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Managing Director - Matt Donnelly

Matt is the founding partner of our firm ad⁺. Opening the doors in 1990, at the beginning of the last recession, with no more than 2 chairs, a desk and a phone he was instrumental in steering our firm and our clients through this difficult trading period.

Matt has always been driven and has a passion for delivering a value added service to his clients which has been the foundation stone for building his successful business.

He is a keen supporter of charity and has undertaken many grueling escapades to raise money for St Andrews Hospice including trekking across the Great Wall of China, Machu Picchu in Peru and the Rockies in Canada.

Matts dedication to the firm has seen many influential changes over our history, none more than

• identifying the need for the accountancy profession to move into the arena of business development.
• recognizing the value of communication in all areas of business
• recognizing the value of business protection to our clients by providing access to our independent financial services company at our offices

Over the past year Matt has allowed his staff to achieve their potential by appointing his management team as high achievers to live the firm’s core values and core commitments. This has allowed the firm to move to a new level which will enhance the profitability in future years.

Finance and Administration Director - Angela McKendrick

Angela joined the firm at the very beginning of its existence as the personal assistant of Matt Donnelly. Throughout the years Angela has held numerous roles within the firm

• Marketing Co-Ordinator
• HR Manager
• Firm Administrator

In her role as the Firm Administrator Angela was responsible for maintaining the financial records of the firm and reporting to the managing partner on the results achieved on a monthly basis together with credit control and any Personnel issues.

Under the new management structure Angela was now responsible for the whole of the support team and the delivery of the projects within her team. This includes the following:-

• IT projects – including the implementation of a new database
• Ensuring support staff available to assist the team – including chasing of client surveys, testimonials and case studies
• Firm One Page Plan – including collating the numbers and presenting them to the management team on a monthly basis.

Angela’s major success in her current role is the ongoing delivery of a daily meeting between the management team during which we discuss must do tasks (big rocks) and any commercial activities for the coming day and week ahead.

 

Production Operations Director - Andrew Gunn

Andrew has been with our firm since 1992 starting out as a trainee accountant, working on vat returns and management accounts for clients. Knowledge gained working on these types of jobs and being confident enough to deal face to face with clients has allowed Andrew to work on the larger jobs within the firm.

After working 18 years as an accountant preparing accounts on behalf of clients we believed that the best approach was to move Andrew from the hands on production of accounts to allow him to fully manage his team and to work on special projects on behalf of the firm.

Under the management structure Andrew is both responsible for an accounts team and ultimately responsible for the following:-

• Production planning – including reviewing all production jobs to ensure that each are approached in an efficient manner
• Production scheduling – including reviewing all production jobs on a rolling 13 week basis and ensuring that the necessary team members are available and booked for the assignment
• Managing the daily production huddle – including interaction with the complete production team to ensure that production jobs are on schedule.

Andrew’s major success within his current role has been to maintain the production teams daily huddle as we have seen this as being critical to the success of the firm’s ability to maintain stability in the current economic climate.

 

Tax Operations Director - Betty Glancey

Betty started with our firm in 1994 having moved over from Ireland. Previously employed as a tax inspector with the Inland Revenue, Betty came to our firm bringing a wealth of experience not available to us before this period, having spent 5 years with PKF in Dublin and Edinburgh.

Betty was instrumental to our firm during the implementation of self assessment in 1996/97 and single handedly created a database to handle all of the information needed for this major change in UK taxation.  Our tax services grew from a three day a week tax assistant to a team of four generating fee income in excess of £300,000 per annum.

As a result of the new management structure Betty was able to free herself up from the daily taxation mail which we received and managed a team who could handle all of this on her behalf.

With a team around her Betty was able to concentrate all of her focus in the following areas:-   

• the wealth management of our a+ clients - making considerable tax savings on their behalf
• tax investigations with HMRC – with a 100% success rate in CIS challenges
• seminars in our new purpose built facility covering all relevant taxation and business development topics

Betty’s major success as a result of the change in structure has been her ability to identify tax savings for our clients in all areas of the business e.g tax investigations, tax losses etc.

 

Commercial Operations Director - Colin Lumsden

Colin began his career at ad⁺ from school as an accounts junior and gained experience in the profession by working on all types of jobs. By building up his skills on various job sizes it was clear that he had a natural ability to connect with clients and their needs he soon began to use his ability to cross sell services to clients.

In his new role as director of commercial activities Colin now had the focus to match his drive in this area and our firm has benefited directly as a result of this change in the direction of Colin’s career.

Changing from an accountant focused on delivering bookkeeping, management accounts and annual accounts Colin is now an individual with clearly defined targets for the firm and we have seen the following benefits to the firm

• Cross selling targets to existing clients has generated thousands in additional revenues whilst exceeding clients expectations
• Extra work order reviews done on every single job to make sure we recover any additional time or services we provide to a client out with or fixed agreement
• Business relationship review completed for all jobs to ensure that we demonstrate what we have achieved and the Value For Money of our services provided to our clients.

Colin’s major success in his current role has been his ability to spot cross selling opportunities which, whilst generating additional revenues for the firm, have also ensured that our clients expectations are exceeded and Value for money has been demonstrated.