BrandWatch: Numerable focuses on the human side of the balance sheet
Bristol-based engineer and entrepreneur Martin Coulthard has launched the Numerable web app to help businesses control their finances better.
The app, unveiled at Xerocon London, enables accountants to quickly produce engaging, graphical management reports.
Martin says: “We are addressing a fundamental need for people to understand their accounts, so they can make better decisions.
Tabular reports
"Many struggle to do this using conventional tabular reports. Our app overcomes the problem using a new, highly visual way to show the information.
"It also appeals to accountants as it saves them time, so practises can offer a cost-effective reporting service to smaller clients.”
Interactive plots
Numerable imports data from Xero cloud accounting. It turns reports into interactive plots supported by automated text explanations.
Advisers can add expert comments, create presentations and export to PDF. The company has applied for patents for its novel user interface, which has 1-click charting and needs no configuration.
Bristol-based metrology company Third Dimension is a pilot user.
Financial reports
Its accountant, Natalja Beesley, says: “I prepare financial reports in Numerable for our board meetings. The interface is very simple and easy to use.
"I can quickly identify the key points I want to get across, choose different plots that illustrate them, and add my comments. It’s great to come to each meeting with confidence that I’m ready to give a well-structured, engaging presentation.”
Numerable has been approved by Xero as a Connected App and is available with a free trial through numerable.io and the Xero App Marketplace.
Breaking up is hard to do for the Big Four
There are more developments as the Competition & Markets Authority (CMA) continues its probe into the Big Four.
KPMG recently announced it was stopping non-audit services for larger clients. A big bold move in my opinion.
At the end of last week, The Big Four have also unanimously rejected the possibility of being broken up and are expressing a range of opinions on market share caps and non-audit service restrictions. The full list of responses can be found here.
So, what does all this mean for accountancy firms planning this type of additional advisory-based services?
Clear message
First, the KPMG news is sending a clear message that it will focus on the FTSE 350 for audit. The firm wants to provide more detail for audits, resulting in greater transparency. That’s good news for all of us.
It also used a term not generally found in industry: ‘Graduated Findings’. I believe this has been created to highlight how it will provide a granular level of detail rather than a ‘fair view’. This will be possible but only by using artificial intelligence (AI).
The technology uses a hybrid of machine learning and AI techniques, combined with conventional tests to uncover errors and anomalous patterns of activities across the full financial dataset and associates a risk score to each transaction.
Greater insights
Without doubt, ‘graduated findings’ will result in greater insights and higher assurance – it’s the beauty of AI combined with human insight.
KPMG – and now Deloitte - are setting out their leadership stalls: if they take the lead, it’s easily possible for the rest to fall in line and follow. It’s well publicised that audit services provide greater value; In December 2017, KPMG UK posted a 10 per cent growth in audit performance. So non-audit services seem to be a drop in the ocean. The next question is whether others will follow suit?
It is a bold move to drop this amount of revenue; reading between the lines, the firm must be incredibly sure it can ‘easily’ replace the revenues. The additional work required for a ‘graduated findings’ report will drive audit services revenues. In my opinion, this makes KPMG into a super-specialist.
Strategic move
This is a strategic move. KPMG audits will be trusted more than the others and although this has not been publicly leaked, it doesn’t take much to see that the audit market is where the money is. As the CMA study plays out, it will be interesting to see if KPMG comes under fire and how the others react.
Trust is the key word with audits. If KPMG leads the market in this area, its audits will be more trusted. Large enterprises will want to use them to ensure they have absolute transparency, especially if scrutiny is increasing.
But isn’t that why they use AI? Of course, there is a need to build rules – but then software such as IRIS AI already does this.
Audit standards
As the power-play continues, we shall see who the best of the best will be. Across the industry, I believe audit standards will be improved or the audit committee standards will be reviewed.
We also need to add Brexit. As we progress, there will be different rules across the UK and Europe. The confidence that KPMG has shown in the UK market highlights that whatever happens from a border perspective, audit is here to stay.
So, while the Big Four submit their responses and the CMA study continues, there is a quieter AI revolution in the accountancy sector. Mid-sized practices are seeing the benefits of AI. They can compete on audit. They are transforming their practices and evolving to provide more lucrative value-added services. With technology evolution comes a revolution. And with revolution come opportunity. The opportunity for every practice to thrive in the digital economy.
