Sir David Tweeedie calls on accountants to offer small firms greater advice

ACCOUNTANTS need to play a bigger role in bolstering the business plans of Scotland’s small firms and boosting their profitability, according to Sir David Tweedie, the in- coming president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (Icas).

Tweedie, former chairman of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), said auditors of small companies with no major public interest should fill the role of business adviser as well as that of accountant.

This will be one of his main aims when he takes up his new post with Icas on 20 April.

“I trained in Glasgow and one of the things that I felt very strongly about when I was training was that we didn’t do enough for small companies,” Tweedie said.

His first audit while qualifying with Mann Judd Gordon in the early 1970s was with a family-owned textiles firm in the Gorbals that for years had been making an “existence profit”.

Tweedie’s first review of the books revealed a surge in profits to £50,000 after supply problems had forced the company into using lower-cost materials in a higher-margin product.

“They were delighted, but my view was that we had let them down,” he said. “They had been making the wrong product for years and nobody had pointed this out to them.”

As part of the drive to “give something back”, Icas plans to launch a Trusted Business Adviser campaign later this year. The group will also publish a guide to help small firms set up business plans, review costs and otherwise sharpen their operations.

The campaign is particularly relevant in Scotland, where some 98 per cent of all businesses are classified as small or medium-sized companies.

Tweedie added that the divide between auditor and adviser should be maintained in the case of quoted companies, large employers and those with otherwise “high public interest”.