Terms of business

These terms apply to all work carried out by Forrest & Fern Financial LLP (“we”, “us”), registered in England and Wales with registration number [TBC], registered office: Tynwald, Sandy Lane, Church Brampton, Northampton, NN6 8AX.

They form our contract with you together with the engagement letter we send before starting work. The engagement letter sets out the specific services, fees and timescales agreed with you. If the engagement letter and these terms differ, the engagement letter applies.

By instructing us, or by continuing to give us work after receiving these terms, you accept them.

We provide the services described in your engagement letter. These may include, but are not limited to, management accounts, budgets and forecasts, cash flow management, credit control, business finance advice, and maintaining sales and purchase ledgers.

Unless your engagement letter says otherwise, our services do not include:

• audit, or preparation of statutory year-end accounts;
• corporation tax or personal tax returns, or tax planning advice;
• legal advice;
• regulated financial advice, including advice on investments, pensions, insurance or mortgages. We are not authorised by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Our work is based on the records and information you give us. We do not audit or independently verify that information, and our work should not be relied on to detect fraud, errors or irregularities.

Any advice we give is based on the information you provide and the circumstances at the time. Decisions about your business remain yours.

When we carry out credit control, we contact your customers in your name and on your instructions. We do not take legal action or use debt collection agencies on your behalf unless you ask us to and we agree it in writing.

We will only submit a return to HMRC or any other authority after you have approved it.

You are responsible for:

• giving us complete and accurate records, information and explanations, by the deadlines we agree;
• reviewing and approving returns and reports before they are submitted or relied on;
• paying any tax, VAT, PAYE, CIS deductions and other amounts due to HMRC or other bodies on time;
• keeping your business records for as long as the law requires, which is normally at least six years;
• telling us promptly about any change to your business, your contact details or the people we should deal with.

We are not responsible for penalties, interest or other costs caused by information that is late, incomplete or inaccurate, or by returns you did not approve in time.

Our fees are set out in your engagement letter. Most work is charged at a fixed monthly fee. Work outside the agreed scope is charged at our hourly rate of £150 per hour, and we will agree it with you before starting.

We invoice monthly in arrears. Invoices are payable within 30 days of the invoice date. VAT is added where applicable.

If an invoice is not paid on time, we may:

• charge interest and compensation under the Late Payment of Commercial Debts (Interest) Act 1998;
• pause work, including submissions, until the account is brought up to date, after giving you written notice.

We review our fees each year and will give you at least 30 days’ notice of any change.

We are supervised for anti-money laundering purposes by HMRC. The law requires us to confirm the identity of our clients and the people who own or control them, both before we start work and from time to time afterwards. We cannot start or continue work until these checks are complete.

We are also required by law to report any knowledge or suspicion of money laundering or terrorist financing to the National Crime Agency. We may be prevented by law from telling you that we have made a report.

We will keep your information confidential and only use it to provide our services, except where you agree otherwise, where the law or a regulator requires us to disclose it, or where it is already public.

We may use carefully selected third-party software and service providers, such as cloud accounting and storage services, to carry out our work. We take reasonable steps to make sure they protect your information.

We handle personal data in line with UK data protection law, including the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.

Where we process personal data on your behalf, such as your customers’ contact details for credit control, we act as your data processor. We will only process that data on your documented instructions, keep it secure, make sure anyone who handles it is bound by confidentiality, help you meet your own obligations, and return or delete it at the end of our work unless the law requires us to keep it.

Where we use personal data for our own purposes, such as managing our relationship with you and carrying out money laundering checks, we act as a data controller. Our privacy notice is available on our website. We are registered with the Information Commissioner’s Office under registration number [TBC].

We communicate mainly by email and through online systems. While we take reasonable precautions, email cannot be guaranteed to be secure, and we are not responsible for losses caused by interception or misdirection that are outside our reasonable control.

We will never change our bank details by email. If you receive a message asking you to pay us using new bank details, please do not make the payment. Call us on a number you already hold to check first.

Your books and records remain your property. We will return any original documents you give us at the end of our work, or sooner if you ask.

We keep our own working papers and copies of information for as long as we need them for our work and our legal obligations. Money laundering rules require us to keep identification records for at least five years after our work for you ends.

We will carry out our work with reasonable care and skill.

Our total liability to you for all claims arising from our work, whether in contract, negligence or otherwise, is limited to the total fees you paid us in the 12 months before the claim arose.

We are not liable for any loss of profit, loss of business or indirect or consequential loss, or for any loss caused by information you gave us that was incomplete, inaccurate or late.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot legally be limited.

We hold professional indemnity insurance. Details are available on request.

If you are unhappy with any part of our service, please contact us at hello@forrestandfern.co.uk. We will acknowledge your complaint within five working days and aim to resolve it within 28 days.

Either of us can end our work together by giving 3 months’ written notice.

We may stop work immediately if fees remain unpaid after we have given notice, if you do not provide the information we need for money laundering checks, or if continuing would mean breaking the law or professional rules.

When our work ends, you will pay for all work done up to that date. We will return your records and give reasonable help to whoever takes over this work. We may charge for handover work that goes beyond returning your records.

Our work is for your use only. No one else can rely on it or enforce these terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

We may update these terms from time to time. When we do, we will let you know by email, and the updated terms will apply from the date stated in that email. If you do not agree with the changes, you can end our work together under section 13. If you continue to instruct us after that date, you accept the updated terms. The latest version will always be published at forrestandfern.co.uk/terms.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.