Pay the minimum amount of tax
Wine businesses sit at an unusual intersection between agriculture, manufacturing, hospitality, property and retail.
That creates complexity.
But it can also create opportunity.
Our starting point isn’t simply preparing your tax return after the event.
We conduct a Tax Health-check to understand your business, investments and future plans and identify the tax planning opportunities available to you.
Depending upon your circumstances, that might include:
- the tax treatment of vineyard and winery expenditure
- capital allowances on qualifying plant, machinery and equipment
- Structures and Buildings Allowance
- VAT planning
- employment taxes
- business structures
- remuneration and profit extraction
- land and property transactions
- succession and inheritance tax planning
- capital gains tax
- financing major capital projects
- the tax consequences of acquiring or disposing of a vineyard or wine business.
And we don’t perform that exercise once and forget about it.
Tax planning needs to happen before the transaction, investment or year end – not when we’re preparing the accounts nine months later.
So we build tax planning into the relationship.
Trust your numbers
A vineyard can be asset-rich, stock-rich and still desperately short of cash.
That makes good financial information particularly important.
- How profitable is each part of your business?
- What does it actually cost to produce a bottle of wine?
- How much cash is tied up in stock?
- What’s happening to your gross margin?
- Is cellar-door tourism making money?
- Are trade sales profitable once discounts and distribution costs are included?
- How does direct-to-consumer performance compare?
- What happens to cash if you plant another five hectares?
- Can the business afford a new press, bottling line or winery?
- And what happens if the next harvest is 30% below forecast?
Your accounts should help you answer questions like these.
We build financial reporting around how your business actually works, using cloud accounting, management information, budgets, forecasts and meaningful KPIs to give you numbers you can use to make decisions.
Because accounts shouldn’t simply tell you what happened last year.
They should help you decide what to do next.
Understand the true cost of your wine
Few industries have such a long gap between spending money and receiving it back.
Before a bottle is sold you may have incurred years of expenditure on establishing vines, vineyard management, harvesting, winemaking, maturation, bottling, storage and marketing.
Sparkling wine extends that cycle even further.
Understanding the real cost and value of your stock is therefore fundamental to understanding the profitability and financial position of your business.
We’ll help you establish accounting systems that properly capture those costs and give you meaningful information about margins, stock and profitability.
Not simply a number for the year-end accounts.
A number you can actually manage the business with.
Plan for the realities of a seasonal business
Wine doesn’t conveniently follow the accounting calendar.
Neither does the British weather.
Your cash requirements can change dramatically through the vineyard year, while investment decisions made today may not generate revenue for several years.
We can build integrated budgets and cash-flow forecasts around the actual cycle of your vineyard or winery.
That means modelling different scenarios.
- What happens if yield falls?
- What happens if sales grow faster than production?
- When does a new planting become cash positive?
- How much working capital will additional sparkling wine production absorb?
- Can we afford the next stage of expansion?
The objective isn’t to predict the future perfectly.
It is to understand what different futures would mean for your business before they happen.
Hear from us first
One of the biggest complaints we hear from business owners about accountants is remarkably simple:
“I only hear from my accountant at the year end.”
We think accountancy should work the other way around.
At the beginning of our relationship we’ll build an annual plan around your business.
That combines the things that have to happen – accounts, tax, VAT, payroll and other compliance requirements – with the things we’ve agreed should happen to make the business better.
We’ll look at your processes and systems, identify opportunities to improve them and agree the financial and tax priorities for the year ahead.
Then we’ll put them into a plan.
The intention is simple:
You should hear important things from us before you have to ask.
From vineyard to business
Many UK vineyards begin with an extraordinary commitment to the product.
Then the business grows around it.
A few hectares become more hectares.
Contract winemaking becomes your own winery.
A tasting room appears.
Then tours.
Then events.
Then an online shop.
Then trade customers.
Before long, what began as a vineyard has become an agricultural, manufacturing, retail, hospitality and tourism business operating simultaneously.
The financial systems don’t always grow at the same pace.
That’s where our Process Mapping work comes in.
We look at how information moves through your business – from purchasing and production to stock, sales, payments and accounting – and identify where processes can be simplified, automated or integrated.
The objective isn’t more software.
It’s less administration and better information.
Thinking about planting a vineyard?
Sometimes you need an accountant before you need an accountant.
Planting a commercial vineyard requires substantial capital long before meaningful revenue arrives.
Land preparation, vines, trellising, machinery, labour and professional costs all arrive first.
The grapes arrive later.
And the wine later still.
Before making that commitment, we can help you build a financial model examining:
How much capital will you need?
When will you need it?
When might the vineyard become cash positive?
How sensitive is that calculation to yield, price and production assumptions?
Should you sell grapes or make wine?
Contract winemaking or your own winery?
Still or sparkling?
Wholesale, retail, cellar door – or a mixture?
There may not be one right answer.
But there should be a properly costed one.
Planning to grow – or eventually sell?
A successful vineyard can become an extremely valuable asset.
But value isn’t created simply by owning land and planting vines.
It comes from building a commercially sustainable business around them.
If you’re considering expansion, bringing in investors, acquiring another business, passing the vineyard to the next generation or eventually selling, we can help you understand both the financial and tax consequences.
And because Ascentis advises business owners on valuation, corporate finance and succession, we can start that conversation long before the transaction itself.
That’s usually when the most valuable planning can be done.
Why Ascentis?
There are plenty of excellent accountants.
There are rather fewer accountants who genuinely understand wine.
At Ascentis, the two worlds come together.
- Chartered Accountants.
- WSET-qualified wine knowledge.
- Practical vineyard experience.
- Wine business experience.
- WineGB member.
- Xero Platinum Partner.
- Investors in People Gold.
- NPS 8.7.
- And more than 25 years helping owner-managed businesses understand their numbers, reduce tax and make better decisions.
We don’t want to become accountants who happen to have a few vineyard clients.
We want to become part of the British wine industry.
Let’s talk wine. And numbers.
Whether you’re thinking about planting your first vines, already producing wine, building a winery, expanding your tourism operation or wondering whether the business is making as much money as it should, we’d like to hear from you.
The first conversation doesn’t need to start with your accounts.
Tell us about the vineyard.
Tell us what you’re trying to build.
Tell us what’s frustrating you.
Tell us where you want the business to be in five years.
Then we’ll talk about how the numbers can help you get there.