IWhen clients call
Services / 07 — Advisory & consulting
Business advisory, feasibility and restructuring support, technical training and capacity-building, and ISQM quality management support for other accountancy firms.
Advisory work is only useful if the people giving it also understand what implementing it involves. Most of what sits under this heading connects to work we do ourselves — audit, tax, accounting and quality management — so recommendations come from people who have actually done the underlying thing, not repeated a framework from outside it.
ISQM 1 implementation has a real deadline for many firms. Tell us where your firm currently stands and we'll tell you what's realistically left to do.
We need an outside view before a major decision.
Business advisory grounded in how the numbers and the operations actually work, not a generic framework applied from outside.
We're a smaller accountancy firm and ISQM 1 is due.
Quality management system design and implementation support from a firm that has been through its own.
Our team needs structured technical training, not another one-off session.
Training and capacity-building built around what the team actually does, not a generic course.
We're restructuring the business and want the case tested first.
Feasibility and restructuring advisory before the decision is made — not a justification for one already taken.
We want a second opinion on a structure our current advisers proposed.
Independent review, without the incentive to defend a recommendation we didn't make.
Our board wants better financial literacy at the table.
Training and capacity-building pitched at governance level, not repurposed technical-staff material.
We're being onboarded to ISQM 1 for the first time and don't know where to start.
Practical implementation support from people doing the same exercise for their own practice.
We need help building a business case for investment or expansion.
Financial modelling and feasibility work built to survive investor or lender scrutiny.
Advisory, training and quality-management support delivered by the same people who do the underlying audit, tax and accounting work.
Independent input into decisions that need more than an internal view.
Testing whether the plan works before it is committed to.
Structured and technical, built around what the participants actually do.
For other accountancy and audit firms — practical implementation from a firm that has done it for itself.
Structural input into how decisions get made and reviewed.
Models built to be interrogated, not just presented.
Where a process problem is a design problem, not a compliance one.
For businesses assessing a new sector, structure or market.
"Advisory & Consulting" covers three genuinely different kinds of engagement.
| Service | Who it's for |
|---|---|
| Business & restructuring advisory | Businesses and boards making a specific decision — a structure, an investment, a turnaround. |
| Training & capacity-building | In-house finance teams, boards and organisations wanting structured technical development. |
| ISQM & quality management support | Other chartered accountancy and audit firms building or reviewing their own quality management system. |
ISQM 1 applies specifically to firms performing audits, reviews and other assurance or related services engagements — this strand is for other firms, not general businesses.
Advisory input into a decision is different from making the decision or implementing it on a client's behalf — we stop at the recommendation and leave execution with management, which is also what keeps the boundary with any audit relationship intact.
Where we are the statutory auditor, advisory work is scoped so it does not create a self-review or management-involvement threat under the ICAP Code of Ethics. We will tell you where that boundary falls before we quote.
Recommendations come from people who have built the models, run the audits and implemented the frameworks being recommended — not a separate advisory unit repeating theory.
Sessions are shaped by the specific standards, systems and decisions the participants actually deal with, not a course delivered the same way to every client.
We built our own quality management system before offering to help other firms build theirs — the guidance reflects what was actually involved, not a checklist copied from a standard.
Advice that doesn't survive a cost-benefit conversation is not finished advice. We include what a recommendation actually takes to implement.
We are not paid more for one recommendation over another. Where the honest answer is "don't proceed," that is what gets said.
The goal of capacity-building and quality-management support is a team that no longer needs us for that specific thing — not an ongoing dependency dressed up as a service.
These are the firm's controls applied to advisory work specifically. The full set, applied to every engagement of any type, is published.
The right model depends on whether the underlying need is a single decision, a skill gap, or an ongoing obligation.
A defined piece of work with a clear endpoint.
Delivered as a series over weeks or months, not a single session.
Support that needs to continue year over year, not conclude at a single report.
We help work out which of these actually fits before proposing one — a structured programme priced and run like a one-off engagement rarely serves either side well.
ISQM 1 applies specifically to firms performing audits, reviews and other assurance or related services engagements — so this strand of the service is for other accountancy and audit firms, not general businesses. A business looking for a broader governance or risk framework would sit under our governance and risk advisory work instead.
Often, yes — many recommendations lead into work we already do, such as structuring, accounting or systems changes. Execution is scoped as a separate piece of work from the advisory phase, so you know what each stage costs before committing to it.
Sessions are built to be directly useful against the technical CPD needs our clients' teams already have. Whether a specific session formally qualifies depends on your professional body's own rules — worth confirming with us when a programme is being scoped if that matters for your team.
A feasibility study tests whether specific assumptions behind a decision actually hold — market, cost, financing, capacity — before commitment. A business plan generally documents a decision already made. We are usually engaged for the former, often before the latter is written.
Not always. Where we are the statutory auditor, advisory work that would create a self-review or management-involvement threat under the ICAP Code of Ethics is provided only to non-audit clients. We tell you where that boundary falls before we quote.
It depends on the firm's current state — an existing quality control system under the old ISQC 1 gives a considerable head start over building from nothing. We give a realistic estimate once we've seen where a firm currently stands, rather than a standard figure.
Defined pieces of work — a feasibility study, a gap assessment — are scoped and fixed-fee. Training programmes are priced per programme. Ongoing quality-management or governance support is typically a retainer, reviewed annually as the underlying need changes.
Related
Let's work together
A specific decision, a training need, or a quality management system to build or review. A partner will tell you what's realistic before anything is scoped.