Could you be a generalist?

Accounting careers can go in many different directions. We spoke to two accountants about being generalists and working in practice.

As their careers progress, accountants eventually have to consider whether they’ll work as a specialist or a generalist. A generalist accountant is one who works across an organisation and financial areas, as opposed to focusing on one industry or expertise.

Specialising can help people gain deep knowledge, or practices grow quickly through referrals within a close-knit community. But not everyone wants such a narrow and deep remit.

We spoke to two generalists – Nicole Lonsdale, Founder, Ginger Bucks, and Chris Harrison, Director – Payroll Specialist and R&D Consultant, Chadwick Accountants – about building a successful career.

Nicole Lonsdale at a glance

Age: 25

Years in accounting: 8

Name of business: Ginger Bucks

Tip: A qualification provides the technical skill. Real life requires more. Make sure you’re finding other ways to hone your soft skill sets too!

Nic’s father gave her a great financial education from an early age. Her earliest introduction to accounting was when he (a chef) would show her the spreadsheets he kept, tracking pricing, costs and profitability.

At first she’d planned to go to university and go on to a career in forensic accounting, but ill health and a love of work led her to apprenticeships.

“There was this light bulb moment: if I love working, there’s got to be a way I can learn and work at the same time”.

Nic began an AAT Level 2 apprenticeship – a practical, hands-on experience that she loved, before studying Levels 3 and 4 at night classes.

Making generalist work fit lifestyle

She declined her company’s offer to pay for her AAT Level 4, choosing to self-fund to avoid being tied to them for the foreseeable future.

When Nic realised she valued her freedom to travel and self-determine over having her training funded, she started reconsidering her CIMA, which she’d need for a career as a forensic accountant, too. CIMA would have been a three-year course, with an obligation to stay on for a few years afterwards.

“I started asking myself, ‘do I need this, is it a necessity for me to get started?’ I questioned whether specialism and another five years worth of education was something I needed to set up my own practice, which I wanted for my own financial and travel freedom”.

Variety and relationships at the heart of generalist careers

“I fully appreciate specialists, and I want to get them in to work for me. I love accounting but I know that I don’t want to sit in front of spreadsheets every day. I’m not the die-hard, sit-at-my-desk technician.”

“The part of accounting that I love the most is the advisory side. It’s the conversations with the clients, understanding their goals, working a strategy that’s supported by the financials behind it. Scenario modelling is where I see the most impact on a client.

“But at the same time, I do like getting knee-deep in a bookkeeping tidy-up sometimes. That’s the beauty of being a generalist – you can flip between all of it and you understand it all”.

Being a generalist allows her to provide services a specialist may not be able to. “I go through each stage of the business journey. There’s bookkeeping involved in that, there’s the quarterly advisory calls, there’s compliance and tax returns. If you’re specialised in one area, how are you supposed to holistically look after the whole client?”

Chris Harrison at a glance

Age: 44

Years in accounting: 3

Name of business: Chadwick Accountants & Bookkeepers Ltd

Tip for students: My advice, especially for mature students, is never give up. Returning to studying later in life can be challenging, and I found it much harder to retain information than when I was at school. There were times when I failed exams, but I didn’t let that stop me. I picked myself up, learned from the experience, and tried again. The sense of achievement when I finally completed my qualification made all the hard work and setbacks worthwhile.

Chris also wanted to become an accountant since he was in school, but life took him in a different direction. It wasn’t until his wife Rachael Chadwick-Harrison started her own business that he had the chance to join her, and pursue the profession. Qualifying later in life meant he had more real-world experience than most trainees, which has shaped how he approaches his work.

“What appealed to me about the generalist route was the sheer breadth of it. The variety keeps the job interesting and means I’m constantly building on my knowledge across different areas of the profession, rather than becoming siloed”.

For him, analytical work and R&D are the most fulfilling areas. “There’s a real satisfaction in digging into the detail and figuring out how things fit together. R&D work in particular lets me get properly involved in what clients are actually building and innovating”. But he would never consider specialising in them.

“The variety is exactly what I enjoy about the job, so narrowing it down into one niche area has never appealed to me”.

Working with clients as a generalist

Chris mainly works with SMEs across manufacturing, construction and service-based businesses, with each sector bringing different challenges and pressures.

Nic’s clients are varied too, ranging from sole traders as small as £20,000 a year up to through to limited companies with £1 million in annual turnovers.

She says, “I’ve designed the pathway to take a client on a journey of growth through their natural business cycle, supporting them in ways they may not realise they need. At sole trader stage they need help setting software up, understanding what income they’re bringing in, how much they can take home – handholding through very basic necessities.

“It’s a very different type of problem than that of a £90,000 or £1 million business. We take them through each stage of the journey through different services and conversations to get them to that point.

“I think if I were a specialist, I’d just deal with tax. I wouldn’t have that bigger picture. I will need a tax advisor for my million pound turnover company going for R&D [Research & Development]. But we couldn’t have made that progress if I’d been a specialist.

“It really is satisfying to watch your client grow. As a whole, our overall client base’s revenue has gone up 621% in a year. Obviously some have had a loss, some have had a bit of growth, some have had huge growth in operating profit. But when you combine it all together, you see where the advisory conversations have really shone for us”.

Connecting with clients

Being a business owner has helped Nic communicate with her clients, as has her industry background. “I learned a lot of soft skills by having to communicate with departments within the business on a day-to-day basis rather than having less frequent touch points with clients as in a practice.

“But I would say that my overall apprenticeship journey into qualification is what allowed me to build the soft skills to communicate.”

Chris also brings the experience he has running the business to his work with clients. He finds it influences their values.

“We want to create a non-toxic work environment and focus on what clients actually need, rather than just chasing profit. It changes the way we talk to clients too, since we’re speaking from experience, not just theory”.

Setting up a generalist practice

Of course, running a business is its own separate skillset.

Nic’s qualifications and practical knowledge helped her set up practice. She says “I don’t look at it so much as being a practice owner as a business owner. I think as an accountant it’s easy to fall into the attitude that we’re just practice, but we’re not.

“So I went and sourced places that I could go and get free business training, like NatWest Accelerator. I always seek out people that know more than me, not just in my field.

“It’s all well and good being able to do the technical stuff, but it’s worth nothing if you can’t sell or market it. That comes from my experience of going round and speaking to people, and having a business coach.

Chris also found his experience foundational for his work in practice. “Before I came into practice, I worked in retail and sales, managing teams across multiple sites and working to target-based KPIs. It was a completely different environment, but it gave me a solid grounding in people management and hitting targets”

“This corporate background gave me a lot of the management experience I needed to become a Director. Leading teams, being accountable for performance and making decisions under pressure all translated directly into the responsibilities of the role”.

Conclusion

Being a generalist is not for everyone, but if you love the variety and broad experience it can be deeply satisfying – and well-paid.

For Chris, “Starting out was scary, if I’m honest – it was our own savings on the line. And now that we’re responsible for a number of staff, that pressure hasn’t really gone away; the decisions we make affect their livelihoods as well as our own, so we take that responsibility seriously.”

Nic concurs: “My first 12 months were ridiculously hard. For transparency, I think I made around £16,000 in the first 18 months, but then in year two we grew 850%, so I saw the return on my determination, consistency and tenacity later on.”

Cat Hall is Content Specialist at AAT.