SO WHAT’S SO GREAT ABOUT CAMBRIDGE?
THE REASONS WE DECIDED TO BRING THE BOOKKEEPING DEPARTMENT TO CAMBRIDGE
By way of introduction, we are an established bookkeeping practice, based in Hitchin in Hertfordshire trading approximately 7 years and with 7 members of the team and a strong track record of working with local businesses. We specialise in Sage and Xero softwares. We are a husband and wife partnership and, as a business owner, it is of course hard work but we love working with and supporting our clients.
So, why have we decided to bring The Bookkeeping Department into Cambridge?
Well from a very personal perspective, we simply love Cambridge – the history, culture and it has of course my favourite place in the world, The Orchard in Grantchester. We lived and worked in Cambridge for many years before moving to Hertfordshire and so we know it pretty well.
However, there of course had to be some good business reasons for developing our business here and here are just some of the positive factors we took into account;
- As bookkeepers, you would expect us to look at the data and, when you look, you can easily find evidence of a healthy business community, strength of the business economy, big numbers of new start up businesses and great business survival rates.
- A 2016 Guardian article quoted that Cambridge businesses have a survival rate of 49.4% of businesses still going after 5 years which is the best of any town/City in the UK. Other research I read quoted an 80% survival rate after 3 years. So from our perspective, stable businesses who are in it for the long term are great for us.
- The 2017 edition of the Cambridge Study Ltd found that the top 100 companies in Cambridge increased their profits in the previous year by 18.3% and considerably higher than the national average. This is great for us as we love supporting growing businesses.
- According to a January 2018 Guardian article which quotes from new research from Informi which reviewed 63 cities, Cambridge comes in the top 5 cities who are one of the best places to start a business. There’s a big startup culture with many of these spinning out of the University. Tech National reports a tech scene with a £2.1b turnover, employing 30,219 people and resulting in 353 start up births. There is annual employment growth of 7.4% which is even faster than in China.
- Cambridge is the home of so many extraordinary, different and interesting businesses and there is nothing we enjoy more than working with innovative and creative businesses where we can free up the time of the business owners to do what they do best whilst we help give financial control to the business.
- Cambridge doesn’t ever stand still and, although there is a tremendous amount of history and tradition within the city, the City continually evolves and changes. As business owners ourselves, we want our business to be exactly the same – continually evolving and changing to meet the needs of our clients so we hope it will be a good fit for us.
We are at the very beginning of our new relationship with the Cambridge business community and we are looking forward very much to building our connections and helping businesses in this area. We have received a very positive welcome by people at the Allia Future Business Centre, where we have chosen to base ourselves, and at business networking events we are attending. It was very nice this week to have an accountant say to me that ‘they wished they had met me earlier – there is a real shortage of good Xero bookkeepers in Cambridge’.
So a very positive start and we will keep updating you with how the business and the team develop here in Cambridge over the next few years.
If you would like to comment on this blog or if you are able to help us build our connections with the Cambridge business community as we develop our business, your comments or feedback would be very welcome. Lynne Moffat can be contacted on lynne@thebookkeepingdepartment.co.uk or via the website www.thebookkeepingdepartment.co.uk