Terms and Conditions.

01Who we are and what these Terms cover

Disruptive Accountants (“we”, “us”, “our”) operates the website at disruptive.accountants (the “Site”) and offers the confidential practice valuation described on it.

These terms and conditions (the “Terms”) govern your use of the Site, any valuation request you submit through it, and any advertisement of ours that brought you here, including advertisements on Facebook, Instagram and other Meta platforms.

By using the Site or submitting a valuation request you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the Site.

These Terms cover the Site and the free indicative valuation only. If you go on to instruct us to market or sell your practice, that engagement will be covered by a separate written agreement, which takes priority over these Terms for that work.

You can reach us at any time at support@disruptive.accountants. Full contact details are in Section 13.

02Using this website

The Site is provided free of charge so that you can read our argument and, if you want to, ask us to value your practice.

You may use the Site for your own lawful purposes. You must not:

• submit information that is false or misleading, or that you have no right to share, including another person's details without their permission;
• use the valuation form to send us advertising, solicitations or anything unrelated to a practice valuation;
• try to bypass the Site's spam protection or rate limits, probe or test its security, or introduce viruses or other harmful code;
• copy the Site or its content at scale, by automated means or otherwise, except as Section 9 allows;
• use the Site in any way that breaks the law or infringes anyone's rights.

We may suspend, withdraw or change the Site at any time without notice. We do not promise that it will always be available, uninterrupted or free of errors. The Site relies on modern browser features, including WebGL; where those are not available, a simplified version is shown.

The Site is aimed at owners of accountancy and bookkeeping practices in the United Kingdom. You are welcome to read it from elsewhere, but we make no promise that it is appropriate or lawful for use outside the UK.

03Nothing here is advice

The Site is marketing. It sets out our view of where the accountancy profession is heading and why we think practice owners should consider selling sooner rather than later. It is opinion, expressed forcefully, and it is not:

• financial, investment, tax, legal or accounting advice;
• a recommendation to sell your practice, to sell it at any particular time, or to sell it to any particular buyer;
• an offer, a valuation or a commitment of any kind until we put one to you in writing.

Selling a practice is a significant decision. Take independent professional advice from advisers who know your circumstances before you act on anything you read here.

04Valuation requests

What you get

When you submit the form we use the information you give us to prepare an indicative valuation range for your practice and send it to you by email or phone. We aim to do this within 48 hours of receiving a complete request. That is a target, not a guarantee: weekends, bank holidays, unusual practices and incomplete information can all extend it. If we need more from you, we will ask.

What it costs and what it commits you to

Nothing, and nothing. The valuation is free. Asking for it does not oblige you to sell, to instruct us, to speak to any buyer or to take any further step. There is no fee, no retainer and no exclusivity attached to asking.

What the number is

An indicative valuation is our opinion of the range a practice like yours might achieve, based on what you tell us, publicly available information and our view of buyer demand at the time. It is not a formal or independent valuation, and no buyer is bound by it. It must not be relied on for tax, accounting, lending, insurance, matrimonial, probate or legal purposes, or for anything other than deciding whether you would like to talk to us further.

Your side

You confirm that the information you submit is accurate to the best of your knowledge, that you are entitled to share it, and that you own the practice or are authorised by its owners to make the request.

Our side

We may decline a request, for example where we do not think we can help, where the information looks inaccurate, or where a request breaches these Terms. If we decline, we will normally tell you why.

What comes next

If you decide to go further, any next step, such as introductions to buyers or managing a sale, will be set out in a separate written agreement before it begins. Until then, the free valuation is the whole of our relationship.

05Confidentiality

We treat every valuation request as confidential. In particular:

• we will not contact your staff, partners, clients or anyone else about your request unless you ask us to;
• we will not disclose your identity, or anything that would identify your practice, to any prospective buyer without your express permission;
• we will not publish, sell or pass on your details for marketing or any other purpose;
• we may use anonymised, aggregated information (for example, the number of requests received from a region) to understand demand, but never in a form that identifies you or your practice.

Confidentiality works both ways. Any indicative valuation, buyer information or market view we share with you is for you and your professional advisers only, and not for onward circulation.