Star lifts the burden of payment processing
Accountancy professionals facing increasing costs and complexity of payment processing can now offer payroll services without Bacs accreditation. .
Star Payroll has joined forces with CORVID PayGate to enable accountants to create and submit payment files on behalf of clients using the secure Bacs network.
This streamlines the entire process, improving end-to-end control and providing greater payment security. As a result, accountancy practices can capitalise on new services and opportunities in the digital economy.
Seismic shift
Over the past few years, HR and payroll departments have experienced a seismic shift in payment processing. Additional work for pension auto-enrolment and Real-Time Information; the uplift in work without additional resources; increased processing time, and the cost of Bacs accreditation have placed service providers under more pressure than ever before.
The provision of payroll services is growing as accountancy practices are guiding clients through a once-in-a-generation, political, legislative, economic and social disruption across the industry. Companies are now turning to professional partners to provide payroll compliance and further advisory-based services as further legislation looms.
Howard Hoddell, head of sales at Star, says: “The changes in legislation, combined with rising complexity and increased security often prevents companies from running their own payroll. We are seeing many businesses turn to their accountant for support as a natural extension to accountancy services.
Digital economy
“However, for practices to thrive in the digital economy, services must be commercially viable. Removing Bacs accreditation costs and potentially reducing bank charges enables firms to offer affordable payroll services.”
The Star and CORVID PayGate partnership builds on the current integration, enabling payroll files to be directly imported in their native formats and automatically translated into Bacs-ready transactions.
This not only streamlines the process, but ensures there is complete file integrity, maintains security with the data protection rules and provides a level of control to both the accountancy professional and client to ensure payments are absolute.
Craig Steger-Lewis, CORVID PayGate managing director, adds: “Our integration with Star Payroll enables accountants to extend the value proposition to their clients. We firmly believe our partnership will support the new reality of payroll. As the industry embraces digitisation and automation, this is a great way to improve service delivery for clients and achieve business-wide cost efficiency.”
Taxfiler launches smooth integrations
As bookkeepers and accountants brace themselves for another busy tax season, Taxfiler is launching integrations for KashFlow and Xero online accounting software to streamline the submission process.
The new integrations enable accountants to efficiently move information into one system, enabling submissions (tax returns, accounts and VAT returns) to be completed from a single compliance solution. Efficiency has never been so important in the industry, as professionals prepare for the changes required within the new Making Tax Digital (MTD) for VAT regime coming into force in April 2019.
James Reeves, director of Taxfiler says: “Digital record management and sharing is absolutely key for MTD. Every efficiency gain made helps drive productivity and streamlines the process for accountancy professionals. The new integrations are another step to ensuring core compliance can be done correctly, and help firms succeed on the MTD journey.”
Monthly subscription service
Taxfiler has rapidly established itself as a cloud-based monthly subscription service for agents and accountants to submit statutory accounts and tax returns for companies, partnerships, individuals and trusts.
Alongside QuickBooksOnline, trial balances from KashFlow and Xero are imported into Taxfiler Accounts Production. This is done by opening a client, selecting the Trial balance screen, choosing the relevant cloud bookkeeping option and entering user credentials.
Taxfiler says it will be announcing further integrations in the near future.
Ireland upgrades PAYE system
PAYE Modernisation or Real Time Reporting is the latest big policy overhaul in Ireland.
It's also known as SMART PAYE and this is probably to facilitate then following snappy little memory jogger by the Revenue’s marketing department.
- Seamless integration into payroll.
- Minimize employer cost to comply.
- Abolition of P30s, P45s, P60s and end of year returns.
- Right tax paid on current due dates.
- Time savings.
The benefits of PAYE Modernisation are:
- Real time info to the Revenue so employees and employers will have the most accurate and up to date information relating to pay and tax deductions.
- It will improve streamlining of current business processes.
- It will put an end to under/overpayment of tax.
- Reduce administrative burdens experience at end of year when employers have to meet PAYE deadlines.
(RIIR PAYE doesn’t quite have the same ring to it but at least you are more informed now!
But what's the bigger picture? Will all this change really have any effect in the long run besides a smoother PAYE process?
In order to answer this question let’s take a look at PMod’s predecessor Real Time Information (RTI), that was rolled out in the UK back in 2013. Did it do what it set out to do? How is RTI performing now?
Well the answer to the first question is absolutely!
