How long does a discovery call take?

Thirty minutes, and it usually runs to about that. It is deliberately not an hour: half an hour is enough to understand a business well enough to scope and price the work honestly, and long enough for you to get a proper sense of how we communicate. If your situation is genuinely complicated — multiple entities, a group structure, an acquisition in progress — we may suggest a second, longer conversation rather than rushing it. That second call is also free. Nothing about the discovery stage is billed, and there is no obligation attached to booking a slot in the diary.

Will I be given a price on the call?

You will get a realistic sense of the shape of it on the call, and the actual figure in writing afterwards. That is deliberate. The work behind a set of accounts varies enormously with transaction volume, VAT scheme, payroll headcount and the state of the records we inherit, so a number given off the cuff in minute twenty-five would either be wrong or padded to cover the worst case. What arrives instead is a fixed monthly fee with the scope listed line by line, including what sits outside it. No hourly charges for asking questions afterwards, and no surprise invoices.

Do I need my accounts in order before I book?

No, and if they were in order you would need us less. Disorganised records are one of the most common reasons people book, and describing the mess accurately is more useful to us than presenting a tidy version of it. We will ask what software you use, whether the bank feed is connected, and how far behind the bookkeeping is. Honest answers make the quote accurate. If the books are two years behind, that is a catch-up job we would price separately and clearly, rather than something to be discovered and invoiced for after you have signed.

What if I decide Buzz is not right for me?

That is a perfectly good outcome and it happens on a reasonable share of these calls. Sometimes the fit is wrong — a business needs specialist sector expertise we do not have, or is better served by staying with an accountant who is doing a decent job and simply needs pushing on response times. We will say so during the call rather than send a proposal anyway. There is no follow-up sequence designed to wear you down, and nothing is billed. Plenty of people use the half hour purely as a second opinion on their existing arrangement, which is a legitimate reason to book one.

Do I have to tell my current accountant before the call?

Not at all, and most people have not. Booking a call commits you to nothing and your existing accountant has no involvement in it. If you do decide to move, the professional clearance letter goes out only once you have confirmed you want to proceed, so nothing happens behind your back before you have decided. When it does happen, the letter comes from us rather than you, which spares you the awkward conversation. The handover records we request are things you are entitled to, and a reputable firm provides them without fuss.

What actually happens on a discovery call

People put off booking a discovery call because they are not sure what they are agreeing to. Is it a sales pitch? Do the books need to be in order first? Will there be pressure to sign something at the end of it? Fair questions, and none of them get answered by a booking page.

So here is the honest run-through: thirty minutes, what gets asked, what gets said, and what lands in your inbox afterwards.

It is thirty minutes, and it is not a pitch

The call is scheduled for thirty minutes and it usually takes about that. The purpose is to work out whether Buzz is a sensible fit for your business — which sometimes means concluding that it is not. If your situation needs something we do not do, or you are better served staying where you are, we will say so on the call rather than sell you a package that will disappoint you in month three.

That is not modesty. A client who was oversold is a client who leaves within a year, having cost us more to onboard than they paid, and having lost time they will not get back. Nobody wins.

What we ask you

Practical questions, and rough answers are entirely fine. There is no test and nothing to revise for.

How the business is structured. Sole trader, limited company, partnership, landlord, or some combination. This decides most of what follows.
Roughly what it turns over. Not to the pound. It matters because the VAT registration threshold is £90,000 of taxable turnover on a rolling twelve months, and because it drives how much work a set of accounts actually involves.
Whether you are VAT registered, and on which scheme. Standard, flat rate and cash accounting are different amounts of work and different amounts of risk.
Whether anyone is on payroll, including you, and whether there is a pension scheme running.
What software you use, if any, and whether the bank feed is actually connected or the receipts live in a shoebox. Both answers are common and neither is judged.
What has prompted you to look now. This is the most useful question on the call, because the answer nearly always points straight at what you actually want fixed.