If at any point you would like your request deleted, email support@disruptive.accountants and we will delete it (see Section 8).

06Accuracy, statistics and forward-looking statements

The statistics

The automation probabilities quoted on the Site (94% for accountants and auditors, 98% for bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks, 99% for tax preparers) come from Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, The Future of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs to Computerisation?, Oxford Martin School, University of Oxford, 2013. They are the authors' estimates of how susceptible those occupations are to computerisation. They are not our research, they are not predictions of when any particular job will disappear, and the authors and the University of Oxford are not connected with us and have not endorsed the Site.

Practice multiples

Statements about practice values (for example, that practices trade at “roughly one times recurring fees”) describe our general understanding of the market at the time of writing. Multiples vary widely by firm, region, client mix, profitability, deal structure and buyer, and they change over time. Nothing on the Site is a promise that your practice will achieve any particular multiple or price.

The future

Statements about artificial intelligence, the accountancy profession, regulation and the direction of practice values are forward-looking statements of opinion. They are inherently uncertain, they may prove wrong, and we are under no obligation to update them.

We try to keep the Site accurate and current, but we make no promise that it is, and we may change any of it at any time without notice.

07Facebook, Instagram and Meta advertising

We advertise on Facebook and Instagram, which are operated by Meta Platforms, Inc. and its group companies (“Meta”). If you arrived here from one of those advertisements, this section is for you.

Our adverts are ours

We create and pay for our advertisements on Meta's platforms. We are solely responsible for their content and for this Site. Meta is not responsible for either, has not reviewed or approved them, and is not a party to these Terms or to any dealings between you and us.

Your information comes to us, not to Meta

When you submit a valuation request on this Site you are giving your information to Disruptive Accountants, not to Meta. Meta does not receive the contents of your request. Separately, Meta may record how you interact with our advertisements on its own platforms (for example, that you clicked one) under Meta's own terms and privacy policy, which we do not control and which you can read on Meta's websites.

Measurement

This Site does not currently run the Meta Pixel, Meta's Conversions API or any other Meta measurement tool, and it does not set advertising cookies. If we introduce any of these, we will update these Terms and, where the law requires it, ask for your consent first.

What our adverts promise

Our advertisements summarise the argument made on this Site. Any figures they quote, including automation probabilities and practice multiples, are subject to Section 6. Any results, scenarios or timescales they describe are illustrative and are not a promise of any outcome, price or timescale. The offer in our advertisements, a confidential valuation with no fee and no obligation, is the offer described in Section 4 and is subject to these Terms. Where an advertisement and these Terms differ, these Terms apply.

Complaints about an advert

If you think one of our advertisements is misleading, inaccurate or inappropriate, tell us at support@disruptive.accountants and we will look into it. You can also report an advertisement to Meta using the tools on the advert itself, or complain to the Advertising Standards Authority, which regulates advertising in the UK.

Release

To the extent permitted by law, you release Meta and its group companies from any liability in connection with our advertisements, this Site and our services. This does not reduce any rights you have against us.

08Privacy and your data

This section explains how we handle personal data collected through the Site. It sits alongside the confidentiality commitments in Section 5. Disruptive Accountants is the controller of that data.

What we collect

• When you request a valuation: your name, email address, phone number (optional), region (optional), the range your annual recurring fee income falls into, and anything you write in the message box.
• Automatically with each request: your IP address and the date and time of the request, which we use to limit repeat submissions and stop spam.
• When you email us: whatever your email contains.
• When you simply browse: nothing from us. The Site sets no cookies, runs no analytics and uses no tracking pixels. Like almost every website, the web server may keep standard access logs (IP address, browser type, pages requested) for security and troubleshooting.

Why we use it, and our legal basis

• To prepare and send your valuation and to talk to you about it. This is necessary to take steps at your request before entering into a contract (UK GDPR, Article 6(1)(b)).
• To keep the Site secure, prevent spam and enforce these Terms. This is in our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)).
• To deal with legal obligations, complaints or claims. Legal obligation or legitimate interests, as applicable.

We will not send you marketing you have not asked for. Following up on your own valuation request is not marketing.