The changes were all positive and HMRC and are able to deal with PAYE payments and debt more effectively, improving the flow of PAYE payments to the Exchequer, and has had a 99% integration rate. The programme’s Final Business Case reported that the introduction of RTI had enabled:
- Savings of £64m for HMRC
- Savings of £672m from reduced tax credits overpayments due to fraud, error and in year income discrepancy
- A one-off cash flow benefit to the Exchequer measured at £813m
- A net saving administrative burden for employees od £292m per annum.
- Data sharing with other governments departments has seen savings of £491m from correction of claims to DWP benefits other than Universal Credit (UC).
And how is RTI doing 5 years later? Well, according to the same post-implementation report the continuing benefits of RTI are as follows:
- There is a direct benefit for key government areas such as pensions, auto enrolment and student loans.
- Enabling tax and benefit systems to become more responsive. Tax codes are more accurate as are annual estimates of pay.
- Once UC is fully implemented RTI is expected to result in savings of £600m from prevented erroneous and fraudulent UC claims.
So there you have it, some cold hard facts and figures. If the UK is anything to go by, PMod is going to be hugely beneficial to Ireland.
We can't predict all areas that it is going to help with but we can safely say that, as a country, they will be better off.
PAYE Modernisation with Payroll Software
Revenue has strongly advised employers to review their payroll processes and systems to ensure they meet the new PAYE Modernisation requirements for January 2019. Payroll software which caters for PAYE Modernisation will improve and simplify communications between employers and Revenue.
If you have the correct payroll software tools in place, the ongoing reporting to Revenue will be seamless, ultimately saving time and reducing the risk of errors each pay period. Employers using payroll software that is Revenue compliant will be able to create and send the periodic PSR submission directly to Revenue from the payroll software at the click of a button. This integration with Revenue will also allow employers to automatically retrieve RPNs for employees from within the payroll software. Changes to an employees tax credits and cut-offs can then be updated in the payroll software with just one click.
Free Online Training
Thesaurus Software and Revenue have teamed up to bring you free PAYE Modernisation training webinars. We have put together a series of webinars aimed specifically at employers who are currently processing their payroll manually. During the webinars, we will look at the advantages and disadvantages of manually processing your payroll for PAYE Modernisation. Places are limited - Click here to book your place now.
Thesaurus Software is at the forefront when it comes to PAYE Modernisation complaint payroll software. With two different payroll packages to choose from - Thesaurus Payroll Manager and BrightPay - customers will be guaranteed leading-edge software and expertise. To help single-employee companies with their PAYE Modernisation duties, we are offering a free BrightPay employer licence for 2019.
Xero enhances platform for businesses and advisers
Xero has announced major innovations and partnerships that help small businesses and their advisers do their taxes simply, access the data they need most, and ensure they can run more profitable, more efficient projects for customers.
Xero also announced the acquisition of Instafile, a UK cloud-based accounts and tax return preparation company that will automate tax filing and financial reporting for businesses in the UK, helping them prepare for Making Tax Digital (MTD) requirements.
The new features, unveiled in front of 3,000 attendees at Xerocon London 2018, make Xero an even more powerful business platform for small businesses in the UK and around the world. They include:
Full compatibility with HMRC’s Making Tax Digital (MTD): Xero is officially ready for MTD for VAT, so businesses who must comply with new HMRC rules for VAT from April 2019 can now submit their returns directly from the platform to HMRC. Customers will have greater control and visibility of their VAT, with the assurance of being MTD-compliant and connected in real-time to HMRC.
Xero acquires Instafile to automate tax preparation: Xero is bringing accounts preparation and tax filing to the accounting platform with the acquisition of Instafile, a cloud-based accounts preparation and tax filing solution that connects UK accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses to UK compliance bodies including HMRC. With Instafile, Xero is future-proofing UK accountants for 2020, the current expected date for mandatory MTD filing across all tax types.
Faster bank feeds from five leading UK fintechs: Tapping into Xero’s new, industry-leading bank feed API, leading financial institutions including Tide, Starling, TransferWise, Revolut and Soldo will now provide faster direct feeds into Xero so businesses can track foreign exchange payments, manage expenses and uncover deep insights about their performance.
Direct onlinefilings for the Construction Industry Scheme (CIS): Available as an open construction contractors will soon be able to file Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) returns directly from Xero, reducing errors and administration.
