A cost consultancy that shows its own margin.

A small business signs a card processing agreement, an energy contract and a telecoms account in its first year, usually under time pressure and usually from whoever called first. Nobody reads them again. Three years later the introductory rate has lifted, the energy contract has rolled onto out-of-contract rates and there are two lines on the phone bill for services that were switched off in 2022.

None of that is anybody behaving badly. It is what happens when the party with the information is paid by the outcome and the party paying the bill has a business to run. The gap is structural, and it is where the money sits.

The obvious response is a comparison form. We think the useful response is a document: read the bills, work out the real numbers, write them down, and hand them over whether or not anything changes. If the report says you are already on a good rate, that is a good report — it just earns us nothing.

The free-either-way part follows from the same logic. An audit you have to pay for is an audit you will only commission once, and one that has to justify itself by finding something. Ours does not: a report that says three of your five lines are already competitive is a good report, it just earns us nothing.