SIMPRO GROUP · FIELD NOTES
Same economy, same customers, a very different margin. Here’s what the accountants did about theirs, and why the trades can do it too.
Your accountant probably knows your margin better than you do. Theirs is a lot bigger.
This spring, Xero surveyed 520 UK accountancy and bookkeeping practices for its Modern Practice Playbook. Even the firms it classes as lower-margin averaged a 26% net profit. Across the whole sample, the average was 35.8%.
Simpro Group’s research with YouGov puts the average UK field service trade business at 9.5%.
| 35.8% | average net margin, UK accountancy and bookkeeping practices |
| 26% | average for the lower-margin accountancy firms |
| 9.5% | average net margin, UK field service trade businesses |
On those numbers, the accountant keeps almost four times as much of every pound. Fred Voccola, Chairman and CEO of Simpro Group, made exactly that point when he opened Simprosium London:
The accountant makes four times as much money as the person who’s maintaining the elevators.
Fred Voccola
Nobody’s boiler was ever fixed by a tax return. The trades do work the rest of the economy can’t function without, and much of it can’t wait until Monday. If margin followed value, the numbers would run the other way.
So what are the accountants doing differently? Less than you’d think, and almost all of it is copyable.
Same revenue, different outcome
You might assume the most profitable practices simply bill more. Xero found otherwise: revenue per employee barely differs between its top performers and the average firm. The gap opens up in how much of that revenue each firm keeps.
Field service trade businesses have the same problem. Winning the work is rarely what holds them back. The margin slips away after the job is won, in hours nobody can bill and visits that have to happen twice.
| 15.4% | of trade businesses say too much unbillable time is stopping them hitting target margin |
| 14.3% | point to callbacks and rework |
The seven hours
Here’s the comparison that matters most. Across all staff, AI now saves the average UK accountancy practice 7.1 hours a week. The average field service trade business loses 7.32 hours a week to scheduling problems alone.
| +7.1 hrs | gained each week by UK accountancy practices using AI |
| −7.32 hrs | lost each week by field service trade businesses to scheduling |
Almost a working day, every week, moving in opposite directions. One profession is buying time back. The other is still paying for it.
They wrote down how the practice runs. Among practices using AI every day, 87% say their core processes are well documented. Among those with no plans to use AI, it’s 18%. AI can only take on work someone has described.
They made AI part of the day. Two thirds of top performers (66%) use AI in daily workflows, against 47% of all UK practices. Trying a tool once a month doesn’t move a margin.
They grew output without growing payroll. Nearly half of top performers say AI has helped them grow output without extra hires, and just 5% of UK practices expect AI to reduce headcount next year. The time went into higher-value work instead.
The trades’ version
Each of those moves translates to field service, with one difference: a trade business can’t spare an engineer to go and build its own AI.
Generic AI also hands a second job to everyone.
Fred Voccola
Measure what you’re losing. Top accountancy firms are half as likely as average to let billable work go untracked (9% vs 21%). In the trades, a quarter of businesses (25.2%) don’t track the time they lose to scheduling. Every move after this one depends on knowing the number.
Put the AI where the work already happens. The accountants’ most common starting point was AI built into the software they already used. For the trades, that means digital workers inside the field service platform: in Simpro Lightning and BigChange Lightning, an AI scheduler that rebuilds the day when it changes, JustAsk for plain-language answers about the business, and JobScribe writing up the job on site.
Add capacity, keep the team. A digital worker does the job of a role the business couldn’t afford to hire. In Fred’s words: “What we’re doing is we’re providing workers for you.”
Close the gap
The accountants’ margin came from process, daily AI and discipline about where the time goes. None of it depends on being an accountant.
DEATH BY PAPER CUTS
Our guide from Simprosium London shows exactly where field service trade margins leak, and how businesses are getting from 6% to 24%.
Download the guide:
Figures come from separate surveys with different methods and are shown for comparison. Accountancy data: Xero, Modern Practice Playbook UK 2026 (n=520). Trades data: Simpro Group × YouGov, State of the Field Service Trades 2026.
Back to top