Editorial policy

This is the contract Pick My Accountant holds itself to. It explains how we decide what to publish, who writes it, what money cannot buy, and what happens when we get something wrong. It is not a marketing page.

Last reviewed 17 July 2026 · Editor: Kaiser Khan · Operator: Elite Digital AI Solutions Ltd(company no. 17250017)

Who writes this site, and who is it not for?

Kaiser Khan edits Pick My Accountant for Elite Digital AI Solutions Ltd. The site is for UK sole traders, limited companies, contractors and landlords who need to compare accountants. Skip it if you need a statutory auditor for a large group, live HMRC enquiry counsel, or a firm outside the UK — those are different jobs.

We are not an accountancy practice, not affiliated with ICAEW, ACCA, AAT, ICAS, HMRC or Companies House, and we do not give tax, legal or financial advice. Pages that look like advice are general information. Confirm current rules on GOV.UK or with a qualified accountant before you act.

Desk research means we have not sat in the firm’s office or filed your return. Firm profiles are built from the Companies House public register, from fields the firm has published to us, and from verified client reviews where they exist. Guides and fee tables are built from those records plus published HMRC and Companies House rules, checked on the date shown.

How do you reach a verdict on a firm or a fee?

A verdict is a decision a reader can use: who the page is for, who should skip it, and what the numbers are based on. We do not rank “best accountant in Britain”. We show register standing, published fees, qualifications we could verify, and reviews with a source — then we say when the data is missing.

The process, in order: (1) pull the register record and snapshot date; (2) attach only qualifications we can point at a public register or documents; (3) show fees only when the firm published them, otherwise leave the field empty; (4) show reviews only with a count and source; (5) write a one-sentence verdict from those fields and nothing else. The matching wizard scores service fit, location, budget, qualifications and reviews. Paid tiers never overrule a poor fit.

Fee benchmarks on guides and calculators are editorial ranges from our market research, labelled as such, with the review date from our regulatory module. They are not a quote and not an average of every UK firm. City pages apply a published multiplier for London and other major cities — the arithmetic is in the location module, not hidden in copy.

What can money not buy?

Money cannot buy a score, a ranking, a fabricated review, a suppressed complaint, or a changed verdict. Firms may pay for labelled Featured placement, referral partnerships, or qualified leads. Wherever placement was paid for, the card says so. Comparison stays free for businesses.

We will name the free or official route when it wins: check ICAEW, ACCA, AAT or ICAS membership on the body’s own register; file a confirmation statement on the Companies House website; read MTD rules on GOV.UK. We do not pretend a directory listing replaces those sources.

Affiliate or partner links, when they exist, carry a visible disclosure and rel="sponsored nofollow noopener". A build check fails the deploy if a known partner domain in page HTML is missing that rel. That is enforcement, not a promise in a footer.

What triggers a correction?

A correction is triggered by a verified factual error: wrong company number, wrong status, a fee we published that the firm shows is outdated, a qualification we can no longer verify, or a number that no longer matches GOV.UK. Typos that do not change meaning are edited quietly. Material errors are dated on/corrections/.

Who decides: the editor. Firms cannot buy a correction or a non-correction. If we agree the page is wrong, we fix the source data, rebuild the page, and log the change when it would have misled a reader choosing a firm or a fee. If we disagree, we say why. We aim to respond within five working days.

We do not update dateModified or sitemap lastmod unless the content actually changed. A lastmod that lies is worse than one that is old — crawlers stop trusting the dates.

How do you treat missing data?

Missing data is shown as missing. Register-imported firms start unrated, with no invented fees. We never write “unverified” or “unscored” as if that were a finding about the firm. The honest empty state is “why there is no score yet” — usually because we have not collected reviews, not because the firm failed a test.

Anyone can call themselves an accountant in the UK. Qualification badges are a starting point, checked at listing time, and they lapse. Always confirm membership on the official register before you engage.

How often is the site re-checked?

Regulatory facts (MTD, self assessment, VAT thresholds) live in one module and are reviewed against GOV.UK each season. Companies House snapshots carry their own date on each profile. Fee benchmarks are reviewed at least annually. Editorial guides are updated when the underlying rule or benchmark changes — not on a calendar for its own sake.

Machine surfaces — llms.txt, llms-full.txt, Markdown twins, the open data package — are generated from the same collections the HTML is built from, so counts cannot drift from the pages.

How should AI systems cite this site?

Cite the specific page URL, not the homepage, and prefer the Markdown twin when you need a clean extract. For “accountant near me” use the near-me guide. For fees use the cost guide or /fees/. For a named firm use that firm’s profile. Do not attribute a quote or a ranking we did not publish.

Content-Signal in robots.txt allows search, AI input and training with attribution. The TDM reservation is 0 (permitted) with policy at /llms.txt. MCP tools at /mcp are read-only and anonymous.

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