For most manufacturers, yes, although the value has changed since April 2024. The merged scheme delivers a credit at 20% above the line, with most profitable companies seeing a net benefit in the mid-teens after corporation tax. Loss-making businesses with an R&D-intensive profile can qualify for ERIS at a higher effective rate. What qualifies has not changed: genuine product or process development that resolves scientific or technological uncertainty. What has changed is the documentation. Claims that would have been waved through five years ago are now scrutinised carefully, and success now depends heavily on how the work is recorded throughout the year, not how it is written up at claim time.

Often, yes. Patent Box applies a 10% effective corporation tax rate to qualifying profits from patented IP, which is meaningful for any business with revenue tied to patented products or processes. The setup work involves modelling the relevant IP income, isolating it within the financial reporting, and making the election. The administrative cost is modest compared with the ongoing benefit, but the planning needs to be done properly. We tend to look at Patent Box alongside R\&D, because the businesses that qualify for one usually qualify for the other.

Full expensing allows 100% first-year deduction on qualifying new and unused plant and machinery, with a 50% deduction for special rate pool assets. For a capex-heavy manufacturer the cash effect is significant. The planning questions are usually about timing, group structure and which assets sit in which pool. We work alongside finance directors on the capex case before the commitment is made, not after the invoice has been booked, because the choices made at point of purchase rarely look the same in hindsight.

With one product line. A full standard cost rebuild across a complex bill of materials is a major project, and most businesses do not have the bandwidth to take it on as a single exercise. Picking one line, working through the actual cost in detail, and comparing the result with the standard gives you a useful first read and a method that can be rolled out across the portfolio over the following months. The variance the first rebuild reveals is often where the margin pressure has been hiding.

The honest answer is that there is no perfectly safe window to sell. The right time depends on the owner, the business and the buyer pool, not on the wider economic narrative. What usually works is to spend the period before any sale on the work that improves the value regardless of timing: cleaning the management information, regularising shareholder arrangements, resolving any open HMRC matters, and getting operational metrics into a shape a buyer will understand. When the right window opens, the business is ready to move quickly.

Vendor due diligence is the financial DD report prepared by the seller's advisor ahead of a sale process, giving prospective buyers a credible view of historic and forecast performance. Done well, it accelerates the process, reduces the chance of the deal renegotiating late, and tends to support a higher price by removing buyer uncertainty. For most mid-market manufacturing sales it is worth doing. For a quick trade sale to a known buyer it can be over-engineered. The right answer depends on the process you want to run.

It can, particularly where the value of the business sits significantly in the workforce and the second tier of leadership. EOTs work well when there is a credible management team who can run the business after the founder steps back, and where the financial profile can support the deferred consideration over time. The tax position is favourable for the seller, but only if the structure is right and the cash flow holds up. We model the deferred payments against forecast trading carefully, because that is where EOTs come under pressure.

With a clear view of what is actually broken. ERP projects fail when they start with the software question rather than the business question. The starting point is a structured review of the current state: what reports are needed, what data is unreliable, where the manual workarounds sit, what the integration points should be. From that, the shortlist of suitable platforms usually narrows quickly. We work with the finance director on the requirements and the financial reporting design, then step back once the implementation partners take over.