Accreditations & Awards


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We believe it’s important for our clients and potential clients to be absolutely sure that we’re entirely capable of providing the services we offer.

To ensure our credibility and knowledge, we hold the following accreditations, which are regularly reviewed. Given that there’s no restriction on trading using the term ‘accountant’, we believe this is essential.

Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA)

Baranov Associates is regulated by the ACCA, and operates within their ethical guidelines. This means that our clients have peace of mind that our qualifications are genuine and that our knowledge is up to date with the latest regulations.

Xero Certified Advisor

As the government pushes businesses away from manual records through Making Tax Digital (MTD), it’s increasingly important that proactive accountants can help clients identify and implement user-friendly software that can add real value to their business.

We’ve been users (and fans!) of Xero for many years and are extremely confident that it offers significant time savings for clients. Its history of ground breaking innovation such as bank feeds and open API has revolutionised the accounting software world, while the development of many ‘bolt-on’ apps has offered businesses the chance to reduce administration and bookkeeping time and dramatically improve productivity.

We’re a 100% Xero Certified, which is easier as a small team, but also shows our commitment to offering the right level of support for our clients. This certification is monitored annually by Xero.

As an intentionally small firm, we’ll never become a Gold or Platinum Advisor, but that isn’t a reflection of our knowledge or awareness of the system, simply the number of clients for whom we act!

xero-migration-certified-ribbon-slate

Xero Migration Certified Advisor

Implementation of HMRC’s Making Tax Digital programme is well underway. As a result, we needed to ensure that we are fully prepared to help clients with the process of moving to a new software solution as painlessly as possible. Chris therefore completed the training programme and examinations to achieve the Xero Migration Certification. This ensures he’s absolutely up to date with the process required for migrating clients onto Xero, whether from manual records or other software. It also includes how best to plan the conversion to Xero most efficiently.

Xero MTD Ready Web Badge

MTD Ready with Xero

With the staged implementation of Making Tax Digital ongoing, it’s essential that we’re ready to support our clients if they need to change their accounting methods and software. With that in mind, we’ve also completed Xero’s ‘Making Tax Digital learning journey’ and are officially ‘MTD Ready.’ We’ll now be able to combine our Partner and Migration knowledge to help clients through the transition period. Our goal is to reduce the burden they’ll experience, to enable them to focus on their business.

Quickbooks Gold Pro Advisor Logo

Quickbooks Online Certified Gold ProAdvisor

As an alternative to Xero, Quickbooks has a different set of strengths. As a certified firm, we’re able to advise clients on which cloud based packages are most suitable and which Apps are likely to be the most helpful.

Quickbooks has developed its software over the years, and continues to do so, becoming a far stronger competitor within the market. We’re very proud that we’ve now reached the level of Gold Pro Advisor.

We’ll continue to maintain our accreditations with both packages, and our knowledge of others such as Sage, but believe the majority of clients will gain the greatest benefits from using the cloud options above, where the most innovation can be found. Find out more about the benefits of Cloud Software from our Software page.

Quickbooks Making Tax Digital ProAdvisor

As explained above, Making Tax Digital is here to stay, so it’s essential that we can advise clients effectively, and guide them through the process. It therefore seems entirely sensible that we gain the skills, and from there the certification, to do so if they prefer to use Quickbooks rather than Xero, so that’s what we’ve done!

Dext (Receiptbank) Certified Partner

We’re always looking for ways to help our clients save time and be more efficient, and Dext (the new name for Receiptbank) fits that perfectly! An award winning add-on to Xero and Quickbooks, it automatically converts clients’ invoices and receipts into data, making it easy for them send their financial information straight to their cloud software.

There are a wide range of ways to get the information into Xero or Quickbooks, including an App, scanning and uploading, via Dropbox and post. Using Dext also offers other savings as well as time. As Pioneer level Partners we offer Enterprise level subscriptions to all clients as part of our standard package of fees, making access to the App, and the efficiencies it offers, more affordable than ever. See more about Dext here.

Can I just say we are so pleased that we have moved to Baranov Associates. As we discussed when you visited, we had to find a way to take the stress out of all of the financials and you’re doing that for us! We can see how to use Xero more efficiently and so with us being as on top of it as we can be and with you and Liz we feel a lot more confident about our business being in good shape.


Mrs S James, Sandbanks Capital Partners Limited

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