What the work actually looks like.
Real engagements, described by their shape rather than by client name — we publish names only with written permission. Each one includes what we found, what we changed, and what we'd flag.
Sectors covered: SaaS · Agencies · E-commerce · Accounting firms · Professional services · Real estate · Insurance · Construction & trades · Health & wellness · Legal · Recruitment · Creative services · IT services. Figures describe the engagements they came from and are not projections.
🇺🇸 SaaS
Unregistered in 11 states, three weeks before diligence
A Series A SaaS company discovered mid-diligence that economic nexus had been crossed in eleven states with no registrations filed.
11
States registered retroactively
Read it🇬🇧 Agencies
Two years behind, with Companies House penalties escalating
Seven unfiled VAT quarters, accounts overdue at Companies House, and a VAT control account that had never reconciled.
7
VAT quarters filed
Read it🇳🇿 SaaS
Eleven months of runway, reported as eighteen
An Auckland SaaS founder was raising against a runway model that excluded provisional tax and annualised a seasonal revenue peak.
7 months
Runway overstatement corrected
Read it🇦🇺 E-commerce
Four overdue BAS periods and a superannuation problem underneath
The BAS backlog was visible. The missed superannuation quarters underneath it were the expensive part.
4
BAS periods lodged
Read it🇦🇺 Accounting firms
The firm that stopped turning away bookkeeping work
A practice declining compliance work it could not staff added capacity under its own brand rather than referring clients out.
22
Clients taken on in year one
Read it🇺🇸 🇩🇪 SaaS
The €80k German VAT bill nobody had budgeted for
A US SaaS company selling into Germany assumed a registration threshold applied. For a non-established business, it does not.
€80k
Exposure quantified
Read it🇸🇬 Professional services
Three subsidiaries, three charts of accounts, no consolidation
A Singapore holding structure closing 40 days after month end, with intercompany balances that never agreed.
40 → 9
Days to close
Read it🇬🇧 E-commerce
A VAT return typed in by hand, four channels deep
Making Tax Digital requires an unbroken digital link. This seller's return was assembled in a spreadsheet and keyed in.
4
Channels reconciled
Read it🇺🇸 Agencies
Profitable on paper, short of cash every March
An agency recognising retainer revenue on invoice rather than over the service period had a distorted view of both profit and seasonality.
12
Months restated
Read it🇨🇦 Professional services
One blended tax rate across three provinces
A Toronto firm operating across provincial lines applied a single sales tax rate, understating some filings and overstating others.
3
Provinces separated
Read it🇩🇪 SaaS
A cloud ledger the Steuerberater could not accept
A German GmbH running international accounting software found its year-end handover broke down at the DATEV boundary.
DATEV
Export standard adopted
Read it🇳🇿 Accounting firms
A four-person practice that stopped working GST weekends
GST season compressed six weeks of work into two. Adding capacity under the practice's own brand removed the peak.
2 → 0
Weekends worked per GST cycle
Read it🇦🇪 E-commerce
Free-zone status is not an exemption from filing
A Dubai trading company assumed free-zone status removed its corporate tax obligations. It removes the rate on qualifying income, not the filing.
9 months
Filing deadline after period end
Read it🇺🇸 SaaS
Diligence questions the founder could not answer from the books
The metrics in the deck and the numbers in the ledger were produced by different processes, and they did not agree.
11 days
To a reconciled data room
Read it🇬🇧 Accounting firms
140 payrolls, one person, every month
A single-point-of-failure payroll function with RTI obligations on every payday and no cover.
140
Payrolls supported
Read it🇳🇱 E-commerce
OSS filed, domestic BTW forgotten
A Dutch BV correctly registered for One Stop Shop and assumed it covered everything. It does not cover domestic supplies.
2
Return streams reconciled
Read it🇫🇷 Agencies
Social charges that made every hire cost more than budgeted
A Paris agency budgeting headcount on gross salary was consistently 40% short on the real cost.
12
Months restated
Read it🇺🇸 Real estate
Fourteen entities, fourteen bookkeeping approaches
A property operator with an SPV per asset had no consistent way to compare performance between them.
14
Entities standardised
Read it🇦🇺 SaaS
An R&D claim the records could not support
A Sydney SaaS company claiming the R&D tax incentive had no contemporaneous record tying spend to eligible activity.
16
Staff time-tracked to activity
Read it🇬🇧 SaaS
Board saw ARR, statutory accounts said something else
Annual prepayments recognised on receipt made the statutory accounts and the board pack tell different stories.
