For accountants, lawyers, commercial lenders and insolvency practitioners
You have a client who is stuck, and it isn't a technical problem
You can see it in the file before they say it. The numbers are late. The same issue comes up every year. The owner is the business, and the succession conversation keeps getting postponed. None of that is work you are engaged to do — and referring it out carries its own risk.
What we do not do
Stated first, because it is the thing you need to know before anything else.
BraunTrack Advisory does not provide legal advice, tax advice, audit or assurance services, investment advice, or any other service requiring a professional licence or registration. We do not prepare financial statements, file returns, draft agreements, value businesses for a transaction, or advise on regulatory compliance.
We also do not compete for the relationship. We are not looking to become your client's accountant, lawyer or lender, and we do not introduce clients to alternatives to you. Where a matter falls into your area, it goes back to you — and if your client asks us for an opinion in your territory, the answer is that they should ask you.
What we do
We work on the management system around the business: what is actually constraining performance, what should be addressed first, who is accountable for it, and how much of the company depends on one person. The output is a measured baseline, a ranked set of priorities, and — where the client wants it — someone in the room while the work gets done.
When a referral usually makes sense
Described concretely, so it is recognisable in a file rather than in the abstract.
- The owner is the bottleneck, and everyone involved knows it except possibly the owner.
- Year-end conversations surface the same operational issue for the third year running.
- A succession or transition is approaching and the business is not currently transferable.
- A lending or covenant conversation is really a management-capacity conversation.
- The company is growing and the reporting, roles and processes have not kept up.
- Partners or co-owners disagree about direction and it is starting to show up operationally.
- Your client keeps asking you for advice slightly outside what you are engaged to give.
When it does not. A business in acute distress needs restructuring or insolvency counsel before it needs advisory work. A company looking for lead generation, sales training or marketing needs a different kind of firm. And an owner who is not willing to be told something uncomfortable will not get value from this, whatever they say at the outset.
What happens to a client you refer
A scoping conversation, at no cost
Twenty to thirty minutes with the owner to establish whether this is the right piece of work. If it is not, we say so and tell them what would be — including if the answer is that they should go back to you.
A specific information request
Not "send everything." A defined list, with the reason for each item, delivered through a secure upload rather than email.
A fixed scope and fee, agreed in writing before work starts
Your client will know what it costs and what they receive before they commit. Diagnostic engagements begin at $3,500, with a larger version typically at $7,500 where complexity requires it.
Documents the client keeps
A baseline scorecard, a dependence index, a constraint map, ninety-day priorities and a twelve-month roadmap — theirs regardless of whether the relationship continues, and available to share with you if they choose.
What happens to your relationship with them
Nothing, by design. You remain their accountant, their lawyer or their lender. In most engagements we end up in contact with the client's accountant, and it tends to make both pieces of work better — but only ever with the client's explicit instruction.
How information is handled
- Financial and management information is provided by the client, through a secure upload. It is not accepted as email attachments.
- It is seen by David Braun and, where an engagement requires a named specialist collaborator, by that person under the same terms.
- Nothing is reported back to a referring professional — not findings, not scores, not observations — without the client's written instruction. We will confirm to you that a conversation happened, and nothing beyond that.
- Information is retained on a defined schedule and destroyed at the end of it. The full statement is on the confidentiality and scope page.
- Conflicts are checked before an engagement is accepted, including where we are already working with a direct competitor of your client.
Decision required before this page is published. This page needs an explicit, published position on referral fees — whether any consideration passes between BraunTrack and a referring professional, and if so on what basis. Silence on this question does not read as neutral to a lawyer, an accountant or a credit union; it reads as an arrangement that has not been disclosed. Replace this box with the stated position.
Start a conversation
If you have a client in mind, or would rather understand how this works before you refer anyone, use the form or call directly. We are happy to have the conversation with you first, without the client involved.