In the middle of her AAT studies, Holly Pickerill took a job at start-up accountancy firm Tom Geraghty & Associates.

She joined the business as one of its first employees. “It’s a father-daughter business and they’re both chartered accountants themselves,” says Pickerill. “The father, Tom, puts alot of value in taking somebody on and training them up. He wants to support his staff and help them grow, rather than leaving them to get on with it.”

From a career-development perspective, Pickerill, who previously worked as a ledger clerk at food manufacturer Bakkavor, feels that working at a start-up has given her a great grounding in all sorts of accounting disciplines.

“A friend of mine is an apprentice in one of the Big Four. She only ever does audit, whereas I get to do bits of everything as we’re much smaller. I do tax, accounts, payroll – a far wider range of work than I potentially would have done in a bigger firm.”

High stakes

Whether you work in a fledgling accountancy firm or the finance team of a fast-growing tech company, working at a start-up can be an exhilarating – and challenging – experience. You will often be working directly with the owners of the business. And, as the business will be small, it will be able to adapt and change quickly, giving you a chance to try out new things. But you’ll also be working in a business whose survival won’t be guaranteed.

Gary Pickett has worked with many start-ups throughout his accounting career. One of the most successful was Shortlist Media, where he now works as finance director. He stresses that cash and cash flow will always be the biggest issues for a business in its early years.

“Of the 17 start-ups I’ve worked  with, in my opinion 15 were undercapitalised at the start,” he says. “This is quite often the case: they put together a plan and they don’t raise the money they want. What then happens is that the problems start quite early, and it puts pressure on them to be even more successful than they originally planned to be.”

So start-ups can be high-pressure environments, Pickett explains – you need to be prepared to think on your feet and get stuck in when serious issues arise: “You have to have a broad idea, at all times, of how much money is in that bank account. You get a feel for the regular incomings and outgoings and how that cash is working for you.”

It’s important that you’re really passionate about the business and what it does

The learning experience

Pickett has built finance teams for several start-ups, so he has good insight into the kind of skills and traits you need if you want to work in a start-up environment. First and foremost, you need to be prepared to work hard: the pace will be fast. As part of the scaling-up process, there’ll be very busy periods when the work seems to overtake staffing resources, but, if you can keep your head, it’ll be a great learning experience.

“Shortlist was a start-up, then they launched another magazine, then they launched a website, and then they launched an email service,” says Pickett. “They were constantly reinvesting their profits and looking for a bit of extra cash from their shareholders, which meant they constantly needed their hands held [from a finance perspective]. My time there increased from two days a week to three and a half very quickly. Now I’m there full-time.”

You also need to be smart, and flexible. “It’s hard to pin it down, but you need someone who’s prepared to put their pen down and listen to you, change the way they’re working, take on
something else and be flexible,” says Pickett.

Do you believe in what you’re building?

And it’s important that you’re really passionate about the business and what it does, Pickett explains. You need to have faith in the idea. A job at a start-up is not just about getting paid: you’re helping to build something, and there’s a real chance it could fail.

“I’ve changed entire accounts departments in the past as it just wasn’t working,” Pickett says. “It’s got to be right for the company.”

You should also expect the nature of the work to change as the company grows. If you prove yourself capable, you may find yourself leaping up several rungs of the ladder. Great communication skills are a must in a very small company too. You’ll have to work closely with the other teams in the business, and each one might consist of just one person. You, whether on your own or as part of a budding finance team, will be the financial expert in the business.

It’s unlikely that the founders will know much about bookkeeping, cash flow, profit and loss, or any other ways to monitor finances. While you need to be able to explain to them what they’re
looking at, “really you just need to make sure they can concentrate on what they’re good at”, says Pickett.

Ready for anything

If you can survive all of this, you’ll come out of the other side a well-oiled accounting machine, unfazed by anything the working world throws at you. “When you’ve done a start-up and it’s launched, been invested in, changed its shape, been sold or merged, and you’ve gone through all of that once, it sets you up for everything else that you might come across,” Pickett notes.

Find a job at a start-up

Securing a role at a start-up can take even more initiative than you’ll usually need when hunting for a job. It’s all about research, contacts and timing.

Attending entrepreneur and start-up networking events, which tend to be held in cities, is a good way to get your foot in the door. Some events you might want to consider attending include Business Networking London; Manchester Entrepreneurs’ ‘speed-dating’ events for start-ups, students and investors; and the Entrepreneurial Scotland Annual Conference.