£2.4m
ARR reconciled to statutory
Read it🇸🇬 SaaS
First year end, three deadlines nobody had diarised
A Singapore startup reached its first year end unaware of ECI, the ACRA annual return, and the Form C-S deadline.
3
Deadlines mapped
Read it🇺🇸 E-commerce
Margin calculated on an estimate for two years
A brand running ad spend decisions off an estimated cost of goods sold found its actual margin was materially different.
3
Warehouses reconciled
Read it🇬🇧 Professional services
Partner drawings outrunning profit, invisibly
An LLP where drawings were set annually and profit varied monthly had no visibility of the resulting position.
5
Partner accounts rebuilt
Read it🇺🇸 🇬🇧 🇩🇪 🇸🇬 🇦🇺 SaaS
Five countries, five bookkeepers, five different answers
A SaaS group with local bookkeepers in each market spent more time coordinating them than the work itself took.
5 → 1
Providers consolidated
Read it🇺🇸 Professional services
Restricted grant funds mixed into general operating
A non-profit tracking restricted grants in a spreadsheet could not demonstrate that funds were used as intended.
6
Grants tracked in-ledger
Read it🇦🇺 Agencies
Winning work that lost money, repeatedly
An agency with no project-level cost tracking kept pitching the work type that was least profitable.
Project-level
Profitability introduced
Read it🇬🇧 SaaS
Three years of spreadsheets, one migration window
A startup moving from spreadsheets to a real ledger had to decide how much history to bring and from where.
3 years
History assessed
Read it🇳🇿 E-commerce
Zero-rated and exempt, used interchangeably
An NZ exporter conflating zero-rated and exempt supplies had been claiming input credits incorrectly for two years.
12
GST periods reviewed
Read it🇺🇸 Accounting firms
Launching a CAS line without hiring a CAS team
A tax-focused CPA firm wanted recurring advisory revenue but could not staff the delivery side to start it.
18
CAS clients in year one
Read it🇩🇪 SaaS
Payroll tax filed late every month, by one day
A Berlin startup consistently missed the 10th-of-month Lohnsteuer deadline because payroll ran too late in the cycle.
10th
Monthly deadline met
Read it🇬🇧 Agencies
Paying some suppliers twice and others not at all
An agency group approving invoices by email across three entities had no reliable record of what had been paid.
3
Entities on one AP process
Read it🇦🇺 Professional services
Debtor days at 71, on 30-day terms
A consultancy with no systematic collections process was financing its clients' working capital.
71 → 38
Debtor days
Read it🇺🇸 Insurance
Commission statements nobody had ever reconciled
A brokerage receiving commission from forty carriers in forty formats had no way to know what it was owed.
40
Carrier statements reconciled
Read it🇺🇸 Construction & trades
Every job looked profitable until the year ended
A remodeler with no job costing priced new work from a gross margin that turned out not to exist.
28
Live jobs costed
Read it🇬🇧 Health & wellness
Exempt treatment income, taxable product sales, one bank account
A practice assuming all its income was VAT-exempt had been accruing a registration obligation on product sales.
2
Income streams separated
Read it🇬🇧 Legal
Client account reconciliation that had drifted
A small practice holding client money found its client account reconciliation had not been completed properly in months.
Monthly
Client account reconciliation restored
Read it🇺🇸 Real estate
Twelve 1099 agents, no contemporaneous records
A brokerage paying agents on commission split had no reliable basis for its 1099 filings.
12
Agent accounts rebuilt
Read it🇬🇧 Recruitment
Paying contractors weekly, invoicing clients monthly
A recruitment agency funding the gap between contractor pay runs and client payment terms ran out of headroom.
Weekly → matched
Pay and billing cycle
Read it🇺🇸 Creative services
Personal and business spending in one account for four years
A photographer incorporating for tax reasons discovered the entity change was the easy part.
4 years
Of mixed transactions separated
Read it🇬🇧 IT services
Managed contracts billed annually, costs incurred monthly
An IT support business billing support contracts up front had no visibility of contract-level profitability.
Per-contract
Profitability introduced
Read it🇺🇸 Construction & trades
Nine good months paying for three bad ones, badly
A seasonal landscaping business managed cash by feel and ran short every February.
12-month
Seasonal cash model built
Read it🇺🇸 Health & wellness
Billing insurers and never chasing the denials
A practice writing off denied claims without review was losing a meaningful share of billed revenue silently.
19%
Of claims initially denied
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