About half our clients are local and half are remote, so I'm not biased one way or another. Most of my "remote" clients came from personal recommendation - mostly being relatives or co-workers of existing local clients. I find it works fine for clients with relatively simple business models, especially the likes of IT consultants and other freelancers.
I don't think it works quite so well for "bricks and mortar" businesses with more demanding needs - In fact I have two clients who started off as IT contractors and have moved onto bigger businesses, both employing staff and both growing strongly, but the distance is a problem as I can't do the meetings and other "hands on" stuff that they need (i.e. setting up their computer systems etc), so they have to get a more local "book-keeping type" person to go in and then that makes a kind of "eternal triangle" between the three parties which inevitably increases time spent etc. In both cases, I've suggested they need a more local accountant and told them I'm happy to resign and do a managed handover, but both are reluctant to change so we're doing the best we can at a distance.
For new potential clients, I don't really encourage remote working unless they are freelancers or similar and have simple needs. I do prefer being able to sit down and work directly with my clients so am looking at concentrating on more local clients for the future, at least within easy travelling distance should the need arise, rather than the other end of the country!
I can see that someone in the expensive parts of the country would want a cheaper accountant from the poorer areas, but otherwise, I am absolutely confident that any average business could find a perfectly good accountant locally - there are thousands of us about after all. It does seem a bit silly to randomly pick someone from the other end of the country without checking out a few local ones to see if they could do the same job just as well for similar terms.