You can also find budding businesses in accelerators and incubators across the country. These are shared office spaces for start-ups that provide extra advice and resources to help them grow quickly. Google Campus is a huge hub for start-ups in London – its café is a great place to network, and many of its events are free.

This article appeared in our summer 2018 issue of 20 magazine.

The surefire way to get yourself out of dealing with that pile of boring admin, or tackling the teetering washing pile, or finally sorting out the old filing system is by beginning a new piece of work.

Because for most of us, procrastination is all too tempting when starting a new project –  especially when clicking alt-and-tab for a quick check of Twitter / Instagram / LinkedIn is so easy – yet results in a one-hour time-suck where nothing serious gets done.

For the self-employed, or those working from home with lots of distractions, procrastination is even more tempting. But finding ways to boost your productivity will make you more efficient at work and free up more time to have fun (or do the washing or target inbox zero – whatever makes you happy).

So here are six apps for your phone or computer that will help you to beat your procrastination habit – or just block off the temptations for a bit. Good luck!

1. Forest

This is the app for anyone who’s addicted to their phone and can’t stop picking it up. Once you’ve downloaded it and signed up, you plant a seed in Forest, and that seed grows into a tree for as long as you have the app open and your phone is untouched. But if you use your phone for something else – such as picking it up and checking your emails – the tree withers and dies.

The aim is to keep building your forest every day, with each tree representing how long you could stay focused so you want them to grow as tall as possible to show you really do have an attention span. Yes, it’s a game – but in my experience, it works at stopping you pick up the phone. (Available on iPhone and Android, for around £1.50).

2. Procraster

The thinking behind this app is that most of us put off more urgent tasks in preference to less urgent ones, for a few key reasons, which are: the task is too big, you don’t know where to start, you’ve made a mistake, or you think it has to be perfect – and that’s stopping you starting. So Procraster encourages you to open it when you’re putting something off, then click the mindset that best matches your own, before following its prompts and then picking from one of its rewards to help you get back on track. The preset rewards include things like a coffee break or a Facebook binge session, but you can insert your own too.

Procraster then helps you breaks down the task into a 25 minute chunk, and “releases” the reward when you’ve completed it. The app can also link up to your calendar for more motivation. (for iPhone, around £1.50)

3. FocusMe

This is for those of us who need to outsource our willpower to someone who’ll never let us into Instagram in the hour we devoted to work. Not even if you say please really, really nicely.. The app stops you getting distracted or feeding your online addiction by blocking access to any websites and desktop applications that you deem to be time-wasters, in seconds. It has some useful extra features – you can set it, for example, to allow you to access Google Docs or any other specific cloud-based services, or specific websites that you need for work, rather than shut off the Internet completely. But if you visit a site or app that you’ve blocked, FocusMe shuts the page down.

Oh, and it’s impossible to bypass – if you’re committed to a period of blocking, it won’t matter if you restart your computer, you won’t gain access until the time is up! You can even tell FocusMe to protect itself from being uninstalled.. If you know you’ll try that trick on yourself. It costs £2.50 per month, or £30 a year, or £99 for a one-off “forever” fee.

4. AppDetox

Is a similar idea to FocusMe, but phone-specific. It lets you set up set periods of time that you can use certain apps (say, if Crossy Road or Twitter were eating into all your productive working hours, they’d be first on the list), then you can restrict them in various ways, such as at specific times, or for set numbers of launches. (Android, free).

5. Space app

The makers of the Space app reckon “you don’t really want to dump Facebook – you just need space.”

Its ethos is for users to set up goals limiting their usage of time-sapping sites and apps to be more mindful of screen time. It claims to use neuroscience and AI to help kick app addiction, giving users a questionnaire about smartphone habits and then setting targets to cut usage and alerts saying things like “breathe with me” to “short-circuit instant gratification and put you in charge again.” (Free, Android and iPhone)

6. Off the Grid

This for when you’ve tried all the rest and really need to get serious about cutting down on your phone-time. The app totally blocks your phone for a length of time you’ve specified – and if you really want to access your phone after you’ve activated Off the Grid, but before your pre-set session is over, your credit card is instantly charged – the penalty starts at $1 (about 80p) and rises or falls depending on how frequently you access your phone.

Not a big whack, but enough of a financial sting if those sessions start adding up..  The app also sends custom auto-reply messages to let people know you’re Off The Grid when they attempt to contact you. (Android, free).

