1. Executive Summary

Braeside & Carrick LLP scores 53 out of 100 on this assessment, which places the firm in the "Established" band. In plain terms, the foundations are in place but they are not yet joined up. The firm uses a good range of digital tools and has a clear sense of where it wants to go, yet the data sits in separate systems and a lot of work that could be automated is still done by hand. A score in the low fifties is a solid starting point. It says the firm is ready to build, not starting from scratch.

The strongest areas are use cases and strategy. The firm has a clear, well articulated view of the problems it wants to solve and the opportunities it wants to chase, which is rarer than it sounds. There is strong awareness of where data quality breaks down, good adoption of digital tools across the practice, and a reliable backup process is already in place. These are real assets. The firm knows its own pain points in detail and has already identified practical fixes, such as extending an existing tool that captures client records cleanly to more clients.

The gaps that need attention sit in data quality, people and skills, and governance, all of which score in the lower forties. The same client data is entered into several systems by hand, so no one can see a single complete picture of a client without checking four places. Confidence in the current tools is low, some essential tool categories are weak, and there is no dedicated owner for data. On governance, there is no policy covering staff use of AI and no related training, even though staff are already using AI tools informally for client work. This is the most pressing risk to address before it causes a problem.

The firm's most important goal is clear and time bound: getting through the April 2027 Making Tax Digital wave, when the threshold drops and the bulk of the firm's sole trader and landlord clients move to quarterly submissions, without hiring more admin staff. That deadline is in the future and it is fixed in law, which makes it a genuine forcing function. Almost everything in this report connects back to it, because the manual chasing and tracking that already strains the practice will not scale to four times the workload. To help the firm act at a pace and cost that suits its appetite, the recommendations are organised into three cumulative tiers, Essentials, Enhanced, and Accelerated, set across a 90-day and a 12-month horizon. The firm can start with the Essentials and step up as confidence and the business case grow.

3. Company Overview

Braeside & Carrick LLP is an accountancy practice operating across four offices in central Scotland: Stirling, Perth, Falkirk, and Dunfermline. The firm dates back to the late 1980s and employs just under 80 staff. It is led by three equity partners and serves around 800 active clients. The client base is mostly sole traders (around 600), with roughly 200 landlords and 150 limited companies. The sole trader and landlord segments are the firm's main focus of concern ahead of the Making Tax Digital changes.

The firm runs a broad mix of digital tools, with good adoption across the business. Accounting and bookkeeping sit in Xero, Sage 50 for older clients, Dext for capturing records, and BrightPay for payroll. Practice management, including engagement letters and tax filings, runs through IRIS, which is hosted on a server in Stirling that is around six years old and maintained by a local IT provider on a retainer. The Microsoft 365 suite is in use, including Outlook, SharePoint, Teams, and Excel. A manually maintained Excel tracker acts as the master list for client records and status. Client relationship and marketing functions use HubSpot CRM and Mailchimp, the website runs on WordPress, and DocuSign handles signatures. Client data is spread across several of these systems, which the firm identifies as a core problem: no single system holds a complete view of a client. There is also informal, unmanaged use of AI tools, including ChatGPT on personal accounts and Microsoft Copilot paid for by one partner.

In terms of roles, the firm is led by three equity partners with split responsibilities across business services, tax, and audit and corporate clients. Day to day ownership of the client tracking spreadsheet rests with a senior manager in Stirling, though this is by default rather than a defined data role. No one in the firm formally owns data or systems as a responsibility, and there are no in-house developers or IT staff; technical support is outsourced to the external IT provider. The questionnaire and consultation indicate a need for clearer ownership of data and AI as the firm prepares for change.

5. Data Landscape

6. AI and Data Readiness Assessment

Braeside & Carrick LLP has a clear, well argued case for change and a genuine forcing function in the April 2027 Making Tax Digital wave, which pulls roughly 600 sole traders and 200 landlords into quarterly reporting. The firm knows what it wants and why, which is rare. The foundations that hold it back are practical: client data is scattered across IRIS, Xero, Sage 50, an Excel tracker and Outlook with no single view, skills and ownership of data are thin, and staff are already using consumer AI tools with no policy or training. In short, the ambition and direction are strong, while the day to day plumbing and controls need work before AI can be deployed safely. The per dimension breakdown below shows exactly where the strengths and gaps sit.

Dimension Breakdown

7. Governance & Compliance

8. Goals & Route Map

Braeside & Carrick LLP knows what it wants and why. The firm scores well on strategy (66) and use cases (80), which means the goals are clear and the business problems are real. The gap is in the foundations that support those goals: data quality (44), people and skills (42), and governance (43) all sit in amber. The route to each goal runs through those weaker foundations, so the order of work matters.

Survive the April 2027 MTD wave

• The objective: Get the bulk of the firm's 600 sole traders and 200 landlords through the April 2027 Making Tax Digital wave, when the income threshold drops to £30,000, without hiring more admin staff. Success means zero missed submission deadlines through the first full quarterly cycle in summer 2027 and no new admin salaries. This is the firm's top priority because the deadline is fixed in law.
• Where the firm is today: The current process cannot scale. Today the practice handles around 800 annual returns; the rollout turns that into roughly 4,000 quarterly submissions on top. Chasing already absorbs about two full time staff and roughly £50,000 a year in salary, and around 30% of clients still file late or incomplete. The landlord segment is the least digital: some are on Xero, some send spreadsheets, and a worrying number still bring paper twice a year. A strength to build on: Dext works well for the 200 clients who use it, and records from those clients arrive clean with no rekeying.
• How to get there: First, widen Dext adoption to the roughly 150 clients who could be on it now, and push landlords onto a digital records route this year. This is the cheapest single win and is covered in the quick wins of the Action Plan. Second, pilot the new chasing and tracking process on a slice of clients this autumn, as set out in the 90-day plan, so it is running properly by January 2027 and battle ready before the April quarter. Third, use the quieter February to April 2027 window to tune the process before the first full cycle.

