Accountants in Derry / Londonderry
Accounting, tax, payroll and advisory for Derry / Londonderry businesses — run from our office in Ballymena, not a call centre across the water. Fixed fees, plain English, and someone who picks up the phone.
The business base in Derry / Londonderry
Northern Ireland's second city has a growing technology and digital sector, a major healthcare presence, higher education, manufacturing, and retail and hospitality serving a catchment that extends well into Donegal.
The Donegal relationship is the defining commercial feature. A great many businesses here have customers, staff or suppliers across the border as a normal part of trading, which makes currency handling, cross-border VAT and employment questions routine rather than exceptional. The growing tech base also brings R&D relief and share-scheme questions into play.
Getting to us, and us getting to you
About an hour and a quarter from Ballymena. Mostly video and phone; in person where it earns the journey.
An hour and a quarter, so mostly remote — which for a tech business is generally the preferred option anyway. We'll travel for the conversations that warrant it.
What we do for Derry / Londonderry businesses
A growing tech base on one side, a Donegal catchment on the other. The work here splits fairly evenly between innovation reliefs and cross-border mechanics.
- R&D tax relief — documented as the work happens rather than reconstructed afterwards, which is what claims now need to survive.
- Selling into Donegal and the Republic — the goods position under the Windsor Framework, and the separate place-of-supply answer for services.
- Staff living across the border — income tax and social security can be due in different places under the UK–Ireland agreement. Settled at the outset, not guessed.
- Share schemes and equity — option arrangements set up correctly at the point they're granted, before a funding round makes them expensive to fix.
- Management accounts — monthly numbers a board, a bank or an investor will accept without a covering explanation.
Questions we get asked
Half my customers are in Donegal — how does that work for VAT?
For goods, Northern Ireland's alignment with EU rules for goods means selling into the Republic works differently — and usually more simply — than it does for a GB business. For services, UK place-of-supply rules decide it. The most common mistake is applying the goods logic to a services business, or the reverse.
I'm a software company — can you handle R&D claims?
Yes, with the caveat that the regime has tightened and HMRC rejects far more claims than it did. What makes a claim survive is a contemporaneous record of the technical uncertainty being resolved, written as the work happens. We'd rather set that up than reconstruct it later.
Can you help with paying staff who live across the border?
Yes, and it needs to be established properly at the outset. Where income tax is due and where social security is due can land in different places, governed by the UK–Ireland double taxation agreement and the relevant social security rules. It's answerable, but not by guesswork.
Looking for an accountant in Derry / Londonderry?
Tell us what you need and we'll come back to you, usually the same working day. No call centre, no script.
Prefer to talk first? Call the Ballymena office on 028 2522 0100, or:
We work right across the region
Northern Ireland is our largest base. Most work runs by phone, video and WhatsApp, so distance from Ballymena matters a lot less than it used to.