Expert Insight,
practical advice

BPP Visual Ltd are specialists in visual management and corporate signage.

We have been using Clive Owen LLP for six years from the day we set up BPP Visual as a limited company and moved into our new premises in Sunderland.

Kevin Shotton and the team at Clive Owen LLP provide ongoing monthly support to our organisation. Their services range from processing our monthly transactions in Xero, processing our payroll and quarterly VAT returns to R&D submissions, annual tax returns and yearly financial reviews.

The effect on our business from having this level of support from the team at Clive Owen LLP monthly has completely transformed the way our company operates. It has saved us countless hours and significant pain trying to manage this process ourselves and I can’t recommend their support highly enough.

The added confidence this brings knowing that our business is under control and that every transaction is accounted for each month lets us concentrate on what we are good at.

An additional function that Clive Owen LLP also provides for us is expert financial reviews, annually.  This has helped us to understand not only how we have performed over the year but also provides the financial information we need to look at longer term planning from both a personal and business perspective.

If I could give any new start up business one line of advice, it would be to choose Clive Owen LLP to take care of their accounts and to provide advice on business finances. This will then give them the ability to concentrate on running the operational side of the business.

I have used Clive Owen LLP for quite a few years now and our relationship has developed over that time.

We are a family owned hotel that has been proudly welcoming guests to our Country House Hotel for over 15 years. My role here includes dealing with all the financial aspects of the organisation from supplier management and costings analysis to financial accounting and planning.

When we were without a management accountant for a short time, we relied on their payroll services and found them to be very efficient. We also had a member of the team insourced for a while which allowed us to maintain essential functions and recruit more purposefully in a timely manner.

Obviously, the Covid-19 pandemic has been challenging for many businesses and our industry has been particularly hard hit. If anything, our relationship with the team at Clive Owen LLP has strengthened recently as they have been incredibly responsive and supportive during this crisis. They have made it easier for us to continue to run our business whilst they have provided expertise on the new laws and guidelines.

We found the payroll team were very helpful in sorting out the new government Job Retention Scheme rules and payments.

I have found the organisation to be very cohesive when speaking to all the different departments and they all seem like thoroughly nice people. Nothing is too much trouble and they deliver their promises, with a smile!

Finally, on a more positive strategic note, Ian Jarvis is helping us to design and implement a new automated reporting system for our management accounts. We will get customised reports showing us the exact information we need to make the right financial decisions in real time. It’s a very exciting project and I can’t wait to see the results and start planning for the future.

If you are looking for a great firm of accountants and business advisers who are not only excellent at their job but really nice people to deal with, then I highly recommend Clive Owen LLP.

NEG Architectural Systems design, manufacture and install architectural façade systems from our base in Washington, Tyne and Wear. Following strong, sustained growth we reached a point where we had a bottleneck in one of our key production processes. We had to make a decision as to whether to invest in new profiling equipment or to wait until market demand became clearer. We learned about the opportunity to secure grant support to de-risk our investment and appointed the Clive Owen grants advisory team to undertake the bid writing process on our behalf.

We were successful with our application, and this has allowed us to commit to the new machinery and create new jobs in the business. The support from Clive Owen allowed us to speed up the application timeline whilst our management team focussed on the business. We would recommend working with Joe Vera-Sanso and Carl Wright on all things grants.

“Clive Owen provided fantastic support in helping us secure funding through the Durham Business Growth Programme, which enabled us to relocate to larger premises and bring two sites together into a single, centralised facility.

Their advice and guidance throughout the process made the application straightforward and gave us the confidence we needed to move forward. Securing this funding has allowed us to strengthen our operations and create a solid platform for future growth.”

Darren McGrath, Arc Environmental