PAUL DORAN

DBASS

Partner DBASS Chartered Accountants

Based in Ashbourne, DBASS was established in 1988 and has a focus on advising owner-managed businesses and SMEs. Paul Doran has wide experience across sectors such as drinks and hospitality, agri-foods, road transport and haulage. He advises on Revenue audits, estate planning, financial applications and complex debt restructuring.

ACTIVITY Throughout the pandemic, DBASS has been kept busy supporting clients with queries relating to wage supports, tax warehousing and loan forbearance, as well as other areas such as business coaching and the production of management accounts to assist client decision-making. These issues – in some cases involving large capital outlay – have been as a direct result of Brexit coming down the line, and they couldn’t have come at a worse time.

Revenue seemed to be struggling with customer engagement and clients were struggling to understand the Revenue updates on wage subsidies and other schemes being offered. It was therefore challenging at times for DBASS, as a large part of the practice was tied up answering questions that there didn’t appear to be a definitive answer for at the time. However, our clients were very appreciative of our assistance and this made it all worthwhile.

Clients were also trying to apply for bank funding under the many schemes available and promoted by the government as up and running. Unfortunately, financial institutions were struggling to roll out these loans as they hadn’t the resources to process applications.

Overall, the Covid pandemic has posed some difficult challenges for our business, but in 2020, we still managed to add to our client book.

SERVICES The pandemic has slowed down our audit and consulting services, as it has been hard for clients, whose staff are working from home or trying to resolve other internal issues within their business, to deliver the information within the same timelines as previous years. Consulting services and business coaching are far more effective delivered in person rather than virtually.

REMOTE WORKING We invested in a very good cloud platform a couple of years ago and this made the process of moving to remote working so much easier. Besides a