No Spreadsheet Could Do This: How Inform Direct Keeps Short & Sons’ Clients Compliant 

Jason Short started Short & Sons Accountants in 2017 with a background most people would not expect: he spent seven years driving a London Black Cab before deciding to retrain. He studied AAT, found his feet preparing tax returns for fellow cabbies, and built from there. By 2026, Short & Sons has grown to a team of six looking after around 850 clients.

The client base reflects Jason’s roots. Four to five hundred of those clients are London Black Cab drivers, but the practice also serves a large contingency of builders, plumbers, electricians, and scaffolders, along with landlords, company directors, and small businesses ranging from sole traders to limited companies with 25 to 30 employees.

It is a varied, fast-moving practice that delivers end-to-end compliance: self-assessments, payroll, VAT, bookkeeping, CIS reclaims, and company secretarial work.

The Challenge: No Visibility, No Safety Net

As Short & Sons began taking on more limited companies, Jason ran into a problem that will be familiar to any practice handling company secretarial work at scale: he had no reliable way to track what was coming up.

“I had no ability to keep a tab on them without making a spreadsheet and putting it in the calendar. I was having to wait for the client to tell me their confirmation statement needed doing before I could do it.”

Jason Short, Founder — Short & Sons Accountants

With 20, 30, and eventually 150 limited companies on the books, a manually maintained spreadsheet was neither sustainable nor reliable. Deadlines for year-end accounts, confirmation statements, and VAT returns were spread across the year.

Without a single place to monitor them, the risk of something slipping through was real and the cost of that, to clients and to the practice’s reputation, was not worth taking.

The Solution: Inform Direct as the Secretarial Backbone

Jason came across Inform Direct through a recommendation in an accountancy Facebook group. He signed up, found it immediately intuitive, and has not looked back. Today, every limited company that joins Short & Sons goes straight onto Inform Direct from day one.

A dashboard built around what matters

The customisable dashboard is central to how the team uses the software. Short & Sons has configured it to display year-end dates, VAT quarterly dates, confirmation statement dates, and PSC codes — everything the team needs to stay ahead of their obligations, laid out clearly and without clutter. As Jason puts it: “Once you’ve got your dashboard set up, every time you add another company the fields just populate. It’s a lot less complicated than you might imagine.”

VAT monitoring: the stand-out feature

Jason singles out VAT monitoring as his favourite part of the software and the reason is practical. Inform Direct not only shows when the next VAT return is due, but which returns have been filed and which have not. For a practice managing VAT obligations across dozens of clients simultaneously, that visibility is the difference between staying in control and firefighting.

“Being able to see which VAT returns are coming up next is just brilliant. That is the piece of the software which I love the most.”

Jason Short, Founder — Short & Sons Accountants

Quick and accurate company formation and secretarial changes

Forming a company directly through Companies House is manageable, but Inform Direct makes it better. The software allows the team to form companies and immediately verify that shareholdings, directorships, and registered addresses are correctly recorded.

All in a clear, structured format that makes errors easy to spot and quick to correct.

Changing share structures, updating directors, or switching to alphabet shares is straightforward. Authentication codes for each company are stored within the platform, so when a client asks for theirs, the team knows exactly where to find it.

Filing confirmation statements in two clicks

The confirmation statement workflow is a good example of how Inform Direct fits into Short & Sons’ broader process. The team downloads the current Companies House data directly from the platform as a PDF, sends it to the client for e-signature via BrightManager and, once signed, files it straight through Inform Direct.

Payment is stored on the account. Two clicks and it is done.

How Inform Direct Fits the Wider Workflow

Inform Direct does not sit in isolation, it is the trigger for the team’s task management.

The practice processes around three to four limited company year-ends per week. Each week, the team checks Inform Direct to see who is coming up next, then transposing those into task lists in BrightManager. Inform Direct surfaces what needs to happen; BrightManager tracks who is doing it.

Email reminders from Inform Direct provide an additional safety net – alerts that fire automatically when deadlines are approaching, ensuring nothing is missed even on a busy week.

The Results: Control Across 150 Companies

Inform Direct has become a non-negotiable part of how Short & Sons operates.

Jason is direct about what life would look like without it:

• No spreadsheet anxiety — 150 limited companies monitored in one place, with no risk of a deadline falling through the cracks.

• Faster secretarial work — company formations, directorship changes, and share restructures completed quickly and accurately.

• VAT pipeline in view — filed and outstanding returns visible at a glance across the entire client base.

• Confirmation statements filed in two clicks — from Companies House download to client e-signature to submission, all within the platform.

• Team-wide visibility — each member of the office can see what their clients need next, without chasing or duplicating work.

• Exceptional value — Inform Direct is, in Jason’s words, “not cost prohibitive” compared to the rest of the practice’s software stack.

“Inform Direct is one piece of software that we literally couldn’t live without. It’s a no-brainer for any practice looking after more than a handful of limited companies.”

Jason Short, Founder — Short & Sons Accountants

See What Inform Direct Can Do for Your Practice

Inform Direct gives accountancy practices full visibility across their limited company portfolio; confirmation statements, year ends, VAT obligations, PSC codes, and company formations, all in one place.

Speak to our team to find out more.