Bramelle Partners was founded in 2013 by Brad Seeto and opened their first office in Crows Nest. Having spent the majority of his career working for large public practice accounting firms, Brad came to understand the current value proposition for clients was extremely poor. The traditional accounting firm would typically charge clients based on time and not based on outcomes. This meant typical accountants were not incentivised to find innovative or efficient solutions as they were charging their time, usually in six minute increments, they were incentivised to spend as much time as possible on a job and doing a job efficiently was actually bad for business. Brad had an ethical dilemma with this approach, as accountants were often seen to be a trusted advisor, yet the same accountants were making more revenue from their clients by spending more time working on the clients jobs and not providing commercial outcomes in the most efficient time possible. Could you imagine if accountants were to advise their clients to pass on all the costs of their own inefficiencies to their own customers? I would think in most cases the clients would say our customers/clients wouldn’t tolerate that. At Bramelle Partners we are no different.
Frustrated with the lack of service and value most clients received from traditional accounting firms, Brad founded Bramelle Partners with the vision to provide better value and outcomes for clients whilst providing transparency with their fees. Bramelle Partners achieves this by providing their clients with annual fixed fees for agreed scope of works, as a result clients are charged based on an outcome, not how long it takes to deliver an outcome. The scope of works is agreed upfront by both parties and is tailored to meet the client’s needs and budget requirements. We provided unlimited support to our clients throughout the year which is included in our fees, we don’t charge our clients additional amounts for the privilege of informing us of any changes to their circumstances, in fact we encourage this. Having more information about our clients allows us to advise them better and ultimately provide them with a better solution. Once the scope and fees have been agreed, we invest in our team, processes and software to make everyone’s life better. Through making this investment, our proudest achievement to date, is being able to deliver more services, faster turnaround time and at the same fees which our clients originally agreed to. Yes we can confirm out clients have has a single increase in fees for the same scope of work since partnering with us and our clients are getting better service than ever.
Bramelle Partners name originates from taking the first two letters of the first name of each of the family members in Brad and Elaine’s family. Another reason why Brad founded Bramelle Partners was the Seeto family were expecting the birth of their second child at the time. With the support of his wife, Elaine (who now works in the business), Brad started his practice with a modest portfolio of clients who followed him from his previous firm. The initial clients were predominately from the tech and startup space, which at that time, the industry in Australian and NSW was still very much in its infancy and doesn’t share the same profile as it does today.Working closely with the startup clients, Brad has adopted a similar mindset to his accounting practice by making data driven decisions.
Whilst data itself, doesn’t tell you anything, the inferences you can make from the data can tell you everything. There are so many tools available today which produces reporting packs, graphs, ratios etc, but understanding how to interpret the data and questioning the data that Is being collected and its relevance Is crucial and the real key in making the correct decisions . This is where Bramelle Partners can add real value to a client’s business especially in the early days by setting the foundation for how the business should operate and understanding the key metrics to be measured to ensure the business will survive in the long term. We do all the traditional business and tax compliance as well and we do that really well too, but we see our clients getting really good value from our advisory services and introducing them to other businesses in our network to bounce ideas off and share their experiences really helps them to.
In 2015, Brad met up with his first boss, Ken Bromley from Bromley’s Chartered Accountants, who was looking to retire at that time. An agreement was struck and Ken’s clients transitioned across to Bramelle Partners. These clients along with all new clients have enjoyed the benefit of no fee increases since joining Bramelle Partners. We really invest in our clients and the investment pays off in the long run for both parties especially where we can provide additional services at no further costs because the clients are getting more value than they originally received from us and we can see we are making a positive change for our clients and giving more back to them which is our way of thanking them for their loyalty. Our extremely low client attrition rates proves our model is working for our clients.With the growing number of clients and a need to be more centrally located to the Sydney CBD, Bramelle Partners moved their head office to North Sydney in 2016. The company still maintains satellite offices in Chatswood for added convenience to clients in these areas.
Our accountants North Sydney is also happy to travel to meet at any location.Another area of focus for Bramelle Partners is SMSF administration, compliance and advice. Having identified this as a target area earlier in his career, Brad completed his Masters in Applied Finance (majoring in Financial Planning) in 2010 even though never working a financial planner. This was done to bridge the knowledge gap between accountants and financial planners who often work in silos. By gaining a better understanding of the goals of clients from a financial planning perspective, better outcomes are achieved through working more closely with financial planners and speaking to them on their terms to come up a holistic approach by combining both financial planning and tax outcomes. The investment in technology and processes also extend to the SMSF division of the practice.