Associate Chris Page joined the Charter Tax team in August 2010, only a matter of months after the practice had been established. At the time, he was working for the same accountancy firm that Founder and Principal Janet Pierce had been working for.
“I guess is was a big decision to join what was a newly-established firm, but I had worked with Janet before and I knew how ambitious and technically excellent she was. I really didn’t have any reservations to be honest. Since then, we haven’t stopped growing.”
Today Chris assists in the running of the corporate department at Charter Tax, while he is particularly involved with the firm’s outsourced Finance Department (FD) team; responsible for a number of clients in that area.
“Our outsourced FD work has developed over time,” he says. “When I first joined Charter Tax, we really all did everything – from accounts and pay-roll to VAT and tax returns just because there were only four or five of us in the office. Over time, we’ve all been able to specialise in our particular areas and, for me, that’s always been on the corporate side.”
Chris’ role also involves providing assistance and advice to his clients when making key decisions within their business, in order to help them to grow and become as efficient and profitable as possible. He strongly believes that the services he provides to his clients should add value to their business, to assist them with the finance side of their business so they can concentrate on what they do best as well.
When it comes to dealing with corporate clients, Chris brings more than just his accountancy knowledge to the table; he has also had experience of working in industry himself. At the start of his career, he spent more than six years working for one of the largest suppliers of fruit and vegetables in the UK.
“At school, I was always interested in maths, so I guess I thought I’d end up working in finance in some shape or form,” says Chris. “While doing a summer job at the fruit and vegetables supplier, a vacancy came up in the accounts department and that’s how I started my career.”
He adds: “When dealing with our clients, I’ve found that it’s really useful to know what it’s like to work on the ‘other side’ within a business.”
While there, he worked his way up to management accountant and then financial accountant, before moving into practice with a firm in Tunbridge Wells. There his role was varied, including providing assistance to clients with bookkeeping, VAT compliance and the preparation of both management accounts and year-end financial statements. During this time, he also became Sage accredited.
Nearly ten years since joining Charter Tax, Chris says he still really enjoys working at the firm.
“There are good people here and it’s nice to be in a position of not minding coming to work each day, in fact, it’s really enjoyable,” he says. “I think we are all really well supported here and there’s a real culture to bring in trainees and support them in their training. It works really well for us in the corporate team as, at any one time, we’ll have people at different levels of expertise. It can be hard to recruit nowadays, so bringing in school or college leavers and training them up works very well for us.”
When he’s not at work, family life takes up the majority of Chris’ time, although he is still called up for the Charter Tax football team every now and then and enjoys getting involved in team building exercises having recently completed Tough Mudder with his colleagues, two years running!
