What a free client money and tax review covers
- Which statutory regime your agency is actually in — Estate Agents Act, CMP Regulations, or both — and what each requires of you
- Whether the regulation 8(1) audit applies, when it is due, and whether the records will support a clean report
- Your HMRC anti-money-laundering registration: whether it exists, whether it covers every premises, and whether the annual declaration has been made
- How commission is being recognised, and whether gross rent is wrongly inside turnover
- Your VAT treatment of referral, referencing and portal costs — recharges and disbursements are not the same thing
What to have to hand
Nothing at all, if you would rather just talk. If you want the review to be concrete, the most useful things are your last set of accounts, a recent client account reconciliation, your HMRC AML registration reference, your CMP scheme certificate if you have one, and your standard terms of business — because the terms decide when commission is earned, and therefore when it is recognised.
What we will be able to tell you on the first call
Which regime you are in, which is a short conversation with a clear answer and decides most of the rest. Whether the regulation 8(1) audit applies to you and when it is due — six months after your accounting period end, which is a shorter runway than the tax deadlines you are used to planning around. Whether your AML registration covers every premises you actually trade from. And whether gross rent is sitting inside your turnover, which is the commonest single error in agency accounts and is visible in about a minute.
What we will not do on a first call is give you a valuation multiple. HMRC publishes none for this sector, and a number produced from a five-minute conversation would be somebody's opinion dressed as a fact.
If you are switching from another accountant
It is one letter of engagement from you. We then write for professional clearance and the records, and pick the work up from there. Nothing has to happen at a year end — a mid-period switch is normal and creates no extra work for you.
One thing worth asking your current accountant before you move, if you do sales: when the client account was last audited, and by whom. If the answer is that your accountant signed it themselves and they are not a registered auditor, that is not a valid report under regulation 8(1) — and it is far easier to establish while you are still a client than afterwards.
If you would rather not use the form
Email is fine, and so is WhatsApp — the link is in the header of every page. Please do not send client account data, vendor or tenant records, or identity documents by ordinary email; once you are engaged we will set up a secure route for anything of that kind.