“When I started my career, there was one typewriter in the office and adding machines with reams of paper coming out the back,” recalls AAT Licensed Accountant, Victoria Cooper FMAAT, now owner and manager of the almost paperless Red Shoes Accounting.

Already a proponent of cloud-based accounting tools like Xero and automated bookkeeping applications such as Receipt Bank, Red Shoes Accounting has recently introduced digital signatures and folder sharing so accounts and tax returns can be signed, sent and received entirely online. “It’s going to save a lot of time in January,” she adds.

The digital shift

Indeed, accountants and practices that have shifted to more digital provision of services and, ways of working see increased efficiency as one of the biggest rewards. From software that automates data entry and processing, or management reports; to tools like Trello and Slack that can improve internal communications and how clients are managed, the time saved can be used to create new business opportunities, explains AAT Licensed Accountant, Andrew Sullivan FMAAT, director of digital accountancy firm Numbers (UK) Ltd.

“We’ve expanded our service offering because of the technology we use,” he says. “Forecasting and reporting were things, for example, that we weren’t previously able to do because they took too much time to build in Excel. Using Spotlight [Reporting], I can do that in half a day. It’s worthwhile to us because people pay a lot of money for that. Once you’ve got someone who has bought into a five-year forecast, they’ve almost bought into a five-year development plan too.”

Transitioning

The firm began its transition to digital almost five years ago and a recent office redesign means there is no longer space to store manual records. This commitment to new ways of working has had a knock-on benefit for recruitment, says Sullivan: “Six months ago we recruited two people who wanted to move into a more digital practice.  It’s good for us to know we were attractive to them and that we’ve got people who want to work the way we do. It breeds the right accountants going forward.”

Cloud-based accounting and virtual communications and meeting tools have also helped with retention, allowing the practice to easily offer full-time remote working to a member of staff who recently had to relocate. For AAT Licensed Accountant, Caroline Trevenna FMAAT, founder of Mona Accountancy Services, the flexibility that technology offers is perhaps its biggest benefit: she can work from anywhere, not be tied to 9-5 hours or have to be in the same place as her clients.

Global access

“Most of my business will be in the UK but I can work from anywhere and just knowing I have that option is fantastic,” she says. “This fits especially well as my partner is in the forces, so not being tied to a fixed location for work means I can move around with him as needed and not risk my client base.”

Her flexible, digital approach has, in fact, helped expand this base: “I am finding Instagram is where I get most interest, particularly from wellness clients. The way I work appeals to them because it’s the way they work too. I try to bring a slight personal tone to my posts so people feel they’re connecting to me as well as my business.”

Ahead of the competition

Embracing technology “helps you stay ahead of the competition” and shows clients you are aware of wider industry trends and changes, adds Cooper. Whether it’s preparing clients for Making Tax Digital or introducing a new app or software that could benefit their business, positioning her firm as digitally capable reassures clients, especially the less tech savvy: “They know we will be able to do it for them, that we’ve the expertise, rather than them having to adapt to an environment with which they aren’t familiar.”

All three agree it is best to trial new technologies on your own accounts or teams first so you can assess their value and anticipate any questions or problems that clients might have. Using your own practice as a guinea pig allows you to test how secure new systems and software are, where data is held and how it’s backed up, and whether a new tool fits in with other software packages and applications or simply adds more steps to a process.

“You can end up having an app for everything,” says Trevenna. “It’s much easier to find a few that you really get on with otherwise you can lose track of where things are. It’s good to experiment but best to use a few things well.”

“The way the industry is going there are so many software providers they can push things on you so you have got to do things gradually,” adds Sullivan.

Start the change with receptive clients

With clients you may wish to phase things in too, says Trevenna: “Always start with people who are more receptive first and then try to get those who are less receptive excited. You need to find their Achilles heel and apply technology to them and that problem.”

Internally, it’s important to get staff buy-in before rolling out new tools, adds Sullivan, and to keep tabs on how greater flexibility and cloud-based working can affect practices and client relationships.

“Because all the data is now live we are less reactive in some situations and we can notice things happening with our clients in real-time,” he says.

“On the other hand, it [more digital-only ways of working] can be a bad thing because people expect 24/7 contact so you do need to weigh that up.”

Work clients fears

Cooper knows that taking the time to set up clients and train them on new digital tools along the way will make things smoother in the long run, especially in January if it encourages more digitally-submitted accounts and tax returns. For those resistant to change, adds Trevenna, it’s about “working with their fears”:

“Whatever tools we are using, it’s still their business and I’m still there to guide them and help their business be the best it can be.”