Buying an accountancy or audit practice starts with a list, and most lists are rubbish. The standard approach — filter Companies House by industry code — produces thousands of firms that aren't practices at all, because the code is self-declared and nobody keeps it current.
We found a better source and built the engine around it: the statutory audit register, where registration is a fact rather than a claim. Companies House then gets used for the signals it is genuinely good at — officer ages, filing history, incorporation dates.
The rule that matters most is what the engine refuses to do. If a phone number, email or website can't be confirmed from a primary source, the field stays empty and the firm stays where it is. A blank beats a wrong number, because a wrong number wastes the one approach you get.
- A weekly sweep of the statutory audit register, by region, giving a list of firms that verifiably do the work
- A Companies House scan used for signals rather than identification — partner ages, succession risk, filing patterns, incorporation dates
- Fit scoring across fee income, partner count, succession signals, audit capability and distance from an existing office
- Contact verification against each firm's own site or the register, with unconfirmed fields deliberately left blank
- A six-stage pipeline from identified through to under offer, with the count at each stage visible at all times
- Two programmes on one engine, filtered separately, so an accountancy search and an audit search never contaminate each other
- Outreach sequencing off the back of the verified list, so the approach happens while the research is still current