our history

Lesley and Graham set up Inca in December 2002 with the intention of being a small business accountant that was different from the norm, easy to deal with, no surprises for clients and based on a desire to really help the clients with their businesses. Sadly, many new businesses do not succeed, statistics from the Office for National Statistics and HMRC indicate that only 41% of new business last beyond their 3rd birthday. We took the view that it was therefore essential to equip small business owners to make good decisions about their businesses from a financial perspective. If their finances were in order, it gave the business owner time to focus on products, service, marketing, their team, their processes, in fact much of the reason why they probably set-up in the first place. Our view is to help them continue to develop and trade, therefore we don’t need to go out and replace a significant percentage of our client base every year through their ceasing to trade.

We also recognised that when someone is thinking of starting up a new business, they will typically ask someone else they know to recommend an accountant. 25% of our client growth in each of the last 2 years has come from referrals from existing clients. We have a marketing philosophy (relatively unusual for a firm of accountants we think) which is based on client retention. This and our overall business philosophy underpin our approach to the market.

We couldn’t understand why accountants always expected their clients to visit them, after all the client is the customer. Everyone knows that contact with your customers is essential in building and maintaining relationships and that excellent relationships form a fundamental part of ongoing business. So why did so many accountants charge for talking to their clients? These beliefs were based on our experiences of actually having run businesses in the past, we’ve been there on the receiving end. Graham ran a £60 million turnover business supplying SIM cards to the mobile phone industry while Lesley ran the finances for all Europe for a leading Customer Relationship Management systems provider, listed on the US NASDAQ exchange.

We started small in terms of clients and staff – just the two of us. Our growth in terms of clients, their successes and our team has been a pleasure to experience. We take great pride when one of our clients has a significant success in their business, a new contract or overall growth. From very humble beginnings, we are now working with over 150 clients from Denmark to Dublin to Devon, Paris to London and many places besides. We are, however, most proud of the fact that the vast majority of our clients are just like us, small businesses based in Oxfordshire and the surrounding counties. We have a relatively short history, but intend that we and our clients have a long future together.