By Sector
Day Nurseries
Running a day nursery means balancing funded-hours income against staffing costs, keeping every room as full as you can and staying inspection-ready, while still finding the time to think about what comes next. Our day nursery specialists work with owners of single settings through to acquisitive groups, with advice grounded in how nurseries actually trade.
Our day nursery specialists are part of our award-winning Healthcare team, built up from more than 30 years’ experience, offering bespoke sector-specific guidance that’s hard to match.
Accountants and advisers for day nursery owners, from first setting to exit
Most nursery owners we meet didn’t start start out wanting to be accountants, tax planners or deal makers. They started because they care about early years. Our job is to take the financial side seriously so you can concentrate on the children in your care, their parents, and your team.
How we help depends on where you are…
Running your nursery:
Accounts that tell you something useful, tax planning and remuneration advice, and support with payroll, VAT and online accounting software for smaller settings.
Growing your nursery:
Whether you’re buying a nursery, buying a property to convert, or opening another site, we help you work our what you can afford, raise the finance through our banking contacts and carry out the financial and tax due diligence.
Preparing to sell:
We help you build a business a buyer will pay well for, with clean numbers, a sensible structure and a management team that doesn’t depend on you.
You’ll also get timely, relevant sector updates and a joined-up team that won’t outgrow you, who are happy to talk through an idea before you act on it.
Our services for day nursery owners
- Statutory and management accounts that show how each setting is performing
- Tax planning and structured advice, including how to take profits out of the business and how you hold the property
- Tax compliance, payroll and VAT support
- Benchmarking against other nursery operators using data from our audit work
- Raising finance for acquisitions, new sites or refurbishment, through introductions to mid-market bankers and investors
- Acquisition support, including financial and tax due diligence
- Sale preparation, valuation and sell-side advice, often starting years in advance
- Options to take some value out of the business without selling it outright
FAQs
We can design and help you to implement a tax efficient structure for your children’s day nursery business to ensure you are not paying more tax than you should. Amongst other services, we can also work with you to implement relatively low cost and simple changes to your current remuneration plan which can have a positive impact on current staff, as well as being attractive to potential employees.
This is particularly important now given the recruitment and retention challenges seen across the sector.
We have access to detailed benchmarking data that we will have collated as part of our audit work, enabling us to compare your key performance indicators to other operators.
Knowing whether it’s the right time to sell a children’s day nursery can involve a wide range of factors.
Knowledge of the early years sector is vital in order to assess whether it is the right time to sell in terms of maximising value. Our experience and working with businesses in the sector every day means our knowledge is up to date and relevant to your business.
Preparing for the sale of a children’s nursery ideally takes place around two years in advance of the target sale date in order to ensure structures and processes are appropriate to maximise the return, although many can achieve a sale in much shorter timescales.
There are ways in which you can extract some value now without needing to sell the whole business. Our Corporate Finance experts are on hand to discuss tailored options available to your individual needs.
When valuing a children’s nursery, advisers generally look at:
- Historical and forecast trading performance – cash flow, turnover and profitability
- Recent deals in sector (benchmarking)
- Risk & the market/economic conditions
- Freehold vs leasehold property.
As advisers for children’s day nurseries, we can help to get your business in optimal condition to prepare for sale and make the business attractive to potential buyers. Elements we will help you to consider include:
- Presenting the optimal financial position
- Considering restructuring to make the business more tax efficient
- Working to make yourself dispensable by building a solid management team and developing your successor/second tier management
- Having robust systems and processes in place will assist with integration.
Our specialist accountants can support with both statutory and management accounts for nursery businesses. For smaller nurseries, we can also help with online accounting software, submission of VAT returns, monthly payroll processing and much more, freeing up your time so you can focus on the running of your business.
Owning and managing a children’s day nursery is a fast-paced role and it is easy to be so focused on running the day-to-day operations that you don’t stop and think about the future. Our team will work with you to create a business strategy that sets out the goals you want to achieve, and the individual objectives which will help you reach them.
Two common ways for nurseries to grow is through acquisition of an existing nursery, or the acquisition of a property to develop into a nursery. Our team can help with raising finance for either option utilising their network of contacts in the industry who have a real interest in early years development.
Our team of Corporate Finance experts can guide you through the acquisition process, carrying out financial and tax due diligence as well as renewing the legal documentation to ensure you get appropriate protection from any legal liabilities.
Investor appetite remains high in the early years sector, despite current economic uncertainties and increasing costs of borrowing. We have a large network of contacts with mid-market banks who we can introduce to discuss your requirements further.
Listen to our podcast
The Sale of PlayAway Day Nurseries
Following the successful sale of Playaway Day Nurseries to Family First Day Nurseries, it was great to hear from Vanessa Kellow, Owner of Playaway, who is enjoying post-sale life, on how we supported her throughout the sale process from preparation through to completion.
“We were delighted with the professional and confident service provided by Hazlewoods throughout the sale of our company. Rob and the team really were exceptional from start to finish and we always had great confidence in their advice when negotiations became complex. Hazlewoods genuinely care about their clients and were incredibly attentive and responsive to the changing requirements of our sale. We will always be hugely appreciative for all their hard work and commitment in working with us through every stage and ultimately completing the deal.” – Vanessa Kellow
Supporting Stables Daycare: A case study
We have worked with Caroline Johnson, MD and Founder of Stables Daycare, for a number of years and have watched her business go from strength to strength. We caught up with Caroline and Hazlewoods Partner, Rachael Anstee, to find out more.
“When you mention ‘HMRC’ to me, my mind goes to mush and it’s really mind-boggling. But I am, and always will be, cautious with my accounts – they must be done properly.
I needed an adviser who understood the nature of my business, not someone who was just going to look at the figures and that’s it, as there are many variables that come along due to the market. Rachael and I have built up a great relationship over the years…”