MEMBERS OF FSB, 2020, CPAA
Jane Briggs – Managing Director
Jane started Oakwood Tax Consultants back in October 2000, after more than twenty years in the Inland Revenue specialising in Employer Compliance and Accounts Investigations.
The business grew rapidly and became Oakwood Cranleigh Limited trading as Oakwood Business Consultants in 2004. With one employee in 2001, the company now has six employees, some part time, to run a very close family office, a wonderful team of administrators, bookkeepers, payroll operators, tax consultants, VAT specialists, Xero partners and Accountants.
Jane believes in motivating and supporting her staff with the aim to provide clients with world class customer service and accurate, comprehensive, efficient and timely advice, tax returns, accounts, payroll etc.,
Jane is a Fellow of the Certified Public Accountants Association and has been a member for 23 years.
Jane is keen to ensure the team are well trained and have a good work/life balance. Many employees have undertaken First Aid at work courses, food safety courses, Xero partner training and recently executor-ship and probate training.
Jane’s role is primarily overseeing accounts completion with lots of contact with clients, especially new clients with the exciting prospect of advising start ups with sound financial advice to get them on the road to a successful and fruitful business venture with Oakwood as their professional advisers.
Jane’s work also includes taking on executor-ships and applications for probate, sometimes assisting the families of existing clients at a difficult time to ease the financial, practical, form filling side and the pitfalls of IHT and probate legalities. Jane does prepare simple wills and is willing to act as an attorney in power of attorney considerations.
David Rangeley – Business Partner
David Rangeley qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 1972 and had his own tax practice for 26 years before merging it with Oakwood on 1st April 2019. David specialises in personal tax matters and has developed an expertise in tax compliance, inquiries, contentious appeals and settlements with HMRC. He has extensive experience in helping people who invested in failed tax schemes or who have suffered HMRC incompetence or unjustified treatment.
Camilla Hills – Payroll Manager and Accounts Manager
Camilla came to us in April 2012 after completing exams at college. She started with us as an apprentice and completed an NVQ in Business Administration in her first year. We then moved her on to AAT level 2 and over the years, she has competed level 2 and 3 and is now hard at work on level 4.
Camilla is our Payroll manager and the one we all go to if we have an employment query. She also prepares employment contracts and staff handbooks for all our clients new employees , she runs around 30 monthly payrolls together with her own portfolio of bookkeeping clients and VAT returns as well as year-end accounts.
She is an expert with our software package Xero for bookkeeping and accounts as well as ClearBooks, she also has a working relationship with Quickbooks and Sage.
Victoria Briggs – Accounts Supervisor & Office Manager
Victoria joined us fresh from college back in June 2007 having completed her Private Secretary’s certificate in office administration. She then went on to complete the Pitman bookkeeping course in record time and has since added a Platinum Xero partnership qualification.
Victoria and her partner Jamie have two boys aged 8 and 11 who keep them very busy, but Victoria is still in the office five days a week, specialising in Xero, Sage, ClearBooks and QuickBooks accounting software. She does bookkeeping, VAT returns and Accounts, enjoying training our clients on Xero. She is also the office manager.
She brings Storm to work, her six-year old Husky Labrador cross who is quite a handful but is slowly settling down!
Jozef Cole – Payroll Assistant & Account Manager
Jozef joined the team in August 2018 as a bookkeeping apprentice. Since then, Jozef has climbed the first rungs of the Accountancy ladder, qualifying from his Level 2 AAT apprenticeship programme in July 2019 and beginning his studies for AAT Level 3. In January 2021 Jozef passed the final exam of AAT level 3, becoming a qualified Accounts Assistant and completing his apprenticeship with a 97% pass mark for the professional discussion and portfolio aspect of his studies. Jozef now continues with AAT level 4 and is already part way through.
As well as bookkeeping Jozef takes care of sole & Limited Accounts as well as personal and corporate Tax Returns. Jozef also looks after around 15 of our payroll clients and is fast becoming an expert in the Xero Accounting software.
Denise Rogers – P.A.
Denise joined us back in August 2015 and is primarily an Admin Assistant. She semi-retired to look after an aged parent and has reduced her hours to one day a week. She is invaluable to the office, in that she is the lady who organises all of our social events, Christmas party and Summer outings, together with the practical side of Christmas tree decorating. She also helps Jane with her social calendar, i.e. Rotary, Christian Aid, Fairtrade etc.
Claire Coombes – Tax Manager
Claire joined us in August 2018 from running her own business and has proved to be invaluable. She started as an Administration Assistant but due to maternity leave by another member of staff, we found that Claire has the talent and ability to prepare Personal Tax Returns. She has now made this her mission in life!
She also manages the Income from property financial statements and any CGT sales alongside our personal Tax Return clients.
If you have any Tax questions Claire should be your first port of call!
Gemma Briggs – Tax Return administrator
Gemma joined us in August 2019. Jane had been finding for some considerable time that she was bogged down with Administration tasks, and we were also finding that Claire didn’t have time for some of her Admin duties, so we needed someone to take up the slack.
After taking maternity leave in 2021 to have her third son Gemma returned part time to work alongside Claire assisting her with Tax Return and Income from property preparation. She also does other admin duties including updating our checklists, emailing reminders, the limited company annual Returns, Health and Safety updates and more recently manages our social media presence on Facebook and our website.