From four staff to seventy-five: how Pocknells has scaled with TaxCalc

That early bet has paid off. Pocknells now employs around 60 people across its accountancy business, rising to 75 across the group's other ventures, and TaxCalc has scaled alongside every stage of that growth.

The firm regularly brings in staff from rival practices who arrive with preconceptions formed on other software. “We've employed lots of people from different accountancy firms that maybe come from using some of your rivals, the CCHs, the Irises, or whatever it is,” John explains. “And they've all come in with the opinion that potentially it isn't as good. I think now it's as good. It's as good as all of them.”

He's just as direct about where TaxCalc sits against the bigger players. “It rivals them completely. They [the team] all say how easy it is to use. They all say how quick it is compared to  ████  or  ███ . It's a very efficient software, to be honest.”

For John, TaxCalc's strength lies as much in how it feels to use as in what it does. “Aesthetically it's very pleasing software,” he says. “It's very clean, you know where everything is.” That clarity supports different working styles across his team: some staff use Simple Step to move straight through a return, others prefer to work through the forms directly. “I think the flexibility around it is great.”

That flexibility extends to how the different parts of TaxCalc talk to each other. John points to the seamless movement of data from accounts production into the tax return as a standout benefit, both for speed and for accuracy. “It takes away a lot of the human error in typing all of those parts in again,” he says.

Pocknells has steadily added more of the TaxCalc ecosystem over the years, including Making Tax Digital, anti-money laundering checks and client onboarding, all run from within the same system.

“All those parts are seamlessly in one system, From a training and process point of view, it's very simple for us to get our team on board with it.”

The firm also makes regular use of What If Planner and the dividend database. “The What If Planner we use a lot, that's a great add-on,” says John. “The dividend database we use too. We'd typically try and get the data from our client, but it's a useful tool to have.” Consolidated accounts is a more recent addition, used for the first time last year. “Like everything, it's a bit tricky when you do your first one, because you've got to work out how you link it all together. But once you've done it, it's such a simple process.”

That consistency across modules is something John comes back to repeatedly. Filing a VAT return and filing an MTD return follow the same underlying process, just with different boxes to tag. “It's not like, well, this is how you've got to do this one, then it's a completely separate process for the other one,” he says. “Even someone who's not very computer literate, like me, can file an MTD tax return because they can file a VAT return. It's the same process.”