Automated connections to 150 companies for businesses and advisers: Hubdoc, the newest member of the Xero family, now fetches bills, receipts and other financial documents from more than 150 financial institutions and vendors UK small businesses interact with daily.
Streamlined payroll administration tools: Business owners and their accountants can spend less time on payroll, and more time growing their business, with new payroll employee bulk uploads and direct integrations with NEST, the UK’s largest pension provider.
Powerful integrations with Xero Projects, payroll and Trello: Xero Projects, the simple job costing and time tracking tool, is now more powerful than ever, with integrations to Trello and Xero Payroll, giving businesses a single source of truth on the profitability and efficiency of their projects.
A new Xero dashboard to improve user controls: Navigating the Xero dashboard is now more intuitive than ever, ensuring business owners can find what they need quickly, while accountants and bookkeepers can help guide their clients.
“Making Tax Digital will make business taxes more accurate and more efficient but importantly, with Xero it will be easier than ever for business owners, accountants and bookkeepers to meet their compliance requirements in the UK,” said Steve Vamos, Xero CEO. “The features we’ve announced ... make sure that UK small businesses can spend less time on their business and more time growing it.
Xero accelerates banking connections
Xero is teaming up with five leading fintech groups – Tide, Starling, TransferWise, Revolut and Soldo. The tie-ups will give Xero-using UK small businesses access to more financial information, faster and at no extra cost.
The integrations demonstrate the success of Xero’s new bank feeds API, which uses secure standards including OAuth to connect businesses with data from the financial sources they use daily in one platform.
The NZ accounting software group says it means financial institutions of all sizes can securely integrate with Xero, improving time-to-market for direct integrations as they gain access to a consistent development platform.
Financial data
Whether it’s digital accounts like Tide, digital banks like Starling, foreign exchange platforms like TransferWise and Revolut, or an expense management platform like Soldo, small businesses and their advisers can now choose to integrate their financial data directly into Xero with no additional fees for ease of use from a growing list of fintech service providers.
Xero has also now been granted Account Information Service Provider (AISP) status by the UK Financial Conduct Authority, enabling the company to take advantage of Open Banking in the UK. Coupled with the bank feeds API, Xero is well placed to ensure full market coverage of bank feeds, while ensuring small businesses aren’t burdened with any additional fees.
“These new integrations have been some of the most requested from our customers and with the new Xero bank feeds API, financial institutions can bring these innovations to market faster than ever. As the UK moves to an Open Banking regime, these innovations will enable businesses and their advisors to gain access to the financial information they need to make crucial business decisions, without bank feed charges” said Edward Berks, director, Platform Business at Xero.
Banking landscape
“The UK has a dynamic fintech sector and the latest Open Banking regulations have enabled a huge shift in the banking landscape. With continued development of the Xero platform we can offer automation at scale for small businesses and accountants.”
More accurate data and greater time savings for small businesses and advisors
The new integrations build on the existing connections Xero has to more than 180 financial institutions globally – including HSBC, Santander, Barclays, Natwest and Metro Bank in the UK, and now Absa, a major South African financial institution, helping grow account coverage for small businesses in South Africa.
Direct bank feeds means small businesses and advisers will receive transaction data frequently, directly in the Xero platform, cutting down on time spent reconciling transactions, and increasing data accuracy.
Having direct access to bank feeds from the five integration partners means small businesses and their advisers can more easily track foreign exchange payments, manage expenses and uncover deep insights about their business’ performance.
Small businesses can sign up to direct feeds from their bank in minutes instead of days and, with bank data flowing into Xero automatically. Accountants and bookkeepers can now ensure they are working with accurate data when working with a bank that uses the Xero Bank Feeds API, so they can spend less time chasing information or fixing errors, and more time helping their clients grow.
Driving innovation through integrations
The integrations with Xero will provide new experiences and capabilities for small businesses on Xero through payments, transactions, foreign exchange, expenses and more. They include:
Tide
A digital banking service for small businesses and sole traders. The integration with Xero will save businesses and their advisers time typically spent manually reconciling transactions
“We brought the UK a business current account in minutes. Now, we’re doing the same with our Xero integration — with just a few clicks, we’ll set up a direct feed and automatically sync your transactions every two hours from Tide into your accounting dashboard, saving you from hours of boring admin.”
Laurence Krieger, COO, Tide
Starling Bank
The UK’s mobile-only bank, offering current accounts that connect to its Marketplace, the financial hub for customers to access financial products and services, such as Xero.
