2019 has been a very busy year at Starfish Accounting and we have seen unprecedented growth in the number of people contacting us looking for accounting services. We have expanded from a team of 5 to 8 (all still part time), and we’re taking on extra office space from January. It’s been very exciting, and we are really proud of what we have achieved.
It does, however, come with its own set of challenges! We are having to rethink our onboarding and new client training to make sure people are feeling well looked after from the get go, and expanding the team increases the importance of internal training too. The volume of emails we are all getting is going up, and managing response times – especially for me – has been a struggle.
The last thing we want to do is to get overexcited by growth and then fail to look after our existing clients. We want to be able to maintain those personal relationships, not turn into an accounting firm that just churns out accounts and tax returns once a year with no ability to have the conversations that actually make a difference.
Making sure we provide excellent service is something that really matters to us. And where we don’t we want to learn from our mistakes and improve. If all we are doing is supporting new clients then we will be failing our other clients – many of whom we have been working with for several years.
We have therefore taken the only sensible decision to pause taking on any new clients until mid February. December and January are always challenging as we work through the remaining 2019 self assessment tax returns, and we will use the first half of February to take stock. We are now running a waiting list for future clients. This will also make sure that when we do start working with more businesses we have enough capacity to provide the right level of support at the right time.
We have some grand plans for 2020 and look forward to sharing them with you over the next few months. If you’re interested in going on our waiting list then fill in our online form and we’ll get in touch (please note we close the office for 2 weeks over Christmas so you won’t hear from us then).
