James Wheeler

James Wheeler Accountant | Tax Advisor | Virtual CFO
Founder of Jameco Construction CFO Trust me, it's very common. I'm James Wheeler, an accountant and tax advisor.

Running a construction business and feel like your accountant doesn't understand your industry? That's the conversation I have with directors every single week. I founded Jameco Construction CFO to provide construction businesses with more than a compliance-driven accountant who disappears for the rest of the year. We work exclusively with UK construction businesses with annual revenues of up to £

5 million. Directors who've outgrown their high street accountant but can't justify a full-time finance team. We handle the day-to-day compliance through our Virtual Finance Department, provide financial leadership through our Virtual CFO service, and make sure you're keeping more of what you earn through our Strategic Tax Advisory. I post about construction finance on here every week, so if you run a construction business, give me a follow. I also run Jameco Group (a finance partner for growing businesses) and Jameco Practice Advisory (helping accountants build specialist practices). If you'd like to chat about your business, book a discovery call at jamecoconstructioncfo.com

02/06/2026

If HMRC decides that someone you're paying as a self-employed subcontractor is working like an employee, they can reclassify the arrangement. I've seen it happen to construction businesses I work with, and the financial impact is substantial.

When the reclassification happens, the business becomes liable for the employer's National Insurance and the income tax that should have been deducted through PAYE, backdated up to six years. Penalties and interest apply on top, and the liability sits with the business, not the worker.

Depending on how many subcontractors are involved and how long the arrangements have been in place, the total can run into the tens or hundreds of thousands.

Construction is one of the most actively reviewed sectors for this. HMRC pays particular attention to contractors where the same subcontractors appear month after month on the CIS300 returns, which is one of the patterns they associate with disguised employment.

When HMRC assesses whether a subcontractor is genuinely self-employed, they look at the practical reality of the arrangement. The tests cover whether the subcontractor only works for the business in question, whether they use their own tools and equipment, whether they set their own hours and methods, whether they have a genuine right to send someone else in their place, and whether they bear commercial risk on the work they're delivering.

If any of these factors describe arrangements you currently have in place, the position is exposed, because the contract isn't the test. The day-to-day reality of the engagement is what HMRC assesses against.

Get the arrangements reviewed by someone who specialises in employment status in construction. If HMRC reaches a different view, the exposure is too significant to ignore.

29/05/2026

Clients love our app advisory 💚

A modern construction business needs more than just an accountant. You need a tech stack that works together, so the manual admin disappears and you can see what's happening in the business at any time.

Xero sits at the centre, and we build out from there based on what your business needs.

Drop us a message if you'd like a chat about how it all fits together.

28/05/2026

For the first time since 2011, HMRC has increased the approved mileage allowance from 45p to 55p per mile for the first 10,000 business miles in a tax year. The change was announced on 21 May 2026 and backdated to 6 April 2026, so it covers the full 2026/27 tax year.

This is a change that matters if you're a construction director using your personal vehicle for business trips like site visits, supplier trips, and client meetings.

The rate had been frozen at 45p for 15 years, despite fuel, insurance and vehicle costs going up significantly over the same period.

For construction directors operating through a limited company, the business reimburses you for every business mile driven in your personal vehicle, and that reimbursement is tax-free at the approved rate.

The simplest way to handle the reimbursement is to credit it to the director's loan account, where it builds up as a tax-free withdrawal you can take whenever the cash is available.

For a construction director doing 10,000 business miles a year, that's £5,500 tax-free credited to the loan account.

And if you haven't been claiming this in previous years, HMRC allows backdated claims for the previous four tax years at the rates that applied at the time. For a director who's been doing similar mileage and not claiming, that can add up to a significant recovery on top of the current year.

This is often overlooked because directors don't track personal vehicle business miles in Xero, so unless your accountant is requesting this information at period end, the mileage isn't being claimed.

If you've been using your personal vehicle for business and not claiming the mileage, mention it to your accountant or work through it with a construction-specialist finance team.

26/05/2026

What profit did your construction business make last month?

I don't mean turnover or how busy the business has been, I mean the profit after subcontractors, materials, and overheads have been paid.

The construction directors who approach me almost never have an answer to that. They know the work is coming in and the revenue is being generated, but when I ask what the business made last month, the conversation goes quiet.

The reason is almost always the same: the financial information isn't being produced during the year. Year-end accounts are prepared months after the period has closed, and by the time they're reviewed, the information is historic, with no opportunity to change the result.

Without regaular information being produced on a quarterly or monthly basis. The decisions being made by the director are based on instinct rather than on the financial position of the business. Pricing is set without knowing what the gross margin looks like, and hiring decisions get made based on workload rather than what the business can afford. Investment gets committed to on the assumption that the profit is there, rather than confirmation that it is.

Monthly management reporting changes that, because the director sees what the business made each month, where the margin came from, and where it's getting lost. Performance gets compared against the previous month and the same period the year before, which shows up movements the static information doesn't reveal: margins shrinking on certain contracts, overheads creeping up, customers paying slower with debtor days increasing, or work in progress building without revenue catching up.