“Small businesses have always been the backbone of the UK economy, but yet the big banks continue to overcharge and underserve some of the most important people in our economy. We wanted to change that. Today we’ve taken another big step in changing the way these small businesses manage their finances.”
Megan Caywood, Chief Platform Officer, Starling Bank
TransferWise
TransferWise is a new kind of financial company for people and businesses that travel, live and work internationally. Over four million people and businesses use TransferWise to transfer over £3 billion every month, saving themselves over £3 million every day.
"International business banking is too expensive, complex and time consuming. TransferWise is offering a better alternative that is already helping our 150,000 business customers take their businesses global. Integrating with Xero has been one of our most requested features, so that
accountants and bookkeepers can conveniently and accurately reconcile their international currency accounts."
Stuart Gregory, Head of Business, TransferWise
Revolut
Revolut provide Personal and Business accounts to over 3 million users, for holding, exchanging, sending and spending funds without terrible fees.
"Integrating with Xero is part of our vision to build the most seamless business banking platform in the world. At Revolut, we want to help businesses safely and effortlessly connect their finances to the tools they love. Working with Xero will make it even easier for us to help our business clients connect all of their data and create meaningful insights that lead to better business decisions.”
Nikolay Storonsky, founder and CEO, Revolut
Soldo
Soldo is a multi-user expense account that gives businesses complete control of company spending and automates the entire expense management process.
“Xero offers transparency into company finances – and Soldo matches it with complete visibility into spend. By integrating, we can put all the data a business needs for real-time accounting in one convenient place: letting accountants spend more time advising clients – and less on frustrating admin tasks.”
Darren Upson, VP Small Business Europe, Soldo
Global Bookkeeping Week focuses on MTD challenges
Bookkeepers are taking part in Global Bookkeeping Week, an international celebration of good bookkeeping and its transformative power for small businesses.
It's a celebration of a profession that has its origins in the manuscripts of 15th century Franciscan monk Luca Pacioli and that is now getting to grips with cloud accounting.
Dinah Scudder, of Scorpion Bookkeeping Services in London, will be meeting her fellow members from the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers (ICB) to raise a cup for their profession on Wednesday 21 November.
Bookkeepers who do VAT and tax returns for local businesses, will be meeting at Costa Coffee on Tooley Street, London Bridge, to celebrate the event.
Seamless transition
"We are embarking on software training courses to ensure that we are equipped to help our clients make a seamless transition when MTD for VAT comes into effect," says Dinah, who left a job in Barclays Bank to set up her own bookkeeping practice.
ICB Bookkeepers have seen increased demand for their services over recent months as businesses struggle to get to grips with Making Tax Digital (MTD); the HMRC initiative that affects VAT-registered businesses with turnover over £85k from April 2019.
Catherine Pyman, owner of CPY Business Solutions Ltd in Knaresborough, N Yorkshire, says: "The role of ICB Bookkeepers has never been more important. There is a lot of new, cloud software but nothing can replace a bookkeeper.
Power to transform
"If you're a VAT-registered business with a taxable turnover above the VAT threshold, MTD means you must now use commercial software to maintain your accounting records and file your VAT returns online. Just 3.5 per cent of businesses in this category are exempt and you'll no longer be able to use the usual HMRC VAT form,' says Jacquie Mount FICB, ICB's head of technical policy.
Global Bookkeeping Week will see ICB Bookkeepers in the UK link up with a 150,000-strong community of students and members of ICB Global.
Putting you back in control
President and co-founder Garry Carter, says: "Good bookkeeping has the power to transform!
"Gone are the days when you could get through your first year of trading and find out you couldn't pay your tax bill.
"Bookkeepers not only save you time and money, they talk in a way you understand, putting you back in control of your finances and making sure you're ready for MTD and whatever comes next.'
Global Bookkeeping Week ICB's headquarters in New Zealand, Australia, The Philippines, Singapore, the UK, Ireland, and North America.
Fintech high flyers Fluidly raises £5m in funding
Fluidly, a London-based fintech startup delivering intelligent cashflow management for SMEs, has completed a £5m Series A funding round.
Fluidly defines a new software category – Intelligent Cashflow. Cashflow management is the single biggest financial pain-point that businesses face, and knowing their future financial position is of critical importance. Fluidly uses machine learning to predict and optimise the future cashflows for SMEs and provides the key to financial decision-making.
