About - The F Word

About The F Word

Martin Horton The F Word Business Finance Help

About me

Hi, I'm Martin.

I like to think of myself as a friendly, approachable accountant, who has 35 years’ experience working in accountancy departments in manufacturing, retail, and wholesale.

Yes, I’ve seen it all.

You could say that I fell into accountancy by accident, simply because I was good at maths and it just seemed like the natural thing to do.

I qualified as a Chartered Management Accountant in 1994 whilst working for a national retailer in the Midlands. Later that year I moved to the North West with my wife Diane (a native to the area).

We now have two ‘adult’ daughters who are making their own way in the world.

My dad hated accountants as he was a shop steward in the 1970s working for Norton Motorbikes, Yale locks and also worked on the first Concorde.

Accountants were his nemeses as he was always battling with them regarding pay increases, redundancies etc.

Why The F Word?

Many people still think that the main purpose of an accountant is to save money but there is so much more to what we do and The F Word explores all of these things and more.

Since 2008 I’ve been running my own accountancy practice and Iearned a lot about the things which seem to be a constant headache to clients.

It got me thinking; why not gather all of these scenarios and share this advice to a wider audience?

And so, The F Word was born. I really hope it will give you a good insight into better business finance and inspires you to imagine how things could be different for you in the future.

A few extra bits about me:

I’ve been made redundant 3 times and have worked with the firms long after they have ceased trading in order to make sure everything was finalised in an orderly manner. This is when you learn so much about how not to run a business.

My last ‘employed’ position was financial controller of a multi-million pound, rapidly expanding FTSE 250 retailer.

I didn’t go to University but worked through my qualifications whilst working in industry.

What our customers say

“I worked with Martin for a number of years and always found him to be intellectually strong with an extremely good understanding of how to turn raw data into valuable business insight. His input has always been first class and would be of real benefit to any business.”
Rob ParkerTopps Tiles Plc

“In a recent customer satisfaction survey, we cited more regular meetings with Martin as a desirable improvement. Within a few days one of Martin’s team was on the phone to ascertain the type of meetings and frequency required and booked these in. I would have no hesitation in recommending Martin and his team to anyone looking for professional, affordable accountancy services.”
Matthew JonesThe Purple Property Shop

“Martin comes here every month and presents this amazing monthly reporting analysis, which gives all the trends in this very easy, graphical format that you can use. It tells me exactly, at a glance, which areas I need to focus on, in terms of marketing. It gives me forecasts of sales, against budgets, against revenue and profit margin. It tells me my break-even point. It gives me all of this future, forecasted profits. The everything… so many graphs. I never had anything like this, and it is absolutely brilliant that not only do I get this report, but he actually makes time to come out and actually go through it.”
Celia GazeThe Wellbeing Farm