James: I have been involved in business all my life, with my family running The Redcliffe Hotel since the late 1970s, and throughout my teenage years I was always entrepreneurial – whether that was renting out my computer games to friends, arranging school discos, or trading Pogs (if anyone remembers those!).
I’ve had quite a diverse range of jobs since I started as a pot washer for the family business at the age of 14, working in hotels, restaurants, theatre, radio, bars, and clubs. All that experience in business came in useful when I started my accountancy career at 21. And after 15 years of being an accountant at some of the top firms across South Devon, I felt the time was right to do it on my own.
The bookkeeping and accounting landscape is changing forever with the expansion of ‘Making Tax Digital’ to non-VAT registered businesses in the coming years, and as a bit of an IT geek, I jumped on the Cloud Accounting bandwagon with Xero and QuickBooks Online from day one. We are now Platinum partners with Xero, which entitles us to pass on the very best discounts to our clients. Also, all of our accounts staff are qualified ProAdvisors.