Accountancy practices hold financial data for hundreds of businesses in one place, which makes them a high-value target and a single point of failure for their clients. Add the January deadline crush, Making Tax Digital and increasingly demanding AML expectations, and technology stops being background infrastructure. Cloud Agile keeps practice software fast, client data protected and the whole environment ready for the busiest six weeks of the year.
These are the issues that come up again and again when we audit organisations in this sector. If more than two look familiar, a conversation is probably worth having.
Systems that cope in June crawl in January, when the whole team is in practice software and portals simultaneously and every hour matters.
Payroll, bank details, personal tax records and identification documents for an entire client base, all reachable from any compromised mailbox.
Attackers who reach your mailboxes do not just target you, they impersonate you to your clients, which is a professional problem long before it is a technical one.
Legacy applications tied to a server nobody wants to touch, holding back remote working and creating a recovery risk.
HMRC services, Companies House, bookkeeping platforms, payroll and client portals, each with their own logins and no consistent access control.
Identification records, document retention and demonstrable data security controls that need to survive a practice assurance review.
One senior team covering support, infrastructure, security, governance and AI, so nothing falls between suppliers.
Support that scales through the deadline peaks, with capacity planning before January rather than emergency calls during it, and senior engineers who understand practice software behaviour. Explore our business IT support services.
Microsoft 365, Azure hosting or hybrid setups sized for concurrent busy-season load, with secure remote access so the team can work anywhere without dragging performance down. Explore our cloud and infrastructure services.
Multi-factor authentication everywhere, Conditional Access, email authentication to stop your domain being spoofed at clients, endpoint protection and monitoring for unusual mailbox activity. Explore our managed cyber security services.
Immutable backups of practice data and client records with tested recovery times, plus a continuity plan that assumes the worst week of the year is exactly when you will need it. Explore our backup and disaster recovery services.
Cyber Essentials certification, data protection documentation and the security answers larger clients now expect before appointing an accountant. Explore our governance, risk and compliance services.
Accountancy practices answer to their professional body, HMRC and the ICO, and increasingly to their own clients' procurement teams.
Access control, retention and secure exchange of personal and financial records, including how identification documents are collected and stored.
Client due diligence records held securely, retained for the required period and retrievable during a supervisory review.
Digital record keeping and digital links maintained end to end, with the infrastructure and integrations to support them reliably.
ICAEW, ACCA and similar reviews increasingly cover information security, backup and continuity as well as technical accounting work.
A pragmatic baseline that also answers most of what corporate clients ask, and helps at insurance renewal.
Portals and encrypted delivery replacing unprotected email attachments for accounts, payroll and tax documents.
Client accounts, tax working papers, payroll data and email backed up immutably with retention of at least seven years, aligning with HMRC record keeping periods, Companies Act requirements and AML five year minimums. Restores are tested so a historic year can actually be produced when HMRC or a practice assurance review asks.
Practice size, software stack, hosting arrangements, busy-season pain points and any client or professional body requirements.
We review infrastructure, Microsoft 365, backups and security, and specifically assess whether the environment can carry peak concurrent load in January.
Security and resilience risks first, performance work timed to complete well before deadline season, with transparent per-user pricing.
Deliberately scheduled outside busy periods. Most practices onboard between March and October so nothing changes when it matters most.
Ongoing support with a pre-season readiness review each autumn, covering capacity, backups and the incident plan.
Both models are priced the same way per user. The difference is how much you keep in-house.
The usual fit for practices up to around 50 staff.
For multi-office practices with internal IT capability.
Accountancy has more genuinely automatable administration than almost any sector we work in, and the return is easy to measure in recovered chargeable hours.
Automated engagement letters, AML document collection and records-request chasing, which is otherwise one of the largest drains on practice admin time.
Incoming client documents recognised, renamed and filed to the right client and period automatically, instead of by hand.
Copilot producing first drafts of client letters, management commentary and internal summaries from your own approved data, reviewed by the responsible person.
Automated alerts when a client record is incomplete or a filing deadline is at risk, before it becomes a late submission.
A clear policy on what client financial data may be processed by which tools, with technical controls behind it rather than trust alone.
More detail on how we approach this is on our AI consultancy and automation services page.
Managed support is priced per user per month: Agile Core at £45 per user and Agile Fortify at £75 per user. Servers are £100 each per month and network devices £10 each per month, so a practice still running hosted practice software knows exactly where the cost sits.
Migrations, hosting redesigns, Cyber Essentials preparation and consultancy are quoted separately at £120 per hour. We deliberately price and schedule projects to complete before deadline season.
We work remotely as standard and onsite where it genuinely helps. Choose a region to see how our support, security and consultancy work locally.
Book a 20-minute discovery call and we will tell you plainly what we would fix first, what it would cost and whether we are the right fit.