The short answer
A paid audit is worth buying before a UK professional services firm replaces an agency only when the auditor earns the same fee whichever way the finding falls. An audit sold by the current agency, or by a rival hoping to win the retainer, is a proposal with a diagnosis attached. Scope the audit to six checks and give the auditor read-only access. Buy it only if the firm owns the accounts it will read.
Key takeaways
- An audit is only as independent as the fee behind it, so ask first what the auditor gains from each answer.
- An audit from the agency you doubt, or from its rival, is a proposal in disguise.
- Six checks make a paid audit worth reading, and the first three can be done from the firm's own records.
- An auditor needs read-only access, never administrator rights.
- Do not buy an audit if the firm does not own its accounts or has already decided.
Google Ads offers five access levels on an account, and one of them is read-only, which lets a person look at an account without changing it. That detail, set out in Google's help page on access levels, changes what a UK accountancy practice should be paying for when it thinks about replacing its agency. A reader does not need the keys, so the fee should buy judgement and not access. The first test of any audit offer is therefore not its price or its checklist. It is who is selling it, and what that seller earns from each possible answer. A managing partner who says out loud that the results look poor will usually get two kinds of offer: one from the agency being doubted and one from an agency that would like to replace it. Both are interested parties, and both are free to find exactly what suits them.
Why an audit from an interested party is a proposal
An audit finds what its author is paid to find, so the useful question is who is paid under each outcome. Accountancy partners know this from their own profession. The Financial Reporting Council revised its Ethical Standard for auditors in January 2024, as the ICAEW reported, and the standard rests on independence and objectivity. A financial or other stake that could skew an auditor's judgement is a threat to be managed, not a detail. Marketing audits have no such standard, so the firm has to run the test itself.
| Who sells it | Gains if it says keep | Gains if it says replace | How to read it |
|---|---|---|---|
| The current agency | The retainer continues | Nothing, and the account is lost | A defence. Use its exports, not its conclusion. |
| A rival agency, free or cheap | Nothing | The retainer moves to it | A proposal. Use its list of gaps, check each one. |
| An independent consultant on a flat fee | The same fee | The same fee | The only seller with no stake. Ask about follow-on work. |
| An introducer paid when an introduction works | Nothing | A fee if it introduces the replacement | Interested. We are in this row, so we do not sell audits. |
| The firm itself | No fee | No fee | Free, and biased toward whatever the partner already thinks. |
Google's own page on whether you need an SEO advises researching the damage an irresponsible provider can do, which is the same instinct. It is also why the fifth row is on the matrix: a partner reading her own accounts is free of any fee but not of a view.
What a paid audit has to cover
An audit is worth its fee only if it covers checks the firm could not make alone, and says plainly what it did not look at. Six checks do most of the work. The first three need no technical skill and use the firm's own records, so do them before buying anything. The last three are where an independent reader earns the fee.
| Check | Can the firm run it? | A pass looks like |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Who owns each account | Yes, from the account settings | The firm is owner of Ads, Analytics and Search Console |
| 2. Reported results against the firm's own enquiry log | Yes, with a month of reports | The gap between the two is stated and explained |
| 3. What was promised against what was delivered | Yes, from the proposal and reports | Each promise has a dated result beside it |
| 4. Whether tracking records real enquiries | Rarely | A test enquiry appears in the account within a day |
| 5. Whether account structure matches the brief | Rarely | Each campaign maps to a service the firm wants |
| 6. What the auditor did not check, and its stake | Only by asking | A written list of exclusions and any follow-on interest |
If checks 1 to 3 already show the answer, the audit has little left to add. A practice that finds it does not own its Ads account has a bigger problem than any audit will solve, and our guide to what to reclaim when an engagement ends sets out the order for fixing it.
What the firm can do in an afternoon first
Checks 1 to 3 cost a managing partner a few hours, and they decide whether the other three are worth buying. Take a made-up UK accountancy practice with fifteen people. The partner opens each account and reads the owner list, then sets the last three monthly reports beside the enquiry log that reception keeps. She finds that the reports claim more enquiries than the log records, and that the proposal promised a result nobody has mentioned since the second month. Nothing technical was needed.
That afternoon changes what she asks an auditor to do. She no longer needs a verdict on whether the agency is performing, because her own records have shown a gap. She needs to know why the numbers differ, which is check 4, and whether the account was built to chase the services she wants, which is check 5. A narrower brief costs less, and it is harder for a seller to bend into a general recommendation to start again.
