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IT for accountancy practices

IT for accountants who'd rather be doing accounts.

An accountancy practice is a technology business that happens to do tax. Microsoft 365, practice management, payroll, bookkeeping platforms, HMRC gateways, e-signature — and every January, all of it has to work at once. Foundry runs the technology behind the practice so the partners don't have to.

Talk to Foundry

In your words

Sound familiar?

Common patterns in the working week of accountants, written the way they tend to sound. They are illustrations, not quotes from clients. If more than one of these is your week, keep reading.

  • It's the last week of January and the practice software has decided to update itself.
  • A client has just emailed their passport and P60 to a partner's inbox. Again.
  • We've got a new starter on Monday and nobody's sure who sets up the laptop.
  • The HMRC gateway login is in a spreadsheet someone made in 2017.
  • Our insurer wants to know if we have MFA and tested backups. We think so?

Your environment

What the business actually depends on.

  • Microsoft 365 for email, Teams, SharePoint and OneDrive — almost universally
  • Practice management, tax and accounts production software, on desktops or hosted
  • Cloud bookkeeping platforms with client-level access
  • Payroll and HMRC gateway credentials that must never be lost
  • Client documents arriving by email, WhatsApp and paper
  • Laptops at home, in the office and at client sites

Your risks

Security, compliance, availability and data.

  • Phishing and invoice fraud aimed at a firm that moves money for clients
  • A ransomware event during a filing deadline
  • Client tax and ID documents sitting in inboxes forever
  • GDPR, AML and professional-body obligations around client data
  • Cyber-insurance questionnaires that ask for MFA, EDR and tested backups
  • Microsoft 365 data that isn't backed up because nobody realised it wasn't included

Your problems

The IT frustrations these businesses run into.

  • The practice manager is the IT department by default
  • Practice software updates break things at the worst possible time
  • Starters and leavers take days to set up or, worse, are never removed
  • Suppliers blame each other when email or the hosted desktop goes down
  • Nobody knows who owns the domain or the Microsoft admin login

The Foundry solution

Foundry becomes the practice's technology department. We administer Microsoft 365 and identity, manage every laptop, run the security baseline that insurers and professional bodies expect, back up and test-restore your data, and give clients a secure workspace for documents instead of an inbox. One team, one monthly cost, and a partner who understands that nothing can break in January.

The platform

Your Foundry stack

The capabilities of the platform that matter most for accountants, and what each one is for. Take what you need.

Foundry Support

→ Helpdesk, laptops managed and patched, Microsoft 365 administration, starters and leavers

Foundry Connect

→ Microsoft 365, email, Teams and SharePoint, identity, cloud phones

Foundry Secure

→ MFA, EDR, email security, patching, password vault, Cyber Essentials

Foundry Portal

→ Branded client workspace for year-end packs, ID and tax documents

Foundry Cloud

→ Cloud servers for hosted practice software, Microsoft 365 backup, tested recovery

Foundry Web

→ Domain in your name, DNS, website hosting, certificates, WAF

FAQ

Questions accountants might ask

Do you support our practice software?

We support the environment it runs in — the devices, the hosted desktop or server we provide, the Microsoft 365 integration and the updates. Faults inside the application itself are for the vendor, and we'll tell you clearly where that line is.

Can you help us meet our professional body's and insurer's requirements?

The Foundry security baseline is designed around the same controls the ICAEW, ACCA and cyber insurers ask about: MFA, endpoint protection, patching, backups and access control. Because we run them, we can evidence them.

We're mid-way through the tax year. Is switching disruptive?

We plan the migration around your deadlines and take over in stages — audit first, then administrative ownership, then the security baseline. Nobody stops working. We'd rather start in a quieter month, and we'll say so.

See what the first call covers

Remote-first / UK-wide / one team

Ready for a technology team that can build?

Thirty minutes with an engineer, not a salesperson: what you run today, what’s at risk, what should be automated, and what we’d build or wouldn’t.

Talk to FoundryRequest a quote

30 min call / no pitch / no obligation

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