The Receipt Bank Blog

After 10 years of working in the corporate sector Dave Gormer founded Square Mile Accounting in 2014, specialising in taking startups and technology sector clients ‘from where you are today, to where to you want to be.’

Strongly driven by a desire for operational flexibility and freedom, Dave realised that the business he wanted could only be achieved through the wholesale adoption of technology. Not only does this increase his efficiency, but also makes his life a lot easier - a real ‘win-win!’

From the get-go Square Mile was a 100% Xero firm, but Dave was frustrated by his clients’ bookkeeping processes but unwilling to create a filing system for clients (in the hope they’d stick to it) or take on the inefficiencies inherent in traditional bookkeeping practices. After meeting one of the Receipt Bank team at an industry event he realised that this was the process he was looking for.

The Square Mile team pride themselves on the level of value and expertise they can bring to their client relationships. By now being able to provide bookkeeping services, Dave says it’s changed the way they work and how they price their offering: ‘It’s a real enabler because it’s much easier for clients to do what they need to do, so it makes sense for us to be able to offer bookkeeping. As a result, we’re in a much better position to deliver high-value services to our clients.’

By embracing everything technology can do, Square Mile is squarely placed at the forefront of the industry. Dave explains that ‘we’re moving away from offering compliance packages towards a greater focus on being an outsourced finance department, so automating those labour-intensive tasks is integral to our offering.’ By doing so, Square Mile has grown considerably without the need to hire additional staff to carry out compliance work, allowing the team to focus on more profitable work which provides huge value to clients.
The suite of tools Dave has implemented throughout the practice also enable Square Mile to follow a ‘hybrid remote model’ designed to help the team work anywhere, anytime, including the shared workspaces a new generation of entrepreneurs call home. Drawn to the Shoreditch start-up scene, he acknowledges that ‘without these tools it wouldn’t have been an option to start my business; they’ve been a total game-changer!’