What to ask any seller before saying yes
Four questions expose the stake behind an offer: what is the fee, what happens next, what is excluded and who reads it. Ask for the fee in writing, and ask whether it changes if the finding is to keep the current agency. Ask what the firm is expected to do after the report, and whether the seller would expect to quote for that work. Ask for the exclusions on paper, as row 6 of the scorecard requires. Ask who will actually read the accounts, since an audit signed by a senior person and read by nobody is a template with a name on it. An honest seller answers all four in a single email.
Give the auditor the least access that works
An auditor reads, so the access granted should only let it read. Google Ads has a read-only level, and the Analytics help page on access and data-restriction management describes a Viewer role as the most limited property-level role, able to see settings and data. We have not tested either on a live account, so check the current pages before granting anything. An auditor that asks for administrator rights has asked for the ability to change what it is meant to judge.
Working out whether the fee is worth it
The fee is worth paying when it is smaller than the chance the audit changes the decision, multiplied by what the wrong decision costs. Here is an illustration with made-up figures. Say a practice expects a wrong call, either leaving a good agency or staying with a poor one, to cost £20,000 over a year in lost enquiries and switching effort. Say an independent audit costs £2,000. The audit has to change the decision, correctly, more than one time in ten to break even. If the practice is already almost certain after checks 1 to 3, the chance is nearer nil, and the money is better kept. If it genuinely cannot tell, one in ten is a low bar.
Our piece on whether it is cheaper to fix the agency or replace it shows how to cost the other side of the choice, and the same arithmetic works with your own numbers. We do not say what an audit should cost, because no public source gives a reliable price.
Before you pay anyone
Not sure whether an audit would change anything?
Free to your firm. The agency pays us, and only if the relationship works, so we would rather you read your own accounts first than buy a verdict.
Get a recommendationWhen not to buy one
Do not pay for an audit when the firm does not own the accounts, or has already decided. An auditor cannot read what the firm cannot open, and the fee buys a letter about access. A UK practice that has already served notice has no decision left for the audit to inform, so it should spend the money on the handover instead, using the method in briefing a new agency on what the last one did.
Do not buy one to win an argument, either. If the real disagreement is about a contract term, a solicitor answers it and an audit does not. And a firm that cannot say what result it wants from marketing will get an audit that measures the wrong thing. For how we introduce one specialist, see how it works, and for the firms we serve, see accountancy practices, recruitment agencies, tax advisory and financial advice firms.
Frequently asked questions
What partners ask about paying for an audit.
Should a UK firm ask its current agency to audit its own work?
Ask it for exports and a plain account of what it changed, not for a verdict on itself. An audit by the agency being doubted is a defence, and a managing partner cannot tell a fair one from an unfair one. Have someone with no retainer at stake read the same accounts.
Is a free audit from a rival agency worth taking?
Take the information and discount the conclusion. A free audit is paid for by the retainer it hopes to win, so it has every reason to find a fault only it can fix. It can still point to real gaps, which a firm can then check against its own records before acting.
What access does an auditor need?
Read-only access is enough. Google Ads has a read-only access level, and Analytics has a Viewer role that can see settings and data. An auditor asking for administrator rights on a UK practice's accounts is asking for more than the job needs.
How much should a paid audit cost?
We do not quote a price because no public source gives a reliable one. Set the fee against the cost of getting the decision wrong, using your own figures, as the worked example in this article does. If the fee only makes sense when the audit is certain to change the decision, it is too high.
Can a firm run the audit itself?
Often, for the first three checks, since the firm owns the records. The firm cannot easily judge tracking set-up or account structure without technical help, and that is where a paid, independent reader adds something. Do the cheap checks first, then buy only what is left.
Sources and useful reading
- Google Ads Help, about access levels in your account, for the read-only level.
- Analytics Help, access and data-restriction management, for the Viewer role.
- Google Search Central, do you need an SEO?, for the advice to research the risks of an irresponsible provider.
- Financial Reporting Council, Ethical Standard for auditors, for the Revised Ethical Standard 2024, published 15 January 2024.
- ICAEW, elevating ethical standards, for the standard's core principles.
This article is commercial decision support and is not legal advice. The conflict matrix and the six checks are our suggestions, not standards, and the break-even figures are invented to show the method. Platform pages change, so read the current Google pages. All sources were located on 15 October 2026.