Tax and accounting managed service providers need process orchestration to scale (2026)

One of the UK’s largest tax and accounting groups, Xeinadin spent years growing and scaling the business with the plan to exit. Then, in early 2026, its planned £1bn+ sale collapsed. It wasn't the illustrious client book of over 100 practices and thousands of clients that put investors off, it was the cost of integrating them.

The pitch to investors made sense. Accounting is a sprawling market with sticky client relationships and predictable revenue. Roll up enough regional practices, centralise the back office, and you should be able to extract margin at scale. Private equity swooped down on the opportunity quickly. Xeinadin, Sumer, Azets, Cooper Parry, consolidators assembled enormous client books through acquisition. The trouble is that a consistent way to run the business can't be acquired, it has to be built. And that's where the wheels came off.

The Xeinadin problem is a sector-wide one. Firms have invested heavily in accounting practice management software, compliance tools, document management systems, and accounting automation software, and still can't get a clear picture of what's happening across their own operations.

Growth through acquisition only works if operations can keep up

The volume players face the same problem at a bigger scale. Take In Extenso, which manages 170,000 clients with just 7,300 staff. At those ratios, manually keeping track of it all stops working.

Across the sector, 60% of accounting firms describe their technology as disconnected systems with inconsistent processes, according to Rightworks. That means most firms are running CCH or IRIS alongside a separate document management system and a billing tool, with Excel and email bridging the gaps that none of those platforms fill on their own. Every new client that comes on board gets configured into that patchwork, and the complexity grows from there.

The issue isn’t technology. In fact, most firms have invested heavily in best-in-class accounting workflow software across compliance, document management, and billing. The problem is that none of those tools share data automatically. And when you're processing returns for hundreds of thousands of clients across multiple jurisdictions, that gap reveals weaknesses fast.

Automation without co-ordination

Automation also isn’t the culprit here. Firms have invested plenty in automating individual tasks across the engagement lifecycle. However, billable utilisation across professional services has fallen to 68.9% – below the 70% floor most firms need to cover their cost base, according to SPI Research. That means the sector is spending more on technology to be lessproductive. Co-ordination is the real issue.

Take a returns workflow for example. A bot or digital worker prepares a draft return faster than a human ever could, which then sits in a queue until a staff member manually routes it to the review team. Then the review team adds it to their to-do list and works through it when they have capacity. And when they send it back, someone has to cross-check the sign-off tracker (last updated two days ago) and file it.

Each step might be faster than it used to be, but the handoffs are still a major productivity bottleneck. The result is firms that look well-automated but still depend on staff to act as connective layer between systems. Someone chases the status, manually routes the completed task, and updates the tracker. That overhead doesn't disappear with more bots, it just shifts to wherever the bots hand off.

WIP (work in progress) is a good example. Most firms know roughly how much unbilled work is in the system, but few can tell you precisely where it sits, which client it's for, or when it will convert to a billing run.

The information is there – it’s just scattered across systems that aren't talking to each other.

Deloitte found that only 3% of organisations have successfully scaled their digital workforce. That means 97% are running automation that works at the task level but breaks at the process level. Without something co-ordinating the full sequence, bots and people operate in separate silos.

The piece that's missing is an orchestration layer that manages the full engagement lifecycle, from the moment a client questionnaire arrives, through preparation, multi-level review, sign-off, filing, and billing run.

The case for orchestration

Process orchestration doesn't replace your practice management software. It sits above your document management system and your RPA tools and coordinates work across all of them, without needing a six-month IT project to get up and running.

In returns processing terms the picture looks like this: A client submits their questionnaire and orchestration routes it into the preparation queue. It assigns the work based on capacity and applies the correct review rules for that jurisdiction. When the work is ready for partner sign-off, the system escalates automatically and logs every step against the compliance calendar.

This is a godsend for firms managing returns across multiple jurisdictions. Different clients and authorities might have different extension requirements, but orchestration applies those rules automatically to every return in the queue without anyone manually having to track which deadline applies to which deliverable.

That changes what capacity planning looks like. Instead of a weekly status meeting to establish where returns stand, your operations managers have a live view of the workflow queues: what's in preparation, what's awaiting client information, what's in review, and which ones are at risk before the SLA deadline hits. No one ever needs to chase an update.

The distinction matters for realisation rates and lock-up days too. When work moves through the engagement lifecycle automatically, it reaches the billing run faster. When it sits waiting for a manual handoff, unbilled time accumulates.

How process orchestration unlocked a £32M margin improvement for TMF Group

TMF Group operates across more than 50 countries handling accounting, corporate secretarial, HR, and capital services. Before Enate, their client requests arrived through email, self-service portals, and call centre tickets. Each sat in a separate system with no unified view tying them together.

Deadlines were getting missed, time was being wasted, and the margin for error grew with every new client. TMF came to Enate after realising they could house all of those work processes under one roof and track every task through a single platform.

Felipe Araya, Global Head of Operations at TMF, told us: "Implementing Enate has given me full visibility and control of my operations. Even when travelling, I'm able to access the platform, identify potential client risks and request internal action. By the time I land in another country, the risk is mitigated, and any issues are resolved. The problem of 'not knowing' the status of work has become a thing of the past."

That visibility translated into commercial results. TMF achieved a 22% increase in operational efficiency and a 22% reduction in process cycle times, delivering a £32M margin improvement. Client satisfaction improved by 33%.

Russell Sheldon, Chief Operations & Technology Officer at TMF, told us: "We've gotten to a point where I can see exactly what is happening across our entire organisation at any time. This level of visibility is incredibly powerful and it is delivering some incredible results."

Why Enate?

The tax and accounting market is already dividing. Early movers are building operations where more work doesn't automatically mean more hours spent keeping track of it. The firms that wait are sleep walking into the same problem that Xeinadin's would-be buyers walked away from.

Firms already running Enate are integrating new acquisitions into a consistent workflow framework rather than negotiating with each practice's existing setup. Enate wraps around the accounting practice management software and automation tools you already use. There's no lengthy IT project and no rebuilding your existing stack, deployment runs to 6–8 weeks and your team doesn't need to write code.

Once it's in place, every request that enters your operation moves through a single orchestrated workflow, regardless of service line or jurisdiction. Your compliance calendar is managed automatically — and your operations managers have a live view of WIP, workflow queues, and SLA status without chasing anyone for an update.

If you're scaling a tax or accounting managed service and your processes are still held together by Excel and email, it's time to see what orchestration can do. Take a free trial to see how process orchestration can help your firm scale today.