Blog · Coverage and territory · Tax and accounting
How an accounting firm turns the data it already holds from compliance work into an advisory pipeline: the events in a client's filed accounts and returns, turnover crossing a threshold, a first overseas sale, R&D spend appearing, a director's loan, a property purchase, that map to an advisory service, the clients with a trigger and no service, valued at the firm's own fee for that service, and the partner list that comes out each filing season.
An accounting firm's compliance team computes a client's R&D costs every year for the tax return and never tells the advisory team, which sells R&D credit claims. The data is in the working papers. This guide sets out the triggers in compliance data, the mapping to services, the clients with a trigger and no service, and the seasonal list per partner.
Per client, per filing year:
Trigger events, from rules on the compliance extract Service held = the mapped advisory service billed in the trailing two years Opportunity = trigger present and service not held Value at norm = the firm's median fee for the service among clients of the type
Per partner, per season: opportunities and value.
Client identifiers only.
every trigger maps to exactly one service, and every opportunity is trigger present and service absent
A rule with no mapped service is listed as unmapped and produces no opportunities until it is.
| Trigger | Rule | Mapped service | Median fee |
|---|---|---|---|
| Turnover threshold | Turnover crosses the VAT or audit threshold for the first time | Audit readiness, or VAT planning | £6,500 |
| R&D appears | R&D costs above a floor, no claim in two years | R&D credit claim | £9,000 |
| Overseas sales | Overseas income appears | International tax and VAT | £5,000 |
| Property purchase | Property additions above a floor | Capital allowances review | £4,200 |
| Director's loan | Balance above a limit at year end | Remuneration planning | £2,800 |
| Client | Partner | Trigger | Year | Service held | Value at norm |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2207 | P-07 | R&D costs £310,000 | 2025 | No | £9,000 |
| 4471 | P-07 | Turnover crossed audit threshold | 2025 | No | £6,500 |
| 9034 | P-11 | Overseas sales £1.2m first year | 2025 | No | £5,000 |
| 1187 | P-11 | R&D costs £180,000 | 2025 | Yes: claimed 2024 |
Partner P-07 has two clients whose own accounts say they need something the firm sells, and the compliance team computed the trigger figure for the return.
Per partner: opportunities, value, and the share worked, from the service ledger next year. Per trigger: how often it converts, which is the firm's own evidence for which rules matter.
Compliance data never extracted. The trigger is in a working paper nobody reads for that purpose.
Rules unwritten. Each partner looks for their own; nobody looks for the rest.
Service held not checked. The client with a claim last year is on the list again.
List after the season. The R&D claim window closed.
Mapped once, the compliance extract, the service ledger and the rules produce the opportunities per partner every season, and the conversion by trigger every year. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The tax and accounting page describes the setup, and the service line gaps guide covers the norm-based list this trigger list sits beside.
The firm's own working papers and filing data, extracted as a table per client per year: the line items and flags the compliance work already computed. No new data; the extraction is the work, done once, and the triggers are rules on it.
A rule, written: turnover above a stated threshold for the first time; R&D costs above a floor; overseas sales appearing; a property acquisition; a director's loan above a limit. Each maps to a named service. The rules are the firm's, versioned, and a new one is added when a partner says what they look for.
The service line gap says which services similar clients buy that this one does not. The trigger says something happened at this client that calls for a service now. The gap is the norm; the trigger is the event, and the trigger list is the one a partner acts on this season.