Fluidly is a SaaS platform that integrates with both cloud accounting packages and Open Banking APIs.
Expanding the team
New-York based Nyca Partners led the round with participation from other investors including Octopus Ventures, Anthemis and tech angels Simon Murdoch and Charlie Songhurst.
The money will be used to expand the team of engineers and data scientists working to advance the product, and also to build sales and marketing capacity.
Since launching a year ago, Fluidly has grown rapidly and is now working with nine of the Top 20 UK accounting firms, (including BDO, Mazars, Baldwins and Haysmacintyre, as well as numerous smaller accountants) to reach thousands of SME end users.
Fastest-growing apps
Fluidly has also formed partnerships with leading cloud accounting software providers, becoming one of the fastest-growing apps on Xero’s marketplace and a Champion-level Sage partner.
Fluidly’s success has been widely recognised as evidenced by its winning of both “Innovation of the Year” and “Forecasting, Planning & Analysis Software of the Year” in industry awards held earlier this year.
It is one of 12 fintech businesses participating in the final phase of Nesta’s Open Up Challenge that concludes at the end of 2018. Fluidly is already a previous winner of Stage 1 which rewarded 20 companies with £100,000 in July 2017 that have developed innovative and credible ideas to transform small business banking.
Founder and CEO Caroline Plumb said: “It has been an incredibly exciting year for Fluidly. We have experienced a phenomenal period of growth and this latest investment will enable us to scale the business even further. Cashflow forecasting and management is the key to financial decision-making – we’re on a mission to help millions of business owners sleep better at night by giving them control, certainty and confidence in their financial future.”
Hans Morris, Managing Partner at Nyca said: “We are thrilled to have joined Fluidly on their journey as they grow into a major AI/ ML player in the financial technology industry. Cashflow management for SME’s is an area that is long overdue for the kind of innovation that Fluidly is providing, and we look forward to supporting them as they focus on new product development and expansion of their impressive customer base.”
Will Gibbs, Investment Manager at Octopus Ventures commented: “Cash flow is mission-critical for business, but it’s an area that’s seen little in the way of disruption. Many business owners continue to rely on spreadsheets and guesswork to manage it.
“Fluidly understand that AI can help, allowing businesses to make better forecasts and better financial decisions.
“This is a proven, fast-growth business that we are proud to have supported from an early stage. We are delighted to be working with Fluidly as they continue on their growth trajectory to expand their product, data and engineering teams.”
Accountancy and a tale of one city...
Here is a tale of one city ... and two conferences.
The city is London, the globe's leading financial centre and home to some of the world's most quarrelsome (NB polite word) politicians. Well, this week it played host to two accountancy conferences.
The words accountancy and conference describe both events adequately. After that things get a bit more tricky.
Enjoyable and educational
The two gigs were equally enjoyable and educational - but they couldn't be more different.
The first was Xerocon, a colossal two-day celebration of accounting and more put on in three sprawling hangars at ExCeL by one of the world's leading software group's Xero. I reckon about 3,000 folk from the Xero community and elsewhere in the accounting world let their hair down.
The second was the Institute of Chartered Accountants England Wales Connecting in a Digital World conference. A quieter and perhaps more cerebral affair not far from the institute's historic HQ in Moorgate. I reckon about a couple of hundred or so were there.
Scale, ambition and inspiration
I loved both. Xerocon for its scale, ambition, and inspiration. Xero's chief Steve Vamos drives home a message of 'we help small business the world over thrive and prosper' with concise convicition.
He and his team pulled-off a jaw-dropping extravaganza, complete with zip wires, DJs, rockbands and a keynote stage as wide as a football pitch is long. Not to mention accountancy. And they succeeded in keeping all this razzmatazz on the right side of taste... no mean feat.
History and professionalism
And I loved the ICAEW event because of its history, its commitment to professionalism, its intellect and its endeavour.
For me, the whole ethos of the institute was encapsulated in a practical accounting update by Vivek Mehen of the ICAEW.
My hat goes off to the guy who studied chemical engineering at Cambridge for his wit, passion and forthrightness in delivering a one-hour plus lecture on the nitty-gritty of non-tangible assests. And making it interesting. To a non-accountant! Amazing!
I'll be writing more on both these events next week. But that's all for now. Have a great weekend!