Switching accountants is easier than you think: professional clearance, explained

Ask a room of business owners whether they are happy with their accountant and you will hear the same grumbles: slow replies, surprise bills, work that arrives at the deadline rather than before it. Ask why they stay, and the answer is almost never loyalty. It is the belief that switching is awkward — that there will be a confrontation, lost records, a gap in filings, some administrative purgatory.

That belief keeps more bad client relationships alive than any other force in this industry, so let us dismantle it properly.

The protocol nobody tells you about

Accountancy has a formal, courteous handover procedure called professional clearance. When you appoint a new accountant, they write to your old one, who is professionally obliged to respond, confirm there is no reason the new firm should not act, and hand over the working papers: accounts, tax computations, capital allowance schedules and the rest.

There is no confrontation because you are not in the conversation. Your entire role is one short email to your current accountant — two sentences of "thank you, I am moving, please expect contact from X" — and even that is a courtesy rather than a legal requirement. Everything else happens between the two firms, politely, because both sides do this every week.

What actually transfers, step by step

Here is our standard onboarding, which is typical of any well-run practice:

Engagement letter and ID checks — same day. Anti-money-laundering rules apply to every firm; ten minutes with a passport.
Clearance letter to the outgoing accountant — day one. Most respond within a week; the professional bodies take a dim view of firms that sit on these.
Records handover — your accounts history, tax computations and schedules arrive as files. If your books live in Xero, QuickBooks or FreeAgent, the subscription simply transfers or re-invites — nothing is rebuilt.
HMRC authorisations — we file fresh agent authorisations (the 64-8 and digital handshakes) so we can speak to HMRC for you. The old firm's access falls away.
A deadline audit — first thing we do with the records is map every upcoming date: confirmation statement, VAT quarters, payroll, payments on account. Nothing falls in the gap, because finding the gaps is the point of the exercise.

Elapsed time for a typical small company: under two weeks. Your effort: one email and ten minutes of ID.

"But it's mid-year"

The tidiest moment to switch is just after a year-end has been filed — but it is rarely worth waiting for. Files transfer mid-year constantly; the clearance papers show exactly where things stand. And with Making Tax Digital quarterly updates now running for many sole traders and landlords, waiting ten months for a "clean" moment mostly means ten more months of the problem you already have.

The genuinely bad time to switch is the fortnight before your own filing deadline — a professional firm will tell you so and either rescue the deadline first or time the move immediately after.

What you should expect from the other side

Choosing the replacement matters more than leaving. Whatever firm you talk to — including us — insist on: a fixed fee in writing covering everything named; a stated response-time standard; deadlines tracked by them, not you; and software they will set up rather than tolerate. If a firm is vague on any of those before you have signed, believe the preview.

The uncomfortable truth for our industry

Professional clearance exists because the profession has always known clients must be free to leave. Firms that make leaving feel hard are relying on you not knowing the procedure. Now you know it.

If you have been putting this off, send an enquiry from this page. Tell us who you are with and when your year-end is, and we will map the switch — dates, steps, fee — before you commit to anything.