Whitehead and Howarth is a chartered accountancy practice based in Lytham St Annes. Over 100 years old, the practice provides a wide range of services to both businesses and individuals. These services include bookkeeping, tax planning, audit and assurance, payroll, and financial advisory services.
The practice prides itself on delivering clients peace of mind. Clients enjoy a single point of contact and a highly experienced team providing additional backup support. Upfront quotes, fixed price services and payment terms over 12 months mean all clients enjoy value for money without hidden surprises.
In this interview, Whitehead and Howarth Partner Gareth Maddock reveals the crucial role that documentation plays in modern accountancy. He discusses the balance between physical and digital documents and the challenges of transitioning to a more paperless office. He also reveals the key to managing these changes and shares his experience working with Evolve.
Discover why Gareth believes that Evolve has been instrumental in supporting his firm’s document management journey and why he would recommend their services to other professionals.
Why are documents important in accountancy?
A large part of document use, for us, is all about evidence. It proves you’ve done work and can support the information we submit to third parties such as HMRC.
So we’ve got to prove that we’ve had client authorisation and agreement before filing various documents with revenue and customs and Companies House, for that matter.
Yes, documentation is definitely key in our business.
How do you combine the need for physical and digital documents?
I suppose the difficulty is that I’m a little bit of a Luddite in our office. Some of the younger people ( and not necessarily just the younger ones, some of my peers as well) are better at embracing the paperless office than I am.
I’m of the old ilk, so I still print off emails and put a hard copy on the file just because it’s easier for me to find what advice has been given rather than crawl back through my Outlook box.
So yes, we do both. We use digital technology these days to send documents out for approval, so we’ve got a digital copy. There are still some clients that we have to send paper copies out to because they’re not embracing technology themselves.
And at certain times, we still need to submit certain documents as paper documents. The likes of HMRC are accepting certain documents digitally, but at times, they still like to see the inked signature on various things.
So it’s definitely a bit of both for us: paper and digital.
So, you need a level of flexibility?
Yes, and we’re in that step change at the moment. We’re on a path, on a journey ourselves, moving to more digital media. So yes, we’re busy managing those processes to transition from one to the other.
So, as your document management partner, how have Evolve been able to help you with that journey?
Evolve supplies us with multi-function printing devices. We’ve got multiple devices supplied by Evolve through our office. They are useful because we use them not just for generating the paper output but for scanning and copying as well.
We couldn’t function without those devices, to be honest. We’d be lost if we didn’t have Evolve’s machines.
Have you been able to tap into Evolve’s expertise?
The expertise was useful when we were installing the devices. I suppose we’ve not tapped into their expertise too often because the devices have proved to be pretty good and reliable, which is a big plus for Evolve.
On the very rare occasions that we have needed to call them out for a toner cartridge or needed expert assistance, they’re out so promptly; it’s unbelievable.
I’m really impressed at the speed, and the staff are always knowledgeable and get the job done ASAP for us. So yes, we have used them, but when we use them, they always deliver on time.
How would you recommend Evolve to other professional services?
I would endorse them wholeheartedly because the team they’ve got there are very lovely people, and they deliver when they say they will and exceed expectations, I guess. “Evolve exceeding expectations” is a bit of alliteration for you there, but I think it’s definitely accurate!