CONTENT HUB

YOUR SAY REVIEWS

“Previous to the end of year accounts submission, my view of Cooper Parry and Andy was that the Company and Andy in particular are highly technical, competent and able. The end of year accounts submission and resourcing was delayed and had a negative impact. Not the responsibility of Andy, I accept, but disappointing. Need to ensure that Andy and team are supported and better resourced.”

“Always accommodating when timescales slip slightly. Always on hand to answer our questions. “

“Complicated year due to a significant acquisition which increased Group reporting requirements throughout the audit. This meant heavy involvement by the senior audit team which was carried out to a high standard. Significant additional audit charges only notified at the end of the audit.”

“I worked briefly with CP for the final two months of an audit exercise in 2022, with our firm having taken on the sole trustee role. The team were a pleasure to deal with and this would otherwise be a 5-star rating but the exercise finished on a sour note as CP policy is not to share the signed accounts until the final invoice is paid. As I had approved CP’s invoice for settlement within hours of receipt and with my firm sharing a number of mutual clients, I found this approach to be incredibly immature and short sighted. I do hope this policy, which is not reflected in the engagement terms, is reconsidered for the forthcoming audit.”

CP provide a good service at a reasonable overall cost. There are however two areas for improvement that I would highlight, both relating to fees. Firstly, we would expect to be able to pick up the phone for a quick 10 minute conversation without being billed for the time. Recently we agreed to increase our compliance fees at above the rate of inflation so that we would then have the flexibility to ask such questions without charge, but in practice there has been little evidence of change. Secondly, with our R&D claim we work on a % fee structure, which was appropriate in the early years when we were establishing the basis for the claim, but is now an issue for us as our claims have grown (organically, via the growth of our business) yielding significant additional fees for CP with minimal incremental work. We have proposed on a number of occasions to move to a flat fee structure that we feel better reflects the value added by CP, but there has been a flat refusal to consider this. This feels to me like a very short-term view to take as while it maximizes fees in the short term, inevitably it is likely to lead to us looking for better value elsewhere for this work. Notwithstanding the above feedback, I would like to highlight the excellent relationship that we have with the team, who are responsive and work hard on our behalf, particularly Robin Clegg, Matt Hobbs and Charlotte Taylor.

“Everything went well, just felt a little slow – also no real communication after Audit Senior left until we chased”

“My experience with CP was during a 1st year audit. Overall, taking into account the inevitable challenges this brings, I have awarded 4 stars as the overall experience was an extremely positive one. Some minor logistical issues were experienced, but not enough to justify reducing the rating to 4 stars for the audit alone. We did however feel a little underwhelmed by the first engagement regarding the teachers pension audit – and at times throughout that wondered whether we had made the right decision in changing auditors. Thankfully however, the audit experience was much better and the communication with Ben and Andy vastly improved.”

“The service can be a bit disjointed and difficult to access on occasions mainly due to working from home I suspect”

“We had one project we worked on where we were able to work through to a pragmatic solution helping us finalise accounts within tight timescales – thank you. But we had another project where we needed a solution and one wasn’t available.”

“We found that the auditors were not too familiar with education specific issues- such as Pupil Premium allocation but that will come with experience They both had a very good ‘people manner'”

“The quality of the audit completion report & presentation to the trust audit committee were positively received and we appreciated the openness of the conversation, however Trustees would have welcomed earlier sight of the report and accounts. Our perception and experience of your services at times are that they are left to the last minute. However we understand the volume of work taken on by your team for other clients. We would welcome the opportunity to review the audit process.”

“The audit went very well and although mostly all done via email and inflo, Teams calls were arranged for discussions which were really useful and always accommodated by the team when we requested. There were still occasions when information supplied for one aspect but which also applied to others was requested separately so duplicating the same information. However, there were some aspects – particularly on grants where the finance team were reliant upon information being provided by other school staff which didn’t happen as it should so we have been able to close a few loopholes ready for next year.”

“Service is good, costs increasing a little higher than ideally we would like.”

“Worked cooperatively with us during this year’s audit and gave us good feedback on where we could improve our audit prep and information/Q&A delivery”

“R&D Claim: The additional cash will support working capital. The process was fine no issues”

“R&D Claim: The additional cash will support business financing. The results were very good”