Automate record chasing and tracking

• The objective: Replace the manual chasing process, currently emails plus a hand updated Excel tracker, with an automated system that shows client record status and sends reminders without a person looking each client up. The managing partner is open to a bespoke build if it fits how the firm works. This goal is effectively part of the MTD goal; solving it is how the firm survives April 2027.
• Where the firm is today: The knowledge of who has filed already exists inside Xero and Dext, but humans re-derive it by hand. The single Excel tracker, 800 rows maintained mainly by one senior manager, is a key person risk: in January, two staff chased from different saved copies and about 40 clients were chased twice. No one in the firm can build against the Xero API, and the IT provider is a break-fix shop, not a builder. On the positive side, appetite is high, the budget signal is realistic (£20,000 to £40,000 for a first phase if payback is shown), and the senior manager who owns the tracker would be a strong ally.
• How to get there: First, agree the level of ambition against budget: out of the box practice reminders, a glue tool such as Power Automate connecting existing systems, or a bespoke status dashboard pulling the whole client book through the Xero API. The Action Plan sets out this staged choice with costs attached. Second, engage an external delivery partner, since the firm is a buyer not a builder, and insist on understanding and owning whatever is built. Third, put the senior manager who runs the tracker at the centre of the build, with some tracker work backfilled to free roughly a day a week.

Control how staff use AI

• The objective: Put proper control around staff AI use before it causes a problem: a written policy, a list of approved tools on firm accounts, and training so staff can use AI safely instead of using personal accounts. The firm sees paying for staff training as money well spent.
• Where the firm is today: This is a live risk, not a paper one. Staff use ChatGPT on personal accounts, possibly half of those under 35 weekly, and client details have very likely been pasted in. A junior nearly sent a client a confidently wrong AI-written explanation of a tax rule; a manager caught it at review. There is no AI policy and no AI training. This conflicts with professional guidance on client confidentiality. The leadership team is split, with genuine confidentiality concerns on one side and a push to adopt on the other, but the conversation is moving and the assessment itself was agreed across the partners.
• How to get there: First, issue a short written AI policy covering what may and may not be entered into AI tools, and name an approved tool on firm accounts where the data terms are understood. One partner already pays for Microsoft Copilot personally, which is a natural starting point to evaluate on firm licences. Second, train every member of staff on safe use and on checking AI output, as set out in the Action Plan. Third, frame this as enabling safe use rather than a ban, since a ban would drive the behaviour further underground. Note that the firm also flagged it needs UK GDPR guidance and has not reviewed its data processing agreements with software suppliers as a set; both should be picked up alongside the AI policy under the governance workstream.

Grow the advisory side to 30%

• The objective: Move beyond compliance work and grow advisory from around 15% of fee income today to about 30% within three years, using data the firm already holds and winning larger clients on the back of it. The prize is real: a good advisory client is worth £8,000 to £15,000 a year against an average compliance fee of around £800.
• Where the firm is today: This goal is the furthest off and the firm has rightly placed it fourth, because it depends on the first three being solved. The data is there: 250 clients' live books sit in Xero but are only ever looked at backwards, at year end. Two barriers stand in the way. Partner time is consumed by compliance and admin, the same problem behind the partners' lost evenings. And advisory has never been productised; every job is priced and delivered differently by each partner.
• How to get there: First, free up partner time by solving the chasing and MTD problems above; advisory cannot grow while partners assemble numbers by hand. Second, productise one repeatable offering, for example a standard monthly reporting pack and a quarterly review call at a set price, drawn from Xero rather than built from scratch each time. Third, pilot that offering with a small group of the 250 clients whose live books are already in Xero. Given the foundations work needed first, treat this as a 12-month-plus goal; the first concrete step is choosing the single advisory product to standardise.

Give the partners their evenings back

• The objective: Reduce the partner time spent assembling numbers, checking statuses, and rechecking data the leadership team does not trust, so partners spend their time on client work instead. This is ranked last by the firm's own choice, on the view that if the other goals are met, the evenings sort themselves out.
• Where the firm is today: The cause is the same as the other goals. Partners re-derive status because the data is spread across four systems and not trusted; one partner spent two full evenings assembling January workflow figures for a planning day. The data landscape confirms the problem: client information is split across Xero (about 30%), IRIS (20%), Sage (15%), SharePoint (15%), the Excel tracker (10%), and Outlook inboxes (10%), with no single complete view of any client.
• How to get there: This goal has no separate route; it is the by-product of the others. Automating the chasing and tracking removes the manual status assembly, and a single status view removes the cross-checking across systems. As the MTD and automation work lands through the Action Plan, partner evenings should return without dedicated effort. The firm should track partner hours spent on admin as a simple measure of whether the other changes are working.

9. Action Plan

This is your prioritised action plan, grounded in your consultation and questionnaire responses. Every item is specific to your business: real systems, real processes, costed against typical SME pricing. The plan is sequenced into three phases that build on each other.

How to use it. Tick each action as you commit to it. The dashboard updates live to show your projected readiness score, which dimensions move most, and how the gains compound across phases. Tools, indicative costs, and timelines sit on every action. Your selections save automatically and follow you across devices, so you can return to this plan as you make progress.

Costs shown are indicative ranges based on typical SME pricing at time of assessment. They do not constitute a quotation. Actual costs will vary based on the firm's specific requirements, chosen suppliers, and implementation approach.

10. Funding & Eligibility

A scannable view of the schemes most likely to apply to your business. Money and eligibility confidence are front and centre. Tap any row to see why it is relevant and how to act.