When our reporting picks up a change, the director can act on it right away rather than waiting until year-end to see what happened. If margins are shrinking on certain contracts, it becomes a pricing review focused on where it's showing up, and if overheads are creeping up, it becomes a cost review of the specific lines that have moved.

The information needed to produce this reporting is usually already held within Xero, but what's missing is a monthly process to pull it into a format the director can use throughout the year.

If you'd like to find out how regular reporting could transform your business, get in touch.

25/05/2026

A lot of construction directors put off switching accountants because they assume it'll be a mess.

It never is because we handle the whole transition, so compliance never drops and you can focus on the business.

The bigger question is what you might be missing under your current setup. If you've been thinking about a change, the link's in our bio.

21/05/2026

When I first started in business, I made the same mistake I see construction directors making every day. Chasing every opportunity regardless of whether it was the right fit.

Every enquiry, every industry, every client. Quoting low to win the work. Taking on businesses I didn't understand because the revenue was there.

It puts you on a treadmill. You don't get the time to step back, think about strategy, or focus on the right work. You're too busy delivering everything you've already taken on. Years pass, and the business is in the same position it was three years ago.

The turning point for me was sitting down and working out where the margin was coming from. When I did, the pattern was obvious. The strongest returns came from the work I had specialist expertise in. The clients who valued that expertise were happy to pay a premium for it.

The low-margin work fills the schedule but drains your team. It keeps the business at full capacity without justifying the effort it takes to deliver.

The construction directors I work with describe the same experience. Most have an instinct for which clients and types of work are profitable. Without the financial visibility to confirm it, though, they can't act on the instinct confidently. So they keep taking on every job that comes in. Turning work away feels uncomfortable when there's no data to back up the decision.

Once that visibility is in place, the decision-making changes. The right work gets prioritised, the wrong work gets declined, and the wasted resources get freed up.

That requires discipline and detailed financial reporting. But the construction businesses that put it in place end up more profitable, even on lower turnover. And when they do grow again, the profit grows with it.

If you're seeing this pattern in your business, the next step is working through where the margin is coming from with a construction specialist. Once you know, you can position the business around the work that's making it, and win more of the work that fits.

19/05/2026

Without CIS gross payment status, 20% of every payment you receive as a construction subcontractor is held by HMRC as a payment in advance towards your tax liability.

On a £100k contract, that's £20k you don't see until it's either offset against your own CIS or PAYE liabilities, or reclaimed at year-end.

That puts real pressure on the cash flow, especially alongside domestic reverse charge VAT and the payment terms most construction businesses are dealing with.

Gross payment status changes that. You receive the full amount of every payment with nothing deducted. You're then responsible for setting aside the tax owed, but the cash stays in the business in the meantime.

There are three tests to qualify.

The turnover test looks at construction turnover net of VAT and materials, and the threshold is £30k per director or £100k across the whole business.

The compliance test looks at CIS, PAYE, VAT, and corporation tax across the previous twelve months. Everything needs to have been submitted and paid on time.

The business test looks at how the business operates. You need a UK bank account and to be carrying out construction work in the UK.

It's one of the first things I review with any new construction client who doesn't have it. Several businesses I've taken on recently weren't aware their position had changed.

Circumstances change. If your turnover has grown, or your compliance record has improved since the last time it was looked at, you may well qualify now. And the impact on the cash flow is immediate from the next payment that comes in.

If this has never been raised with you, or you've previously been told that gross status isn't possible, it's worth having it reviewed by a CIS specialist.

18/05/2026

Jameco Construction CFO is a finance partner built specifically for UK construction.

We work exclusively with construction businesses turning over up to £5M. Compliance, reporting, tax planning, and CFO-level support, all from a team that understands the industry.

72 reviews on Google, all five star. Xero Silver Champion Partner.

18/05/2026

Always appreciate it when a client takes the time to leave a review. Cheers Carl, much appreciated.

"James is friendly, pleasant and always helps where he can. Fantastic service he provides us with, and we'll continue to build upon our relationship."

14/05/2026

When I tell a construction director we provide a virtual finance department, most of them ask what that means.

Essentially, we sit outside the business but function as if we were part of it, with a single point of accountability across compliance, reporting, tax planning, cash flow forecasting, and strategic input.

Construction directors are typically operating with the fragmented version.

A high street accountant produces year-end accounts, a bookkeeper processes the transactions, and tax advice is ad-hoc when something specific comes up. The director sits in the middle holding it together, and the information from each source rarely lines up into a coherent picture of where the business stands.

A virtual finance department gives the director a finance function operating at the standard of a much larger business. The reporting rhythm is built around what the business needs rather than the deadlines HMRC sets, tax planning happens during the year rather than at the end of it, and CFO-level input is there at the point of decision, not after.

For most construction businesses between £250k and £5M, this is a more effective structure than any single in-house hire could deliver.

One person cannot operate at the level of a bookkeeper, a management accountant, a tax adviser, and a CFO simultaneously, and the cost of hiring four people who can is rarely justifiable at that size of business.

Nearly every client we've taken on had never come across this model before they spoke to us. They'd been working with a high street accountant for years and assumed the only alternative was hiring internally.

If you'd like to see what this could look like for your business, get in touch.

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ME156AW

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