Roughly two thirds of the call is us listening. The questions are there to size the job honestly, not to build a case for a bigger package.

What we tell you

How we actually work, day to day. Who you would deal with. What is inside a fixed monthly fee and — more usefully — what sits outside it, because that is where surprise invoices come from at other firms.

We will also cover the software. FreeAgent is included in our packages, worth up to £330 a year against subscribing to it yourself, and it is HMRC-recognised for Making Tax Digital for both VAT and Income Tax. If you would rather stay on Xero, we are a Xero Gold Partner and that works too. QuickBooks and Sage are supported as well.

And we will flag anything time-sensitive that comes out of your answers. If you are a sole trader or landlord whose qualifying income was over £50,000 in 2024-25, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax started for you on 6 April 2026 and you are already in quarterly reporting. If your income was over £30,000 in 2025-26, your start date is 6 April 2027. That is the sort of thing better heard on a free call than discovered in a penalty letter.

What it costs, and why there is no price list

This is the question everyone actually wants answered, so we will not be coy about it: you get a figure in writing after the call, not before it.

The reason is not commercial theatre. The work behind an identical-looking set of accounts swings by a factor of three or four depending on transaction volume, VAT scheme, payroll headcount, whether there is a director's loan or stock, and above all the state of the records we inherit. A firm that publishes one headline number is pricing the tidiest imaginable version of the job, and everyone who is not that tidy pays for it later in extras. We would rather ask six questions and give you a number that holds.

What the call turns into — an example

Take a limited company turning over about £180,000, VAT registered on standard accounting, two people on payroll including the director, roughly 200 transactions a month in Xero with the bank feed connected, and records that are broadly up to date. The owner books a call because their current accountant takes a fortnight to answer an email.

Thirty minutes establishes the scope: quarterly VAT returns, monthly payroll for two, bookkeeping review, year-end statutory accounts for Companies House, the corporation tax return, the confirmation statement and the director's self assessment. It also surfaces two things they had not raised — a director's loan account nobody had reconciled, and the fact that the accounts filing deadline is nine months after the year end, which was closer than they thought.

What arrives afterwards is a proposal listing all of that line by line, with a fixed monthly fee, and an explicit list of what is not included. Nothing on the call is binding.

What you do not need to prepare

Nothing. Genuinely. You do not need your accounts in order, you do not need a spreadsheet, and you do not need to know your turnover to the pound. If the books are a mess, that is useful information rather than an embarrassment — it is a large part of what we would be quoting for.

If you want to get more out of the half hour, the one thing worth doing is writing down what is actually bothering you about the current setup. That is more useful to us than any figure. Jot down specific questions too, whether that is a tax situation you are unsure about, how a switch would work, or what happens to your existing software — otherwise they surface twenty minutes after you hang up.

If you already have an accountant

Most people on these calls do, and asking about alternatives is not a betrayal of anyone. We will ask what prompted it, because slow replies, unclear advice and constant chasing are the three answers we hear most, and each points to a different fix.

If you go ahead, the handover is our job, not yours. We write to your existing accountant for professional clearance and the handover records, and you are not required to have an awkward conversation before that happens. Our page on switching accountants without the hassle sets out the sequence in full. In practice the main thing to know is that timing matters: switching just after a year end is easier than switching three weeks before a filing deadline.

What happens afterwards

If it looks like a fit, a written proposal follows — scope, fixed monthly fee, what is excluded, and the steps to get going. You are not chased for a decision. Plenty of people take a fortnight, and a fair number use the call purely as a second opinion on their current arrangement and stay where they are. That is a perfectly reasonable use of a free half hour and we would rather you did that than signed up unconvinced.

Booking one

You can book directly and pick a time, or if you would rather write first, the form on our get in touch page reaches a person and gets a reply, usually within one working day. If you want to read up on what the packages cover before you talk to anyone, that is set out on our accountancy packages page.