Dentists
The UNW Dental Business Unit, led by partner Alan Suggett, is a leading national advisory team that acts for over 500 dentists across the UK.
UNW is a member of NASDAL (National Association of Specialist Dental Accountants and Lawyers), where Alan is a member of the Technical Committee and editor of their quarterly survey, and ASPD (Association of Specialist Providers to Dentists).
We work on a fixed fee basis, which includes an annual benchmarking report of practice results, and we also advise clients on buying and selling practices. Over the years, we have developed a vast number of strong working relationships with special dental leaders and lawyers.
Many pitfalls can arise working with NHS practices; In keeping with our code of practice, our team at UNW are here with as much support as you may require, however big or small.
- Buying a practice
- We can help you find a practice to buy
- Evaluate whether a practice will be viable for you
- Help you negotiate favourable purchase terms, including a tax efficient purchase cost allocation
- Introduce you to lenders and help you get a good deal
- Advise you about the best structure to operate the practice (sole trade, limited company, etc)
- Selling your practice
- We can help you with “tactics” on sale to maximise your value
- Our knowledge of the Goodwill market can help your sale negotiation
- We’ll help you minimise tax on sale
- An experienced and independent advisor to relieve your stress and help with your decisions
- Maximising practice profitability
- We’ll prepare a report for your practice analysing areas of strength and weakness based on the annual NASDAL benchmarking survey of hundreds of practices
- We’ll quantify the amounts of extra potential profit to be earned
- We can help you measure improvements as part of a profit improvement plan
- Minimising tax
- UNW has six tax partners and a team of approximately 30 tax advisers – almost 50% of our staff are tax professionals
- You probably aren’t Jimmy Carr or Gary Barlow – so we’ll advise you accordingly
- We’ll do our best to advise you so that your tax bill is minimised – but you can sleep at night
- Whether annually, on practice sale, or on death – we’ll help minimise taxes
- Payroll
- We have a payroll bureau with dedicated staff
- We’re not a call centre so will look after your staff sensitively
- We can even pay your staff using our BACS facility
- Payroll is about to become even more complicated with the advent of RTI and Auto enrolment – but we’re up to speed and can relieve you of this stress
- Our payroll bureau can take the stress from you
- Fees
- Most of our fees are fixed, and agreed with you in advance
- We don’t charge extra for telephone calls or emails
- You can pay us on a monthly basis if you’d prefer
- No surprises!
- Strategic planning
- The UNW Strategic Development Programme (SDP) is a tried and tested, systematical approach to strategic planning
- If you’d like to be more focused and plan for how you’d like your business future to unfold, we can help
- You’ll have objectives, an action plan and a review process
- Fixed fee strategic planning projects start from £1,000 plus VAT
- Where are you now, where would you like to be?
- What is the best structure for your practice?
Sole trade, incorporation, LLP, expense sharing, partnership?
We’ll help and advise about all of the important issues
- VAT
- Associate NHS pension
- Breaching contract
- GDC registrant
- Awkward Commissioners
- Who owns the practice freehold?
- Subcontracts
- Repaying loan capital
- Entrepreneurs relief
- Directors
- Incoming tax saving
- Mixed NHS & Private
- Goodwill ownership
- Shareholders
- Companies Acts
- Involvement of spouse
- Dividends
- Limited company issues
- Risk
- Principal’s NHS pension
- Accounting systems
- We work with many computerised accounting systems (and even your manual books if you insist!)
- We can recommend, configure and train you and your staff if you would like to improve record keeping
- We’ll work with you on “the Cloud” if you like (usually using a system called Xero)
- We have experience of designing sophisticated reporting systems measuring a range of KPI’s in addition to monthly profit and loss accounts and balance sheets
- If you produce good monthly reports we’ll “desk review” these for you (to give you extra confidence) free of charge as a reward!
- Keeping records (“the books”) efficiently
- NHS pension scheme (NHSPS)
- At no extra cost we’ll review your NHSPS entitlement annually
- It’s complicated, and the Rules & Regulations often aren’t clear, but we can help you make sure your entitlement is right
- Beware of the rules which apply to incorporated practices – we’ll guide you if this affects you
- Despite recent changes it’s still a marvellous benefit
- Associates – our approach
- Some of our biggest dental clients have been with us since they were associates
- Fixed fees, including unlimited telephone and email support
- We have a dedicated team, on your wavelength
- We’ll do our best to minimise your tax liability
- We’ll make sure your NHS pension calculation is right (surprisingly most accountants don’t do this)
- When the time comes we’ll help you find and buy a practice
- Associates – the NHS pension scheme
- In 2012 the NHSPS rules were clarified with regard to Associate / Performer pension entitlements
- The correct basis of associate pensionable pay is the amount paid (not 43.9% of gross fees)
- This important clarification will result in most associates pensionable earnings increasing
- We will check this for you
- Pension nightmare – are you affected?
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