2018 - What a year!

2018 has been an exciting year for Monahans as we have seen the culmination of a number of years’ strategic planning around the growth and development of the firm.

We’ve had a number of reasons to celebrate as we won two national awards. Firstly the Practice Growth Award in the Accounting Excellence Awards 2018. Presented to us by Rachel Riley, we won the title in recognition of our excellence in growth through the use of a number of strategic initiatives and our expansion across the South West over the past three years, as well as the development of specialist services such as probate and private tax.

And then just a few weeks later we won the Large Firm of the Year Award at the IRIS Customer Awards! Highlighted was our approach to talent development and bringing in specialist partners to drive growth.

In a move unusual for our profession, but one that makes clear business sense to us, we appointed our first non-accountant Partner. HR expert Sophie Austin became Partner in September, and she is already instrumental in developing and delivering ongoing recruitment and engagement strategies.

James Keeton also joined Monahans, as Partner in August, and brought with him 20 years’ experience at some of the UK’s most reputable firms, including Deloitte and BDO, as well as leading financial transformation and change management for businesses across the manufacturing, hospitality, and leisure and tourism sectors.

But we truly believe in staff development too and ‘growing our own’. We have 33 trainees with us currently and, in April, we were pleased to appoint Andrew Perrott to Partner. Andrew first started with us as a trainee in 2000 and has now worked his way up through the ranks.

Each office has been busy this year fundraising for charity. Overall, thousands of pounds have been raised by each office to support their chosen charities, and we’ve also been proud to sponsor two of the Minerva’s Owls in Bath this year, which raised £139,200.

As we look towards 2019, there are a number of issues that we predict will continue to be important to businesses.

Cyber security is high on the agenda. With GDPR being 2018’s big game-changer, cyber security and preventing leaks and breaches of data is a business priority. Fines could potentially reach up to €20million, but our clients are protecting themselves through our new service, Rizikon, which helps you to identify and so rectify and gaps in your defences.

Making Tax Digital will come into effect in April and will impact almost every business no matter how big or small. We’ve been working closely with our clients for over a year now to prepare them, through tailored advice, training and workshops. This will continue through 2019.

It’s been a busy 2018 and we eagerly anticipate the challenges and opportunities 2019 will bring.

To all of our clients and colleagues, thank you for a great year!