What the recruitment treadmill costs a practice

One ordinary replacement costs an agency fee, two notice periods and months of settling in, and the cycle repeats. The weeks and pounds, stage by stage.

29 September 20267 minute read

Replacing someone costs more than a salary gap: an agency fee, a recruiting wait, the new starter's own notice period, and months of settling in, stacked one after another.
UK recruitment agencies charge 15–20% of first-year salary for a standard professional placement — £5,100–£6,800 on a £34,000 accounts role, spent before anyone has started work (Mason Bedford, 2026).
Robert Half puts the average time to fill a permanent finance and accounting vacancy at seven weeks, and that clock does not include either side's notice period (cited in TaxCalc, 2026).
The same research cites Advancetrack's 2026 Accounting Talent Index: 73% of UK accounting firms are turning away work for lack of staff, and 74% think current workloads will push people out of the profession altogether.
Faster hiring only trims the search stage of a roughly six-month cycle. Both notice periods and the settling-in period repeat regardless of how quickly a practice recruits.

What one departure costs

Costed as the salary saved minus the replacement's salary, a departure comes out close to zero. The cost is in the months between the resignation and the desk being full again.

Four stages happen in sequence, each with its own published or contractual length: the leaver's notice period, the time it takes to find and place a replacement, the replacement's own notice period at their current job, and the weeks after they start before they are fully useful on your files, your software, and your clients' quirks. Added together, they give the gap from the day of the resignation to the day the practice is back to full strength.

An example replacement in weeks and pounds

This example is illustrative and is not a client: a semi-senior on £34,000, doing accounts preparation and bookkeeping, replaced through a standard agency search.

Stage	Length
Their notice period	4 weeks — the standard month most UK contracts carry
Time to fill the vacancy	7 weeks, the average for a permanent finance and accounting placement (Robert Half, via TaxCalc)
The successful candidate's own notice period elsewhere	Typically another 4 weeks at their current employer
Settling in before they are contributing at full rate on your files	An estimate: about 12 weeks. It varies with the role and with how well your files are written down
Elapsed time, resignation to full strength	Roughly 27 weeks — about six months
Agency fee on £34,000 at 15–20%, spent by week 11	£5,100–£6,800, before the new starter has produced a single set of accounts

For about half a year the practice runs on less capacity than it had, with the same clients and the same deadlines. The gap is absorbed by the remaining team working longer, by the owner going back onto production, or by clients waiting longer for their accounts.

The shortage behind the wait

Seven weeks is an average, so some searches take longer. Advancetrack's 2026 Accounting Talent Index found 73% of UK accounting firms turning away potential clients because they do not have the staff to take the work on, and 74% believe sustained workloads could push people out of the profession entirely (TaxCalc, 2026). Those firms are recruiting from the same pool of candidates as you.

Shaving two weeks off the seven-week search does not change the leaver's notice, the new hire's notice, or the settling-in period, and it does not change how many other practices are chasing the same small number of qualified people this quarter.

The cycle repeats

If every departure is met with the same recruitment cycle, the cost comes round again with the next resignation. A practice that loses someone in a production role every twelve to eighteen months spends about six months of each cycle below full strength, which is a third to a half of the time.

Before the next departure

Name your single points of failure. List every role where one person leaving stops a whole function — payroll run by one person, bookkeeping known only to one person. That list shows where the practice is exposed.
Cost your last hire in full. Add the agency fee to both notice periods and a settling-in estimate, in weeks as well as pounds, and write the total down.
Write down the day-one response now. Decide what the practice does the day someone gives notice: who picks up their clients, which deadlines move, and whether you advertise or cover the hours another way.
List the roles you have refilled more than once. Those are the roles to cover another way, such as with a seat.

Covering a production role with a seat

A Production seat or an Accounts seat is one of our own employees in Pretoria, in one role. Accounts and tax work is reviewed by our own UK practice before it reaches you. You pay no agency fee and wait for no search. The seat is rolling monthly with one month's notice. If the person on your seat leaves, we find and train their replacement at our cost.

You still review and sign the work, and you keep the client relationship. When someone in a production role leaves, or the practice needs more hours, you change the size of a seat. Sizes and prices are on the pricing page, and the mechanics are on how it works. The wider recruitment shortage is covered in the real reason practices can't hire.

Where to start

Run the numbers on your own last hire first, using the same four stages. Then put your client numbers into the capacity calculator to see what size seat would cover the role you keep having to refill, and talk to us about what the first month would look like.

Published 29 September 2026. Tax rules and rates change, so check current figures on gov.uk before relying on anything here. This is general information for practice owners and is not advice.

Questions

How long does it take to replace someone in a UK accountancy practice?

Longer than the seven-week average that gets quoted, because that figure only covers the recruiting itself. Robert Half's research puts the average time to fill a permanent finance and accounting vacancy at seven weeks, but before that clock starts your leaver is working a month's notice, and after an offer is accepted the successful candidate is normally working a month's notice of their own somewhere else. Add a settling-in period before they are fully productive on your files, and a resignation-to-full-strength gap of around six months is a realistic, ordinary figure for a like-for-like replacement.

What does a recruitment agency charge for placing an accountant?

Between 15% and 20% of the role's first-year salary is the standard range for a mainstream professional placement in the UK, so £5,100 to £6,800 on a £34,000 accounts or bookkeeping role. That fee is contingent, meaning it is only charged on a successful placement, but it is payable in full once someone accepts, weeks before they produce any billable work. Specialist or senior roles can run higher, and the percentage is often negotiable for volume or exclusive arrangements, but 15–20% is a reasonable planning figure for a standard hire.

Why does it feel like practices are always hiring for the same role?

Because a large share of the sector is short of staff at the same time. Advancetrack's 2026 Accounting Talent Index found 73% of UK accounting firms turning away potential clients for lack of staff, and 74% expecting current workloads to push people out of the profession entirely. When that much of the sector is short-staffed at once, every departure draws from the same thin pool of available candidates that every other short-staffed firm is also recruiting from. The same roles — bookkeeping, part-qualified accounts preparation — keep coming back around on the same practices' vacancy lists as a result.

Does hiring faster solve the problem?

Only partly. A faster search can trim time off the seven-week average, but it does not touch the leaver's notice period, the new hire's notice period elsewhere, or the weeks it takes a new starter to reach full output on your files and clients. Those three stages typically make up more of the total gap than the search itself. In the example above, the search is seven weeks of roughly twenty-seven. A practice that recruits quickly still loses a production role for months each time someone leaves.

What's the alternative to repeating this hiring cycle for the same role?

A seat: one of our own employees in Pretoria, in a single role — accounts preparation, bookkeeping and VAT, payroll, or marketing — with accounts and tax work reviewed by our own UK practice before it reaches you. There is no agency fee and no search, and the seat is rolling monthly with one month's notice. If the person on your seat leaves, we find and train their replacement at our cost. Seats come in 160, 80 or 40 hours a month, with the prices on our pricing page. You still review and sign the work.

5 min read

Tell us what is on your desk and we will work out what you need

Half an hour on the phone with your job list in front of you.

Talk to us