Who sees it

• Your request is stored on our web server, in a folder that cannot be downloaded from the internet, and is emailed to our support mailbox. It is read only by the people at Disruptive Accountants who handle valuations.
• Our website hosting provider and our email provider process data for us, on our instructions and under contract.
• The Site loads fonts and code libraries from third-party content delivery networks (Google Fonts, jsDelivr and cdnjs). When your browser fetches those files, those providers receive your IP address and standard browser information, as with any resource loaded from the web. They do not receive anything you type into the form.
• We do not sell personal data, and we will never share it with a prospective buyer without your express permission.
• Where a provider processes data outside the UK, we rely on the safeguards UK data protection law allows, such as adequacy regulations or the International Data Transfer Agreement.

How long we keep it

We keep valuation requests for as long as we need them to deal with your enquiry and any engagement that follows, and to keep a reasonable record of our dealings with you. If you ask us to delete your request we will do so, unless we are legally required to keep it. Records used for rate limiting are keyed to a one-way hash of your IP address, not the address itself, and count only requests made within the last hour.

Your rights

Under UK data protection law you can ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, restrict or object to how we use it, and ask for it in a portable format. Email support@disruptive.accountants. We will normally respond within one month.

If you are unhappy with how we have handled your data you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office. We would appreciate the chance to put things right first.

Children

The Site is for practice owners and is not intended for anyone under 18. We do not knowingly collect data from children.

09Intellectual property

The Site, including its text, design, three-dimensional scene, images, videos, logo and the Disruptive Accountants name, is owned by or licensed to us and is protected by copyright, trade mark and other intellectual property laws.

You may view the Site and print or save pages for your own reference. You may not otherwise copy, reproduce, republish, adapt, distribute or exploit any part of it without our written permission.

Software libraries and fonts used by the Site (including Three.js, GSAP, Bricolage Grotesque and JetBrains Mono) belong to their respective owners and are used under their own licences. The Frey and Osborne paper is cited as a source and remains the work of its authors.

10Third-party links and services

The Site and these Terms link to other websites, including Meta's platforms, the Advertising Standards Authority and the Information Commissioner's Office. We do not control those sites and are not responsible for their content, their availability or their handling of your data. A link does not imply endorsement in either direction.

The Site also loads resources from the third-party content delivery networks named in Section 8. Their availability and conduct are outside our control.

11Our liability

Nothing in these Terms excludes or limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded or limited.

Subject to that:

• the Site and any indicative valuation are provided free of charge, “as is” and for information only, and we exclude all implied terms, conditions and warranties to the extent the law allows;
• we are not liable for any loss or damage arising from reliance on the Site, on an indicative valuation or on our advertisements, including any decision to sell, not to sell, or to accept or reject any offer;
• we are not liable for any indirect or consequential loss, or for any loss of profit, business, revenue, goodwill, opportunity or data, however it arises;
• we are not liable for the Site being unavailable, for harmful code reaching your device through your use of the Site or of the third-party services it loads, or for the acts or omissions of Meta or any other third party;
• if we are nonetheless found liable to you in connection with the Site or a free indicative valuation, our total liability is limited to £100.

The Site is aimed at businesses and their owners. If you are dealing with us as a consumer, nothing in these Terms affects your statutory rights.

12General

• Changes. We may change these Terms at any time. The version published on the Site when you use it or submit a request is the one that applies to you. The effective date at the top shows when they last changed.
• Separate agreements. If you go on to engage us, the written agreement for that work takes priority over these Terms for that work.
• Severability. If any part of these Terms is found to be invalid or unenforceable, the rest continues to apply.
• Waiver. If we do not enforce a right under these Terms straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• Third parties. Apart from the release in Section 7, nobody other than you and us has any right to enforce these Terms, whether under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 or otherwise.
• Governing law. These Terms, and any dispute or claim arising out of them or the Site, are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction, except that if you are based in Scotland or Northern Ireland you may also bring proceedings in your local courts.

13Contact

Questions about these Terms, your data or one of our advertisements:

Disruptive Accountants
support@disruptive.accountants
disruptive.accountants