other work you choose to allocate.

To discuss a pilot, tell us about the type of work, the software you use and where your team needs capacity. Please do not include client records in your enquiry.